BloodRayne [GC]

The last time we saw Terminal Reality's BloodRayne the backbone of an innovative third person action game was in place but the basic elements of the game, such as a solid framerate and fluid animation, were lacking. As a half-human half-vampire hero, the femme fatale BloodRayne has plenty of attack moves and powers at her fingertips and in her fangs, but the most recent versions we've seen running on PS2, Xbox and GameCube are really starting to do her some supernatural justice.

By now we should all know BloodRayne's backstory. Her mama is human, but her daddy is all vampire, giving BloodRayne the very best of both worlds. That is, she can hangout during daylight hours and walk into a church, but she still has to drink blood regularly and is quite the physical specimen. She plies her trade for the Brimstone Society, the secret organization that has taken it upon themselves to snuff out supernatural things in the world. The mystery of the game promises to be thick as you travel from Louisiana to Argentina to Germany trying to prevent a familiar, yet diabolical Nazi plan of using the occult to strengthen their army.

Now that we can fully appreciate the animation of our vampire hero, all of her abilities should be more than enough to deal with that Nazi threat. As far as weapons go, Rayne has a pair of razor sharp blades attached to her forearms that are just as lethal retracted as they are when extended. Even when she's firing weapons, using the right trigger/shoulder button, she can always use her slashing attacks on the left trigger/shoulder button if she needs to. The slashing attacks are the key to BloodRayne's Blood Rage attack. As she hacks and slashes enemies her Bloodlust meter increases until she's ready to Rage. While in Rage the screen turns a light shade of red and all of her movements are accelerated, opening up a whole new arsenal of attack moves, but using the same melee or shooting attack controls. So in Blood Rage double tapping the left trigger gives you a more deadly and dramatic slashing sequence than just a regular double slash move. There's no better way to clear a room of Nazis or those nasty looking parasites that look like human heads on worm bodies.

The weapon system is so simple it will probably see its way into other similar games in a matter of months. BloodRayne can pick up weapons enemies drop, including pistols, assault rifles, sniper rifles and special weapons like rocket launchers, use them and dump 'em when they run out of ammo. If she picks up three pistols, each with seven rounds, she's not carrying one pistol with 21 rounds. She's carrying those three pistols and will drop each one once it's dry and move on to the next if she needs to keep blasting. Also, rather than micromanaging her eight-weapon inventory, you simply toggle the weapon type you want her to emphasize: heavy or light. With heavy weapons selected, she always keeps the bigger machine guns handy as long as she's got one in her inventory. There are also special weapons that you will have to manually select from her weapon menu since these tend to be more powerful and serve special functions.