Blood Rayne: Betrayal is a brutal side scroller not meant for the weak of heart. When I first heard about it I expected a very pretty Castlevania like game but instead received a punishingly hard old school style game that was more in the vein of Mega Man Zero. Rayne, the main character, can dole out the punishment with her various bladed accoutrements and then move nimbly across the environment as well, a skill you will be forced to master. This game will bite you, chew you up, kick you in the balls, and have you saying “Please sir, may I have another?!”
When you are first introduced to the combat it may seem a bit too easy, but do not let that fool you. Most of the first enemies can be dispatched with a light stun attack and then a blood sucking finisher, which will consequently replenish your own health. Some of the later enemies however will give you no such heath boost and will take a severe beating to even make stumble. They quickly start mixing up the enemies as well and putting you into what seems like an impossible scenario and giving you a time limit, generally about thirty seconds, to defeat several waves of them before you lose a large point boost. The point system does not serve much of a purpose except to grade you at the end of each level and to make you feel like a total badass for defeating all the enemies in quick succession. Dashing while in the middle of a confrontation becomes essential as the game came with no equipped block button and the only way to avoid damage is to be sucking blood or dashing. Needless to say the battles become quick and furious while also being extremely dangerous and extremely rewarding if you can manage to survive the encounter.
Another part of the game that makes you feel like a total devastator is the music. It feels like a mix of eloquent piano tunes and metal shred fests. At any time during a fight the music will vary based upon your performance and health. If you are taking down enemies left and right with a full heath bar you receive extreme ear pleasures in the form of an orchestral electric guitar anthem. Conversely when your health starts dropping so do parts of the orchestra so that at about ten percent health the music is reduced down to just a solo piano playing. Thankfully they did not just rely on this one battle track and have created several musical scores that fit in very will with the combat as well as the exploration. In an age where music has become more ambiance than anything else this game stands out from the crowd by providing music that is integral to the experience rather than just an afterthought.
While the beginning of the game focuses heavily on combat they slowly start to introduce you to some of the platforming elements the gameplay. At first I felt like the controls for Rayne were a bit too “slippery” to do any precise platforming but as I went on it started to feel natural and actually turned into a very precise platformer. BloodRayne is very old school in its platforming meaning that if you make a mistake you will probably end up dead, no matter how minor the slip up. There are chase scenes with giant blades that require you to play through them perfectly, and I mean perfectly, in order to get survive. There are also times when you are forced to juggle in the air between one or two falling platforms while killing enemies as well. Some of this may seem too intense and if you were to start off on that level without any explanation it would be, but thankfully these super challenging sections are introduced only in the last few levels after you have had time to master the needed skills. As brutal as these sections seemed they never felt like they were killing me cheaply. I always felt as though I was the one that made the mistake and it was very easy to tell how I made the mistake.
Do not think that this game it just all guns and wall jumps though because it also throws a few puzzles you way as well. Most of the puzzles require some sort of combat to set up, such as throwing other vampires into goo, and they are all pretty interesting. This is one of my first real gripes about the game though because usually the game does a good job of making mechanics clear but it does not always do so for the puzzles. A prime example is one section that I broke through a series of wall jumps and air dashes when all I had to do was shoot my gun while floating on a dead vampire. On the whole however most of the mentally challenging parts of the game are well thought out and will requre just enough brain power to make you feel good about yourself without forcing you stop for too long to figure out what to do next. It also helps that most puzzles can be solved with some sort of explosion or satisfying killing.
The last thing that I want to talk about in BloodRayne: Betrayal is the art style and to say that it is gorgeous. Everything looks extremely clean and runs very smoothly. Even things in the foreground are beautifully rendered and deserving of some attention. Bosses too are interesting looking and have several animations that all look natural if sometimes a bit chaotic. The biggest problem I have with the game is with the bosses and their style though. From the first boss to the last there seems to be a lot of distracting chaos going on making it hard to fight or even tell where Rayne is on the screen. The first boss in particular has “rock falling from above” move that is near impossible to avoid, all the while he will be attacking you as will several bug creatures. It detracts from the experience when I am kicking ass and taking names and then all the sudden I do not even know where I am on screen and my heath has been reduced down to nothing. This is not usually a problem in the main game and only becomes an issue with the bosses and so it can be mostly overlooked since the rest of the game is so great.
This game both frustrated me and rewarded me in the same way Demon’s Souls did. It is punishingly hard without being cheap and infinitely rewarding once you learn how to play. The ranking system does little for me as far as replay value is concerned but I will end up playing through this game again just because it is so good. While it does have a few notable flaws they are so small that it does not detract from the experience as a whole. Flat out, I loved this game. If you enjoyed Mega Man or any of the other super hard games way back when then you owe it to yourself to pick up this game.
