BloodRayne Betrayal: Fresh Bites

BloodRayne: Betrayal is a departure from the style of the original two games, as it is a 2D anime-styled hack-and-slash game, whose events seem to be taking place in an alternate timeline. And even though we can deduct this much, the nature of said events is very vague. The story has a lot of gaps we seem to be supposed to fill in with our imagination. Oh well, BloodRayne 2 sort of did it too. The controls in this game are not perfect, but can be made to work. They can be remapped (which I did right away), but you aren’t allowed to use mouse buttons, or even such keys as control and shift. I ended up keeping the arrow keys for movement and mapping the rest onto the numpad. That scheme got me through the game and its toughest achievements. Once you deal with the controls one way or another, you’ll see that the platforming is quite fun, the combat is enjoyable (thankfully, there are no unnecessarily complex combos), and with reasonable determination you will eventually find all the skulls by yourself. The fast-paced action is beautifully complemented by the killer soundtrack. Honestly, the music is so very fitting and badass that even I noticed. The updated Fresh Bites version adds a rebalanced difficulty and the original voice actors. I’d say both are very welcome additions. BloodRayne Betrayal is, probably, as approachable as a hack-and-slash title can get. Still, it’s not as fun as the two original games, and the new vague and less eventful story isn’t doing it any favors either. It feels like a well-done fanfiction.

Like many have complained about, the controls are not great but it's not for the reasons you might think. the developers, much like in Bloodrayne 2, thought to themselves "more complex mechanics = more good". Something as trivial as jumping on enemies heads to gain access to another part of the level is knotted up into pressing jump exactly as you are above their head and pressing down and attack, all three simultaneously with pinpoint accuracy and you have to do it a lot in one level (which makes it impossible, I may add). Also, there is no double jumping... in a platformer where double jumping would make all the difference in enjoyment. Listen, I understand needing to spice up the gameplay so that it doesn't feel overly derivitive from every other hack and slash platformer but, as I said in my Bloodrayne 2 review, don't fix what isn't broken. This was just the developers changing the formula purely for the sake of changing the formula without thoroughly testing the controls. Forget playing this with a keyboard, it makes it next to impossible. Now for a few pros: the art style is really nice, control over Rayne is nice and tight putting aside the asinine decisions in certain platforming mechanics and the music is overall very fitting, nothing particularily pops out but it's definitely serviceable. Once again referencing my Bloodrayne 2 review, this game is only for fans of Bloodrayne, masochist gamers and people who hate themselves but at least want a bad@$$ vampire girl to gawk at for some odd hours.

Bloodrayne Betrayal Fresh Bites is a 2-D Hack n Slash game. The combat is a bit repetitive but fun and smooth. It is a lot of fun to play and runs very smoothly and is great looking too.

I played that game in the PS3 era and was blown away by the fluent, fast gamplay, beautiful art and perfect execution. I wish the game made a bigger impact though. I can only hope it will sell well enough to get a sequel.