I want to root for WayForward. The developers have their hearts in the right place. They put gameplay above all, over story, gimmicks, or flashy hi-res graphics. Instead they rely on time-honored play mechanics and sleek, smooth 2D artistry. It’s almost like they make SNES or Genesis games that were locked away in time capsules. 2D-X thrives on games like that. The Mega Man 9s, the 4 Heroes of Lights, the Hard Corps Uprisings — games that call back to the good old days without ignoring decades of game design wisdom.
Yet there’s always something off in all the WayForward games I played. A level of polish missing. Against all odds I was not a big fan of Contra 4. A Boy and His Blob was high on charm but low on fun and the Shantae series — well, they look great, but I’ve yet to play them. Which brings us to BloodRayne: Betrayal, another game that means well but falls victim to WayForward’s “almost got it” game design.
The biggest problem wasn’t apparent for a while. I thought it was just me at first, or my television, but no, after playing on my PC monitor, it was apparent: the controls are dreadful. Rayne wavers between being either hyper-responsive or not responsive at all. The slight press of the left or right buttons sets her off on a full-speed dash. On the other hand she takes forever to get up from the floor when she’s hit, which lets enemies land more hits. There’s no way to cancel or block attacks, which makes many fights a button-mashing, frustrating mess.
This gets alleviated later on as more abilities open up for Rayne and fights become more varied. However, many of those moves are of no help when it comes to basic platforming. Certain platforming segments require pinpoint pixel perfect precision, which is nearly impossible with controls this slippery. Sometimes Rayne just does whatever she wants. While brawling enemies left and right she’ll just dash off a ledge to her death … without my pressing the dash button.
The problem seems to lie in Rayne’s fluid, over-expressive animations. They take way too long to happen. So maybe I did press the dash button. Maybe I pressed it hoping she would actually dash. Instead Rayne was still slashing at something. A half-second later the dash registers and she’s dead. Everything’s off.
Otherwise, the animation looks good. So long as the camera’s panned out, otherwise her artstyle gives off a Newgrounds/Flash cheapness. This is apparent right at the title screen, with big, flat, detail-less Rayne standing there waiting for you to hit start. Every enemy and character boasts a lot of frames of animation. Too bad a lot of it gets in the way of the game.
It’s really unfortunate since the core game has a lot of promise. Rayne cuts thick, white swaths through the air like Strider and dashes and clings to walls like Mega Man X. It also borrows Castlevania‘s Gothic artstyle well, obviously suitable for a game about a redheaded vampire killing armies of zombies in frilly suits. The music doesn’t take any cues from Castlevania, though. The same few dull tunes play over and over across several stages. But she handles jumps like Bubsy the Bobcat.
There are signs of great intelligence in the game design. It gradually introduces you to new and interesting ways to play, like jumping on enemy heads to advance across chasms, sucking enemy blood to restore life, turning enemies into bombs and other unique maneuvers. I really enjoyed discovering these new abilities, particularly the flight segments with the raven. It almost resembled a horizontal shooter and was the one time the controls didn’t flip out. The raven has a considerable weight and grace to it, as opposed to Rayne’s manic movements.
Level design, however, is all over the place. Typically it’s your usual left-to-right progression with enemy placement relegated to Devil May Cry-style “arenas” where you can’t continue until you defeat every enemy onscreen. It strikes me as a missed opportunity. With Rayne’s abilities it would’ve made for a more interesting game if there had been carefully placed enemies throughout the whole environment like in the stages of Castlevania and Mega Man. But then that would probably require a total overhaul. There’s also a Devil May Cry-style score system that racks up points for certain feats like decapitations, head bounces and defeating the enemy arenas swiftly. At the end of each level you’re award a grade. For every level except the first I got an F — “worm chow.” I didn’t really care that much. Has anyone cared about the scores in games like this? It’s like caring about the score at the end of each act in Sonic the Hedgehog. There are no lives in Bloodrayne: Betrayal, just checkpoints and bitter feelings. Fuckin’ worm chow.
“Pshaw! The game’s too hard for you, you filthy casual!” some might say. But no, noooot really. I got through the 2D game pretty easily until a part late in the game where I had to constantly jump on insects above a bottomless pit while fighing these mummy things that can kill Rayne in one hit. It would have been no problem if the controls actually did what I wanted them to do. Rayne either bounces on the insects or performs a downward stomp into the bottomless pit depending on how close she is to the bugs, which take their sweet time regenerating. Plus the enemies kill her in one hit without any indicating frames of animation, so Rayne just automatically dies sometimes. It’s an absolutely insane spike in difficulty and I was already getting fed up with the game by that point. After losing count of my amount of tries I threw in the towel.
I really want to root for WayForward but BloodRayne: Betrayal makes that tough to do. Once more that level of polish that’s found in the games of yesteryear, the games they try to emulate, is missing. I think they’ll get it right one game. This isn’t that game.
Senior Reviews Editor Tim Torres loves video games and loves to write about them. He also loves movies, comics, animation and acting. He does not hate Final Fantasy VII.
