Post by Bytor on Jan 7, 2011 16:05:17 GMT -5
-Visuals - 6.8/10
If I were playing a PSOne game I'd be very, very impressed...as it is, well, not so much so. I'll give it a definitive A for effort. The backgrounds are, for the most part very nice looking (think Red Faction and you get the idea) and are pretty nicely detailed (I especially like the Nazi posters and hangings) and provide a nice feel to the game. The issues arise when you get up close to many objects/backgrounds. Then it becomes obviously pixelated and screen clipping occurs frequently. You will also find yourself often seemingly walking on air and at times it is simply so dark and the view so bad it's virtually impossible to see where you are going or what it is you are really looking for. And I'm barely going to mention the Nazis as A: there are only a couple of different facial models and B: they all look pretty bland, demons (daemites) feral vampires and werewolves are all OK (at best). Now, I know this is an older game (2002) so some allowances can be made but overall it still suffers a bit from various glitches and issues.
-Sound - 7.2/10
I personally loved Rayne's voice, it's very dry, very deep and extremely sarcastic! She was, at least to me, done wonderfully...everyone else was mediocre at best and horrible at worst, except the twins Sigmund Kreiger and Simon Kreiger, they were hilarious! The music was, for the most part fine and set the mood nicely.
-Gameplay - 7.8/10
Here is by far the strongest point of the game. You can pick up all of the fallen Nazi's weapons and shot your enemies, you can use your blades to slice and dice and you can learn new attacks which can be used during your bloodrage (basically a bonus attack method where your enemies are slowed down). You can also use a "slo-mo" type attack and while I did utilize it it is at times almost more annoying than helpful as not only do your enemies slow down but you do as well. The funniest attack, at least for the first few times, is actually jumping on your victims and sucking their blood (Rayne is after all half vampire), this is also how you replenish your health, I found this to be an interesting aspect of the game. There are also many, many "cheats" which can be utilized by using a groupf of words and stringing three together in the right order, for instance using lameyankeedon'tfeed you can replenish your health at any time, I actually found this system to kind of be fun in playing around with the various combos to see what happens. Rayne for the most part moves pretty well and is easily controlled, albeit a tad stiffly, but the camera angles can, and will at times leave you a tad clueless as to what is going on. I would love to see what could be done with a modern re-invent of this system especially the battle system as I found it to be very nicely done.
-Story - 7.0/10
OK...The Nazi's have discovered ancient relics which will allow them to raise a demon who will, presumably destroy their enemies. The Brimstone Society has hired Rayne to kill the ring leaders. The rest is a romp through Louisiana, Argentina and eventually Germany in search of the bad guys. It's an OK story but kind of seems like a campy spy/monster movie at times.
-Overall - 7.4/10
Well, while certainly not a great game I did spend @10 hours finishing it (the last boss battle BTW is simply silly, way too much luck involved) so it did at least provide me with some enjoyment. And that pretty much is what it is, somewhat mindless enjoyment. Don't expect a classic and just have fun and if you can get past the visual issues it is somewhat fun.
