O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
While third person shooters were a thing throughout the 90s, it wasn’t until Max Payne in 2001 when the genre suddenly clicked. It had all of the speed and energy of a late 90s FPS’, but didn’t feel like a bizarre third person mod to one and had its controls and animations tweaked to feel great. Many games followed using a similar formula. PC-centric ones, like Max Payne itself, kept it all really fast and mouse controlled. Console-centric ones tried to adapt the speed and agility to the controller. Many failed to be fun or memorable. BloodRayne, originally from 2002, was one of the fun ones.
18 years later, the third person shooter genre has changed and playing something like BloodRayne in this new updated Terminal Cut version feels refreshingly fun. It’s a ridiculously fast game that mixes hack and slash and third person shooting into a surprisingly well put together mix and the only game that felt about as good while being about as fast I can think of was The Suffering. But even that one was never this fast and hectic.
The concept is ridiculously simple. Titular Rayne is a dhampir (half-vampire, half-human) who joins a secret society fighting supernatural threats called Brimstone Society. And in this game, which can be unofficially divided into 3 Acts, she goes on missions for that society, killing weird supernatural monsters and nazis in the 1930s. The game is unapologetic in sexualizing the character, putting her in ridiculous clothes, making suggestive sounds when drinking blood of enemies and having her say some lewd combat barks from time to time. And it was as silly and dumb in 2002, but it was also not really the point of why this game is fun. The whole plot is basically some throwaway reason for you to do varied things in varied places and dismember enemies.
Rayne uses her arm-blades, mixed with kicks and Jedi Knight 2 force power jumping abilities as her main tools to solve problems, but she also carries lots of guns on herself (which can even be made visible via cheats… remember when games had fun cheats? this game has those). She dual-wields most of those as well. She also moves really fast, can become even faster via special rage mode and after a bit learns the ability to slow down time at will and for as long as she wants. As such, levels tend to be about you rushing through the whole thing, cutting, shooting and (blood)sucking along the way, breaking walls and pushing switches to get to the end of the level/segment. And each combat encounter feels super fun on keyboard and mouse specifically because you just constantly circle around enemies mashing melee and shooting, which looks like hot mess, but feels controlled and exciting. This is a game where speedrunning levels is the normal way you play the game – exploring or stopping to think is ill advised.
What’s also shocking is how varied it is. I forgot how much different stuff you get to see and do throughout the whole game. Those 3 acts have their own unique sets of enemies with only nazis reappearing in the last two. Some levels have a hub-level and sub-levels, some of which can even be completed out of order. Some are very short and linear. All bosses have unique gimmicks to them. There’s a mission where you get to pilot a mech. And in general you just never know what to expect next.
Sadly, sometimes, especially closer to the end of the game, you do start getting the “okay now what do I do” levels, which break the otherwise fast pace of the game. It can also spike in difficulty completely unexpectedly and some combat animations are just bad for you if you trigger them, which was clearly unintentional. The fact that you save only at the start of the level and there are no checkpoints is fine for most of the game, but in those later maps it can become frustrating, especially since there are a few cases where the game can kill you with absolutely no warning. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it is infuriating.
Overall, the original BloodRayne is still extremely fun to play. It has lots of flaws and if you’re not into games that are this quickly paced and action focused, you might not like it. Also, while the fixes and improvements of the Terminal Cut are extremely welcome, it’s hardly a remaster. More like a version of the game that is easier to work with than the original one. Either way, I was glad to spend 5 hours on this action title again, so many years later. And I’m sure there will be others who will greatly enjoy playing this game. So, if you have never checked it before, definitely give it at least a look.
P.S. Oh and I was originally going to do a full revisit of the sequel, but I found it tedious at release and even more horribly boring now, so I just couldn’t force myself to finish it. Wouldn’t recommend it anyway, unlike this original.