The Sexy Brutale (the name is bad, but not representative of the game at all) is a mystery puzzle game where you relive the same day in the titular mansion/casino over and over, trying to stop the guests from getting murdered by the staff. You cannot directly interact with the victims or the killers, but you can affect the environment to foil each murderous plan. So what's so special here? Well, if the core idea of a Groundhog Day of murders isn't appealing enough, there are many more curiosities The Sexy Brutale has on offer. First of all, the environment is a complete living and breathing world. Just because you're on "Murder 2" doesn't mean you won't see the victims and even the killers of "Murder 5". You even hear many of the deaths through environmental clues, which the characters also react to. This helps build up the overall mystery and get you familiar with all of the characters. Secondly, the aesthetic is gorgeous. A lot of work has been put into the designs of the characters and even the rooms. They are unique, intricate, and truly a pleasure to look at. Last, but by no means last, is the story itself. Every character, despite looking somewhat cartoony hides a ton of depth. They all have their flaws, affections, talents, habits. And that even applies for the murderers. Yes, the "faceless" members of the staff dressed in gas masks with only a playing card name to identify them are all unique. Overall, the storytelling is amazing. So what are the downsides? The game is a bit technically lacklustre. The lack of built-in anti-aliasing really hurts the visuals. Buffering issues sometimes cause you to walk into a room before its fully loaded or get stuck in front of a door for a while. Animations don't really have any kind of smooth transition, snapping into place whenever needed. Also I've found the ending to be a bit disappointing. The game is about 6 hours for a quick run and took me 11 hours to 100%. Whether that's a negative or a positive is up to you.
I can't really complain that much given how I got this game for 30 cents, but for full price, stay away. This is a pretty cool 2D action game, padded out with tons of perhaps the worst platforming I've ever seen. The game has almost nothing in terms of plot (although it's up to you whether that's a step back or an improvement compared to Bloodrayne 1 and 2). The art is actually really good. I enjoyed the designs of the main character, the enemies, the bosses, and even the traps. The game still carries some of that over the top action spirit of Bloodrayne, but takes it in a slightly more ridiculous direction (your main method of transportation is a coffin rocket for example). I actually enjoyed that. The 2D action system is competent, fun, and responsive, even if it doesn't really evolve throughout the game. However there is a really big counterpoint to all of this, that made me reduce my score to a 2/5. Everything fun about the game is absolutely tarnished by the abysmally frustrating platforming. Unfortunately, you'll spend A LOT more time trying to solve another jumping puzzle over instakill acid pits than you'll do actually fighting enemies. The checkpoints are very generous, but just the sheer amount of insane stuff you have to pull off to cross one pit is sometimes astounding. I haven't found anything wrong about the controls, but the level design itself sucks every ounce of fun out of what could've been a really good game. And I say that as someone who enjoys difficult games, I just can't for the life of me understand how WayForward, the creators of Shatae, could fuck up this badly with platforming, but they did, oh they did. If the game had a special mode just about fighting enemies I'd gladly replay it a few times and bump my score up by a point, but as it stands Bloodrayne: Betrayal forces you through the horrible platforming to enjoy even just a little bit of its combat system. Ultimately, I don't think it's worth it. Maybe pick it up on another 90% sale.
Bloodrayne is an old school action game about slicing supernatural creatures and Nazis to pieces with long armblades, shooting them with a variety of guns, and generally destroying everything in your way. The plot is completely ridiculous, but that doesn't really matter. The slicing is good, the shooting is decent, and the designs of the characters and bosses are actually good. It's not Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, but it's a good predecessor to it. However, it requires quite a bit of set up to run on Windows 8.1 or 10 which is why I docked one point from what would've been a solid 4/5 title. The next paragraph will be about how to make it run, if you're interested. First of all go into the "Compatibility settings", set it to run in "Windows 98 / Windows ME" compatibility mode. Also check "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings" and "Run in 640x480 screen resolution" (don't worry it will run in 1920x1080 once we're done with everything). Next download WineD3D for Windows: http://fdossena.com/?p=wined3d/index.frag . The reason you need this is because the game runs on DirectX 8, which is probably not supported by everything else on your system. Next copy d3d8.dll, libwine.dll and wined3d.dll from the archive into the game's directory. Try launching the game, don't worry if it crashes or gives you a black screen after the intro cutscene, we just need to run it once to initiate some files. Now quit if it actually launched, go to the "system" directory in the game's directory, open "RENDER.INI", and set "syncRetrace=1" instead of "syncRetrace=0". Next open "rayne.ini" in the same directory, go to gamePIXX and gamePIXY values and set them to your preferred resolution. You'll have to test this one, some will work, others will give you a black screen after the intro cutscene. However I can confirm that gamePIXX=1920 and gamePIXY=1080 does work and gives you 1080p after the initial cutscenes. Also, make sure that you're launching the game in administrator mode.
