BloodRayne: Betrayal

BloodRayne: Betrayal is the third installment into the BloodRayne franchise, developed by WayForward Technologies, but unlike its 3D predecessors, Betrayal has opted for 2D, side-scrolling gameplay. Released for PlayStation Network and Xbox LIVE Arcade, BloodRayne: Betrayal follows the series’ reoccurring heroine, Rayne, as she battles her way through 15 death-filled chapters. There are oodles of different enemies to combat as well as a few bosses along the way. The combat keeps things fresh by making it fun, yet challenging, to hack, slash, and stomp your way through vampires, electrified toads, and other odd assortments of creatures. While I found myself cursing the game for unjustifiable reasons, I remedied my anger by realizing that I hadn’t played a game quite this difficult in quite some time. I love a good challenge, but when the challenge doesn’t know how to keep things interesting and opts for, “just throw more bad guys in there,” I’d rather give-up, since I know I won’t feel very gratified in the end.

Initially, I believed BloodRayne: Betrayal to be a simplistic, side-scrolling, 2D beat-‘em-up with nothing up its sleeves. Sure enough, those blood covered sleeves were holding a good amount of tricks to slip me up at its earliest convenience. The game quickly grew difficult as I had to learn new ways to avoid attacks, and make hefty use of both my weapons and my blood-sucking mouth. The only way to attain health on the fly was to suck the blood of your enemies. Simple, really, for all you had to do was hit them once to knock them off-guard and then let the blood-sucking commence. However, as more enemies starting making their way on to the battlefield, it grew increasingly difficult to juggle all of their incoming attacks, watch my health meter, and observe the battlefield for flying projectiles (bullets especially).

Aerial attacks mix up the combat a bit...but just a bit.

Some neat tricks that Rayne can pull off include the ability to knock the enemy into the air and hit them with a few aerial attacks before they drop to the ground, hopefully dead if you managed to slice them up enough up there. Dodging is another key to BloodRayne: Betrayal’s combat, so much so that not using it is like choosing to give yourself a handicap. Dodging is done by pressing the L2 button (or LT on Xbox 360) and is not just needed during combat. Some of the platforming in the game requires that you dodge forward in mid-air to make it to your destination. As I stated above, though, this gameplay was a rush of both excitement and anger. The difficult areas led to many deaths, which led to many “REALLY!?” moments, but it always lured me back in to give it one more shot. Sure enough, I would think of some new way to best the fight. These conflicting emotions make this a game that’s hard to like, but not so hard to dislike, either.

BloodRayne: Betrayal makes ample use of its 2D, side scrolling gameplay and graphics when telling its story as it makes the screen appear to be a graphic novel or comic book filled with speech bubbles that tell the story as you progress. This helps the player not feel as if they are trudging through 15 chapters, hack and slashing anything that pops up just so they can say they finished. However, the story is rather bland and the speech bubbles, its only representation of story, don’t appear frequently enough, which often times led me to wonder what the story was. The story goes that Rayne has been recruited by the Brimstone Society to infiltrate a ball that takes place in a castle to stop a sinister plot. That’s about as much as I could garner from the game (it’s also as much as I’d like to tell you, you spoiler-crazy people). I often felt like some quality voice-acting (keyword: quality) would have given the game some much-needed help. This is not a game for vampire lore-loving enthusiasts, but that can be denoted from the reputation the franchise holds.

Oh really? I'm kind of busy at the moment!

While visually unique, BloodRayne: Betrayal lacks a meaningful core. The only reason that I was killing all of these creatures and vampires was simply because I needed to react in self-defense, but even that begs the question, ‘why were they attacking me?’ I’m sure the answer is buried somewhere in those text fields, but I either missed it or it was quickly glanced over and not brought to the forefront of its story. Its gameplay is filled with fun, but frustrating mechanics, and unfortunately, that is the highlight of the title. The comic-esque graphics don’t save the game from death, but don’t hurt either, however, if you are considering purchasing this title based on its likeness to other Vampire-trotting titles, like Castlevania, then save your money because the only thing that will be left betrayed is your wallet.

Michael Fossbakk

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