I think the game is good and this is probably the best (non-yar yar yar) way of playing it, but I think they skipped out on remastering a few things that would have really made this version shine. The ui is still in 4:3 as seen in the official screenshots so it just looks weird in the middle of the screen like that. The main menu is gnarled with artifacts. The title look especially poor, which gives off a bad first impression. Also, the overall textures could look much better. Thankfully there are mods for all of the issues I have.

The game still plays well. I would suggest it on a good sale these days.

Update after playing; It's worse than I originally posted. If you're going to get it, get it cheap and expect more bugs and crashes than the og version. This is a bs lazy cash-grab. It's clear this was just to get more money out of an old game with as little work as possible. If there are plans for another sequel, I wont be there for it.

I owned the original and still love the character, as over-the-top as she might be. But I just don't remember the game being quite so bad at the controls. I'm trying to play with keyboard and mouse, as I did originally, but they're nearly unusable.

Movement is tricky, especially when parts of the game depend on you doing high-wire acts. The game tries to help, and if you let it, it'll save you life, but if you accidentally try to drive yourself, you're likely going to drive yourself over the edge.

Your melee attacks -- arguably the whole point of this character -- seem to be waaaaay too controlled by context. If an enemy is too close to you, you can't use a melee attack at all, and they're free to stun-lock you until you die. The game suggests for some new cool attacks that get unlocked, but it's not really clear how those are used. Every once in a while Rayne will do some cool, fancy move and it feels just like luck? The rage thing make all the fancy moves happen with the addition of streamers. Yaaaay.

You could use your guns at this point, but the enemies are bullet-sponges, guns are rare, and the gun system is tricky anyway. Like, there's not a way to quickly switch weapons, so much as switch which priority mode you want. You've got a large number of slots, but you can't replace weapons in slots without first consuming them... and you can't consume a single weapon, since you always fire both weapons at the same time. At least you don't have to aim. Not that aiming really helps, anyway. Later in the game you get a sniper ability that is mostly unusable, but most of the time, the benefit of guns is that she will automatically point them at enemies, giving you a hint as to where they are.

But the worst part of the guns is the tendency for controls to stick! The game will detect the key-down event to start firing your gun, but will often miss the key-up event, so you empty all your ammo into the walls.

This will end up to be about 7 hours of mostly annoying gameplay, and will cost you $15 and 13GB -- most of which is used to store the movies in multiple languages. You may never see the ending you want, though, because the final mission seems to be totally broken.

In the end, it is better to let Rayne live on in your memory and the memories of cosplayers than to replay her first game. I am grateful to Terminal Reality for doing the work of bringing it back, but ... this ain't it.

I feel like the appeal of the Bloodrayne games has always been just the character herself.

The gameplay is very, very mundane even for the time of its release. It just feels so... clunky or non-impactful. The idea of a female vampire being a badass warrior is cool and the setting of World War 2 is a neat one for a vampire to sink their fangs into, but the gameplay... ughhhhhh. It just feels so unsatisfactory to do anything.

Definitely one of those games where the story came first and then the gameplay was designed. And even then, I would say the story is... mediocre at best. Again, the draw here is Bloodrayne herself. If you like her design and just the overall personality she possesses, maybe you can find enjoyment slogging through this game and its sequel - its clear that's where most of the developers put their care anyway. Personally, I'd much rather see Bloodrayne actually in a fun video game to play - not just to look at or watch.

With all that said, I would like to see a future for the Bloodrayne games. I think there is potential here, but just give it to a competent developer. Oh, and please not one that will make Bloodrayne look like a man. You know who they are. Keep her as she is.

Starts off very well, but unfortunately, gets a lot worse later on.

+ Some nice integrated platforming.
+ Music is pretty good.
+ Environmental destructability is pretty good.
+ I love the idea of individual fights with all the nazi officers, generals and commanders being made into boss fights. Each of them feel more personal and memorable this way.
+ Game is made into 3 chapters. The first chapter set in Louisiana is awesome, Great atmosphere and levels themselves are fun, because it feels a bit more like survival horror than hack and slash. Those are all tiny levels in size but they offer the most.

- Sadly, since chapter 2 the game becomes dull hack and slash with very tedious level design choices. Some later levels remind me a lot of Half Life Xen levels, they're that bad.
- Level design dated badly. Levels since chapter 2 are huge and empty.
- Combat is very basic. You can either slash or shoot. It gets repetitive real fast.
- Majority of enemies have big health, so weaker firearms and basic melee attacks are almost useless.
- Accidently triggering side jump instead of jumping diagonally is annoying.
- Story could be interesting, but most of the writing is poor.

While Ziggurat did a great job making this play fine on modern systems with additional improvements, the game itself is not very good.


6/10

If not for nostalgia, avoid.

I need therapy after this.

I wish there was a button for neutral. There is really nothing done differently with Terminal Cut then the original except for widescreen and updating it to run on newer PCs. The update should preserve the series for next gen. The original Bloodrayne came out in 2002. Compare this to Return to Castle Wolfenstein 2001 or Quake III Arena 1996. Bloodrayne seems older and more dated. Graphics wise and the controls. You can't even crouch. It's not needed but feels so basic. IMO It's like playing a game from 1998. This game seems short but to make it appear longer you have hard fights long after a save point. Forcing you to replay allot of a level to get back to the boss fight. I didn't like grinding to replay so much of a level. A positive note is I picked up this game to play something nostalgic. With the GPU shortage why not? You should be able to play this on a Dell with onboard graphics after 2016. I'ts a good game and worth a shot. I like the time period and the concept of the story. I like the idea of putting vampires and Nazi's together. I don't regret playing the game and I'd recommended it to retro gamer's only.

Even with the annoying parts in it you have to do over and over because you soon die after you past them it only took me 10 hours to finish the game.
The dialogue is funny though (for all the wrong reasons XD ).

BloodRayne is a third-person hack-and-slash game where you play as Rayne, a Dhampir (half-vampire, half-human) working for the mysterious Brimstone Society. Your job is to prevent supernatural creatures from taking over the world, while seemingly keeping it a secret from the general public.

The graphics are pretty bad by today’s standards, even with the additional polish from the Terminal Cut, but it’s passable for such an old game. Most environments are barren and levels can start to run together after a while. Granted, the three major chapters are fairly distinct in visual style, but I would have liked some more variety between levels within the same chapter. It’s tough to stay interested in the environment when it’s your tenth time running through a swamp.

Nothing about the soundtrack stood out to me while playing, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This isn’t the type of game where players expect a unique score full of interesting tracks; straightforward background tracks will do the job just fine. Surprisingly, the most memorable sounds come from the horribly mixed effects. When Rayne jumps on someone’s back to suck their blood, you can’t hear anything over the sound of her slurping. On the other hand, sometimes characters speak so quietly that you have to strain to hear them. This brings up the other major audio issue, the voice acting.

No offense intended towards the voice actors, but there are some dismal performances. It could be due to inexperienced actors, rushed production, or bad direction, but regardless of the reason, it’s impossible to take any character seriously. Rayne speaks with no emotion, yet her lines are full of quips and one-liners. Some villains go in the opposite direction and have cartoonish voices that clash with Rayne’s during cutscenes.

BloodRayne's story is split into three parts that take place at different times and in unique settings. There’s an overarching narrative, but each piece still has a self-contained storyline. None of these mini-stories appealed to me because they tended to drag on. You could sum up the entire plot in only a few scenes, but there’s a bunch of combat sections breaking it up. The overall story is equally weak, but I don’t expect many people to be playing it for the plot. I tend to expect a good story if the gameplay is lacking, but here all I got was some nonsensical narrative full of bizarre twists and reveals. Still, I actually started to appreciate how bad the story was, so it can still be a satisfying experience if you don’t take it too seriously.

Awkward cutscenes abound, adding a whole new level of terrible to the game’s attempts at quality storytelling. Rayne is the epitome of edgy protagonists from the 2000s. Regardless of the situation, she’s always ready with a quip to let you know she’s a badass with a devil-may-care attitude.

If my critiques stopped here, I would probably enjoy BloodRayne. The story is charmingly bad and if the gameplay was decent, this might actually be a strong recommendation. Instead, the combat is a frustrating mess that almost singlehandedly ruins the game.

It sounds cool to jump around stabbing and shooting enemies, but in practice, it feels like you are always fighting with the controls. Even switching to a controller, which shouldn’t be necessary, didn’t help much. Guns lock on to enemies, which can be annoying when you are stuck shooting an enemy you don’t want to. Melee combat is stiff and doesn’t work well with the movement system. Draining someone’s blood seems to be the most polished part of combat, but it’s nothing special.

There’s some visual variety in enemies, but ultimately, they are all generic humanoids. The main distinction is that some have guns and others don’t, but neither of them makes for an interesting fight.

Bosses are a little different, in that they have more thought put into their designs and they all have specific gimmicks that change up how you fight them. Unfortunately, many of these fights are made trivial by using Blood Rage, a move that boosts your damage to insane levels, allowing you to kill most bosses before the buff ends. The main exception is the final boss. You have to kill it in a specific way, preventing you from using Blood Rage. It’s easily the worst fight in the game and almost made me leave it unfinished. The only reason I didn’t quit was that I encountered a bug that killed the boss in a few seconds, after dozens of unsuccessful attempts.

Performance-wise, it runs how you would expect a mediocre port of an old game to run; passable, but generally unimpressive. On the other hand, bugs and glitches are everywhere. It’s unclear whether all these issues were present on release, or if some were introduced by the new port, but whatever the case, they are clearly noticeable. They range from minor glitches, like getting stuck on the edge of an object’s hitbox, to game-changing bugs, such as the one that kills the final boss for you. Some people might play the whole game without facing a major issue, but it’s all up to blind luck.

There are some fantastic elements in BloodRayne, but not enough to carry it through its weaker moments. I loved the cheesy, ridiculous dialogue, yet I could never look past the combat. It always felt like I was suffering through boring gameplay just to get to the next cutscene. Because of that, I can’t recommend this game unless you know you won’t mind the gameplay. For the average player, I suspect it’ll be too much of a slog to enjoy.

Minor performance issues and significant bugs running on: AMD Ryzen 5 1600, 16 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 1070

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Clearly Bloodrayne is not for everyone. Even with the enhanced graphics, the game looks really outdated and the gameplay is very stiff, even for a 20 years old game. It feels more like a 90's game than a 2002 game. If you played the original back in the day and you liked it, give it a try, but if you are new to the series don't bother. There are better hack and slash games on the market, like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta.

5/10