The game is flawed, but those flaws are relics of an older school of game design. I give it a 4/5 as an action game--above average, though not by much. Characters seem modeled after silly action films of the 1980s, making them deliciously corny. Wise-cracking, one-liner Rayne is almost a female expy of Duke Nukem. Story is decent. I give props to the designers for not trying to shove exposition down my throat--they leave a lot to the player's imagination to fill in the gaps, which I like for the most part. There's a distinct lack of the kind of visual cues that you find in some games to direct you, but these are easily circumvented by the game's simplistic level design. There's also an objective arrow, although this can be misleading at times since it rests at the objective as opposed to the path needed to reach these objectives. Be forewarned: curving stairs can be downright annoying to navigate. Easter eggs are few and far between here as there's little room to put them. Boss design is binary. As a regular Rayne they'll probably murder you unless you're packing a lot of heat (guns being very powerful here). However, as soon as you activate Blood Rage you can murder most bosses in seconds. Some bosses require prepwork, but with the exception of one, every boss in the game almost demands Blood Rage in order to be defeated. Outside of these bosses the game is downright easy, since Rayne is the fastest character in the game you can just sprint past most opponents, or when demanded just strafe behind them and suck them dry--only bosses and Daemite warriors and parasites are immune to this. For everything else there's bullet time. Objective view and extruded view are completely useless. The game's reload system was surprisingly tolerable, only in a few places is it truly irksome. The game looks decent considering when it was made. Voice work is bad. I was surprised to learn this game even had a dialogue coach. Took me about 6 hours to beat on normal.
