BloodRayne 2

The vampiress with the mostest returns with more blood, more sex, and more fun for all ages.

If you?re a man of many tastes, you may have noticed BloodRayne, heroine of 2002?s hyper-violent action game, pop up a lot more often lately. On MTV2, for example, lopping heads off to the tune of Evanescence?s ?Everybody?s Fool??or perhaps in Playboy, showing off some of her more interesting assets. It?s all part of the push Majesco is giving the sprightly little lady for her big sequel?and while BloodRayne 2 borrows all of its new features from other, more successful games, it?ll still likely keep the hormones of her fanbase raging for months to come.

Not into Long Walks at the Park

Thankfully for BloodRayne?s fans, the days of her punching out Nazis in the swamps of Louisiana are finally over. BloodRayne 2 is set in the modern age, with everyone?s favorite demi-vampiress slinking among the gothic elite and trying to off her siblings before they can take over the world with a substance that eliminates their vampire-like weakness to sunlight.

Like any character-driven game sequel, the core gameplay remains mostly unchanged. Rayne?s still got a killer set of blades that slices and dices anything in her path, as well as a handy harpoon and a few supernatural powers like bullet time. The main new addition is a gun?a haunted one, of course, which runs off the blood of hapless enemies and is useful for picking off flying bosses with. You?ve also got some more acrobatic bits, with Rayne spinning on poles and flipping up to high areas?a trick that works exactly as it did in last year?s Prince of Persia.

The funny thing about all this, though, is that it demonstrates how much the action-game genre has seemed to advance over the past few years without actually advancing much at all. The graphics are nearly immaculate, with lovely lighting tricks and all manner of destructible objects. The cut-scenes and intermittent dialogue are equally fantastic, as long as you don?t mind the Gothier-than-thou tone sprinkled over everything. It?s just that, despite Rayne?s new abilities, you?re still doing pretty much the same thing as before?slashing up wimpy guys, defeating bosses, and then doing it all over again after the next save point. (Even worse, the old camera problems are still there?you?ll get blindsided by enemies all the time simply because you had no advance warning of their presence.)

Elvira? Whatever

Of course, all of this could be said for the original BloodRayne, too. This series isn?t meant to forge new design breakthroughs; it?s meant to feature a pretty girl doing all sorts of nasty stuff to enemies. If you enjoyed BloodRayne for what it was, then there?s no way its sequel will disappoint you.

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