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- Thread starter potatojohn
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A horse of course
Guest
Nice reflection of your finger, LOSER
A horse of course
Guest
Blair Witch Volume One: Rustin Parr (Minor spoilers)
Our old friends Terminal Reality return for the first of the episodic Blair Witch games, eschewing the heavy action, gore and excitement of Nocturne in favour of a heavier emphasis on adventure game mechanics. It's 1941 and supernatural defence agency Spookhouse have been called in to investigate a series of ritual murders in the town of Burkittsville, Maryland. With the Blair Witch rumours constituting little more than ghost stories and local legends, the protagonist of Nocturne feels the assignment is beneath his talents, so the more inquisitive Elspeth "Doc" Holliday heads to the area to investigate in his stead. She soon discovers more than mortal evil at work in the town, and must solve the mystery of Coffin Rock before an ancient menace can bring its dark plans to fruition.
If, like me, you're a handsome and highly intelligent gamer, you'll no doubt be playing Rustin Parr right after finishing Nocturne, in which case everything from the control scheme to the general mechanics of movement and combat should be familiar to you. A 180 degree turn feature has been added, whilst visuals have had a slight upgrade, with limited facial animations and support for higher resolutions (you'll still need dgvoodoo2 for modern systems though). Most of the basic weapons from the previous game also return, and the most notable additions are an evidence log and map, with some gadgets to help aid in your investigation of the town. It's this aspect of the game that will take up a good deal of your time - talking to locals, analysing audio tapes, solving minor puzzles and so forth. Elspeth will follow up most conversations with a recap of what she's just learned - which is absolutely useless unless you took a break from the game for a week and need to check your last conversation in the log - as well as adding a helpful suggestion in case you're not sure how best to utilize this information. The adventure and puzzle side of the game actually has an extra mode, called "Hard Puzzles", which will significantly increase the amount of work you're have to do to progress past these sections. These range from more convoluted schemes to distract bothersome law enforcement agents, to demonic cryptography, practical witchcraft, and high school chemistry. Some of these can be messed up and lead to a game over, so it's worth keeping a few saves and staggering them so you don't leave yourself in hard fail state.
The other half of the game is of course delving into the woods with your guns drawn and battling all sorts of ancient evils. Well, I say battling them, but you'll quickly learn it's far more efficient to simply run past everything until you hit a boss. And run you will - a lot. The woods are deliberately designed to be torturously confusing, with a lot of very similar pathways and clearings. In the real world, you'll have a map to help guide you, but the game sometimes dumps you in alternate times or dimensions and no longer shows the player's location. In these situations there is a compass you could try and use in tandem with the map, but it's better to simply try and remember the original layout and keep running. Action is therefore probably the game's weakest facet, as enemies are far less interesting or entertaining to kill than in Nocturne, and there's really no incentive to fight them at all since unlike many classic survival horror titles you're unlikely to ever need to stay in one particular area to look for items or solve puzzles. The first time you encounter some of these foes can be slightly creepy, but it's certainly not scary or exciting. Bosses are similarly dull to fight, with the biggest challenge working out whether you're injuring them or not.
In presentation the game isn't all that impressive. Burkittsville has a bleak, almost soulless look to it that I'm sure is faithful to the movies, but it's a visual style that is highly derivative of any point-and-click ghost story. Even many of the pre-rendered assets look rather lazy - such as 2d trees that were originally very low-quality 3d models - and there's only one brief night sequence near the start of the game that plays to the Nocturne engine's strengths. Even the haunted woods aren't much better in this regard, with flat lighting and a distant high-angle camera that doesn't contribute much to the horror. Perhaps the game was trying to give a sense of the player being spied upon by the woodland spirits, but it fails to capture the unease that anyone who's found themselves strolling in the woods at dusk can attest to. Sadly, sound is still not being used very effectively, with much of the game unscored and only the odd jingle playing at inopportune moments. As in Nocturne, I find this aversion to using music utterly baffling, since one of the most atmospheric parts of both games is wandering around the Spookhouse offices to this stock tune - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKuPtbZGxuA
Finally, a lot of the roughness of Nocturne returns, with Elspeth frequently opening conversations by fudging her pathfinding and walking in circles for several seconds, and at least two different reviews mentioned game-breaking glitches in Hard Puzzle mode. There are also a few transitional scenes which were clearly meant to involve further exploration but cut due to lack of time. I read one of the Terminal Reality developers say in an interview that Rustin Parr is the game he's most proud of, purely down to the fact that it's a miracle the team managed to complete the game at all. Unfortunately, it really shows.
It's not a horrible game, but I wouldn't recommend Rustin Parr to any particular demographic. Perhaps twenty years ago I would've found this a tense experience, or jerked off to the implied lesbian relationship, but outside of hypotheticals the scariest part of the game was reading the old native american legends in the Burkittsville library. These days we can enjoy games with identical settings that far outclass Blair Witch in action, horror, and storytelling (Alan Wake), or smug race-traitor hipster bragging rights (Deadly Premonition). You might like the puzzle-solving aspect of the game, but in that case you might as well play a real adventure, or Silent Hill for a better balance of action and brain-teasers.
The Blair Witch Episodes are of course meant to be played as a set, but Volumes II and III were handled by different developers with almost no co-ordination between the different teams, so I won't bother with them unless I end up marathoning Human Head Studios or something. Next up, I'll be replaying Bloodrayne for the first time in about a decade. Let's hope it holds up as well as Rayne's implants.
Our old friends Terminal Reality return for the first of the episodic Blair Witch games, eschewing the heavy action, gore and excitement of Nocturne in favour of a heavier emphasis on adventure game mechanics. It's 1941 and supernatural defence agency Spookhouse have been called in to investigate a series of ritual murders in the town of Burkittsville, Maryland. With the Blair Witch rumours constituting little more than ghost stories and local legends, the protagonist of Nocturne feels the assignment is beneath his talents, so the more inquisitive Elspeth "Doc" Holliday heads to the area to investigate in his stead. She soon discovers more than mortal evil at work in the town, and must solve the mystery of Coffin Rock before an ancient menace can bring its dark plans to fruition.
If, like me, you're a handsome and highly intelligent gamer, you'll no doubt be playing Rustin Parr right after finishing Nocturne, in which case everything from the control scheme to the general mechanics of movement and combat should be familiar to you. A 180 degree turn feature has been added, whilst visuals have had a slight upgrade, with limited facial animations and support for higher resolutions (you'll still need dgvoodoo2 for modern systems though). Most of the basic weapons from the previous game also return, and the most notable additions are an evidence log and map, with some gadgets to help aid in your investigation of the town. It's this aspect of the game that will take up a good deal of your time - talking to locals, analysing audio tapes, solving minor puzzles and so forth. Elspeth will follow up most conversations with a recap of what she's just learned - which is absolutely useless unless you took a break from the game for a week and need to check your last conversation in the log - as well as adding a helpful suggestion in case you're not sure how best to utilize this information. The adventure and puzzle side of the game actually has an extra mode, called "Hard Puzzles", which will significantly increase the amount of work you're have to do to progress past these sections. These range from more convoluted schemes to distract bothersome law enforcement agents, to demonic cryptography, practical witchcraft, and high school chemistry. Some of these can be messed up and lead to a game over, so it's worth keeping a few saves and staggering them so you don't leave yourself in hard fail state.
The other half of the game is of course delving into the woods with your guns drawn and battling all sorts of ancient evils. Well, I say battling them, but you'll quickly learn it's far more efficient to simply run past everything until you hit a boss. And run you will - a lot. The woods are deliberately designed to be torturously confusing, with a lot of very similar pathways and clearings. In the real world, you'll have a map to help guide you, but the game sometimes dumps you in alternate times or dimensions and no longer shows the player's location. In these situations there is a compass you could try and use in tandem with the map, but it's better to simply try and remember the original layout and keep running. Action is therefore probably the game's weakest facet, as enemies are far less interesting or entertaining to kill than in Nocturne, and there's really no incentive to fight them at all since unlike many classic survival horror titles you're unlikely to ever need to stay in one particular area to look for items or solve puzzles. The first time you encounter some of these foes can be slightly creepy, but it's certainly not scary or exciting. Bosses are similarly dull to fight, with the biggest challenge working out whether you're injuring them or not.
In presentation the game isn't all that impressive. Burkittsville has a bleak, almost soulless look to it that I'm sure is faithful to the movies, but it's a visual style that is highly derivative of any point-and-click ghost story. Even many of the pre-rendered assets look rather lazy - such as 2d trees that were originally very low-quality 3d models - and there's only one brief night sequence near the start of the game that plays to the Nocturne engine's strengths. Even the haunted woods aren't much better in this regard, with flat lighting and a distant high-angle camera that doesn't contribute much to the horror. Perhaps the game was trying to give a sense of the player being spied upon by the woodland spirits, but it fails to capture the unease that anyone who's found themselves strolling in the woods at dusk can attest to. Sadly, sound is still not being used very effectively, with much of the game unscored and only the odd jingle playing at inopportune moments. As in Nocturne, I find this aversion to using music utterly baffling, since one of the most atmospheric parts of both games is wandering around the Spookhouse offices to this stock tune - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKuPtbZGxuA
Finally, a lot of the roughness of Nocturne returns, with Elspeth frequently opening conversations by fudging her pathfinding and walking in circles for several seconds, and at least two different reviews mentioned game-breaking glitches in Hard Puzzle mode. There are also a few transitional scenes which were clearly meant to involve further exploration but cut due to lack of time. I read one of the Terminal Reality developers say in an interview that Rustin Parr is the game he's most proud of, purely down to the fact that it's a miracle the team managed to complete the game at all. Unfortunately, it really shows.
It's not a horrible game, but I wouldn't recommend Rustin Parr to any particular demographic. Perhaps twenty years ago I would've found this a tense experience, or jerked off to the implied lesbian relationship, but outside of hypotheticals the scariest part of the game was reading the old native american legends in the Burkittsville library. These days we can enjoy games with identical settings that far outclass Blair Witch in action, horror, and storytelling (Alan Wake), or smug race-traitor hipster bragging rights (Deadly Premonition). You might like the puzzle-solving aspect of the game, but in that case you might as well play a real adventure, or Silent Hill for a better balance of action and brain-teasers.
The Blair Witch Episodes are of course meant to be played as a set, but Volumes II and III were handled by different developers with almost no co-ordination between the different teams, so I won't bother with them unless I end up marathoning Human Head Studios or something. Next up, I'll be replaying Bloodrayne for the first time in about a decade. Let's hope it holds up as well as Rayne's implants.
Last edited by a moderator:
fabulously optimistic
step 1: war cry
step 2: HAMMER TIME!
the way the warhammer in Nox goes SLAM!!!! against niggas' heads makes it one of the most satisfying weapons in RPGs
time to end this evil that marshals before us
more like the land of the tremendously annoying gargoyles
A horse of course
Guest
Observer (Mild spoilers)
A brutally depressing cyberpunk adventure game made by Europe’s janitorial staff, Observer is set in the far future of the “Fifth Polish Republic”, where corporate goliath Chiron has risen from the ashes of World War III and now controls the populace via psychological conditioning, mind-numbing pharmaceuticals, and technological escapism. Rutger Hauer voices Daniel Lazarski, a traumatized corporate inquisitor who comes from the ranks of “Observers” – state-sanctioned enforcers modified with the ability to forcibly mind-jack victims and extract their memories. Lazarski is contacted by his estranged son, who begs for his help at a run-down apartment complex. Trapped within the complex by an outbreak of a lethal digital virus, our protagonist soon realizes that another kind of killer is also on the loose, and he can only escape and uncover the secrets of his son’s disappearance by burrowing into the darkest recesses of the building’s inhabitants…
There’s a fair bit of contention over whether Observer constitutes an adventure game or a walking simulator, owing to its heavily story-driven focus and the tasks you must perform in order to progress. The short answer is that it hews closer to the latter. There is gameplay beyond walking from point A to point B and listening to people talk, but there’s typically very little independent thinking involved. The player has access to several vision modes that let him scan different types of objects, and you usually just flip through these until you find enough relevant clues to advance. There are also a number of short stealth-like sections, but these are very rudimentary to the point that I’m not sure whether some of the foes encountered even possess any sort of dynamic AI or just act according to where the player is currently positioned. It’s more interactive than something like Layers of Fear, but less of a “game” than SOMA or Amnesia.
Presentation is undoubtedly the game’s strongest asset, such that I won’t bother trying to think of enough adjectives to describe the nature of the environments you’ll traverse. That the story is focused on a very limited area for budgetary reasons is obvious, but the memory-hijacking sequences can lead to some jarringly psychedelic sequences involving everything from cyberspace simulations to sprawling jails and fairy-tale forests fighting each other for dominance over Lazarski’s disintegrating mental state. These visions are ripped from the numerous dying and recently deceased unfortunates the player will encounter in the apartment complex, ranging from disgraced surgical prodigies to recovering addicts, and all feed into two particular themes that beat at the heart of the narrative – desperation and misery.
The game constantly reinforces the notion that life in futuristic Krakow would be an unrelenting nightmare were it not for the bitter remedies of drugs, virtual reality, or madness. Everyone Lazarski interacts with is defiled by this world in some way. Even brief conversations through doorways hint at physical or sexual abuse, religious fanaticism, suicide, incurable dissociative disorders and so forth. Though obviously heavily inspired by Blade Runner in visuals and technology, the tone is closer to that of Brazil or THX 1138. Even Blade Runner finds a curious beauty in isolation and mortality, whereas Observer only permits displays of love or optimism as fuel for further suffering. Nobody in Observer’s world experiences pain for a greater good or as a crucible to cleanse themselves of their sins, only for the sake of enduring more pain or inflicting it upon others. It must be tough being Polish.
This is not to say the game is nihilistic, as its grimness is an important ingredient in the conclusion to Lazarski's narrative. The way you view the world of Observer, its trajectory, and Lazarski’s participation in it, will likely influence your decision in the closing moments of the story. The issue with this central narrative is that whilst the game does a great job limiting itself to very personal stories in a very specific location, the central plot balloons into a tale of corporate espionage, mass murder, and – let’s say – “macro-transhumanism”, as if Perfect Blue morphed into Evangelion three-quarters through the movie. The argument can be made that the stories you encounter in the apartment block are “enough” to give a broad perspective on the events of the ending, but it felt far too grand for me. Maybe I’m just completely misinterpreting it and the truth is that "it was all a dream lol".
As I mentioned earlier, it’s not unfair to dismiss Observer as a walking simulator. I pirated the game when it first came out but deleted it due to the slow pace of the first hour. I only bought it on Steam last year because I wanted to get back into the swing of cyberpunk before C2077 comes out. Even then, it has its flaws beyond gameplay mechanics, like not clearly communicating to the player when they have the freedom to pursue more side-stories involving other apartments – resulting in a lot of wasted effort from the development team. There are even minor gameplay elements that I assumed would be of significance to the story but ended up meaning very little. And it's absolutely criminal that the game doesn't natively support VR - it could definitely do with a remaster at some point in the future. Still, if you enjoy cyberpunk or future dystopias and are willing to put up with the game’s sluggishness, I highly recommend the experience. Even if my review has turned you off, at least get the OST. I didn't even notice how amazing some of the tracks were because I felt so morose whilst playing the damn thing.
Thanks for reading and remember to support me on MyFreeCams.
A brutally depressing cyberpunk adventure game made by Europe’s janitorial staff, Observer is set in the far future of the “Fifth Polish Republic”, where corporate goliath Chiron has risen from the ashes of World War III and now controls the populace via psychological conditioning, mind-numbing pharmaceuticals, and technological escapism. Rutger Hauer voices Daniel Lazarski, a traumatized corporate inquisitor who comes from the ranks of “Observers” – state-sanctioned enforcers modified with the ability to forcibly mind-jack victims and extract their memories. Lazarski is contacted by his estranged son, who begs for his help at a run-down apartment complex. Trapped within the complex by an outbreak of a lethal digital virus, our protagonist soon realizes that another kind of killer is also on the loose, and he can only escape and uncover the secrets of his son’s disappearance by burrowing into the darkest recesses of the building’s inhabitants…
There’s a fair bit of contention over whether Observer constitutes an adventure game or a walking simulator, owing to its heavily story-driven focus and the tasks you must perform in order to progress. The short answer is that it hews closer to the latter. There is gameplay beyond walking from point A to point B and listening to people talk, but there’s typically very little independent thinking involved. The player has access to several vision modes that let him scan different types of objects, and you usually just flip through these until you find enough relevant clues to advance. There are also a number of short stealth-like sections, but these are very rudimentary to the point that I’m not sure whether some of the foes encountered even possess any sort of dynamic AI or just act according to where the player is currently positioned. It’s more interactive than something like Layers of Fear, but less of a “game” than SOMA or Amnesia.
Presentation is undoubtedly the game’s strongest asset, such that I won’t bother trying to think of enough adjectives to describe the nature of the environments you’ll traverse. That the story is focused on a very limited area for budgetary reasons is obvious, but the memory-hijacking sequences can lead to some jarringly psychedelic sequences involving everything from cyberspace simulations to sprawling jails and fairy-tale forests fighting each other for dominance over Lazarski’s disintegrating mental state. These visions are ripped from the numerous dying and recently deceased unfortunates the player will encounter in the apartment complex, ranging from disgraced surgical prodigies to recovering addicts, and all feed into two particular themes that beat at the heart of the narrative – desperation and misery.
The game constantly reinforces the notion that life in futuristic Krakow would be an unrelenting nightmare were it not for the bitter remedies of drugs, virtual reality, or madness. Everyone Lazarski interacts with is defiled by this world in some way. Even brief conversations through doorways hint at physical or sexual abuse, religious fanaticism, suicide, incurable dissociative disorders and so forth. Though obviously heavily inspired by Blade Runner in visuals and technology, the tone is closer to that of Brazil or THX 1138. Even Blade Runner finds a curious beauty in isolation and mortality, whereas Observer only permits displays of love or optimism as fuel for further suffering. Nobody in Observer’s world experiences pain for a greater good or as a crucible to cleanse themselves of their sins, only for the sake of enduring more pain or inflicting it upon others. It must be tough being Polish.
This is not to say the game is nihilistic, as its grimness is an important ingredient in the conclusion to Lazarski's narrative. The way you view the world of Observer, its trajectory, and Lazarski’s participation in it, will likely influence your decision in the closing moments of the story. The issue with this central narrative is that whilst the game does a great job limiting itself to very personal stories in a very specific location, the central plot balloons into a tale of corporate espionage, mass murder, and – let’s say – “macro-transhumanism”, as if Perfect Blue morphed into Evangelion three-quarters through the movie. The argument can be made that the stories you encounter in the apartment block are “enough” to give a broad perspective on the events of the ending, but it felt far too grand for me. Maybe I’m just completely misinterpreting it and the truth is that "it was all a dream lol".
As I mentioned earlier, it’s not unfair to dismiss Observer as a walking simulator. I pirated the game when it first came out but deleted it due to the slow pace of the first hour. I only bought it on Steam last year because I wanted to get back into the swing of cyberpunk before C2077 comes out. Even then, it has its flaws beyond gameplay mechanics, like not clearly communicating to the player when they have the freedom to pursue more side-stories involving other apartments – resulting in a lot of wasted effort from the development team. There are even minor gameplay elements that I assumed would be of significance to the story but ended up meaning very little. And it's absolutely criminal that the game doesn't natively support VR - it could definitely do with a remaster at some point in the future. Still, if you enjoy cyberpunk or future dystopias and are willing to put up with the game’s sluggishness, I highly recommend the experience. Even if my review has turned you off, at least get the OST. I didn't even notice how amazing some of the tracks were because I felt so morose whilst playing the damn thing.
Thanks for reading and remember to support me on MyFreeCams.
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Puukko
Arcane
Come on, there are way better waifus.
Love
Cipher
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2013
- Messages
- 371
They only count when you're supposed to protect them!
Bahamut
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2008
- Messages
- 1,196
After kicking ass of
Yea its one of crappier Zeldas overall, it wasn't that much terrible, just annoying with motion controlls abuse and bad structuring.
At least bosses where entertaining, still never again.
Modron
Arcane
- Joined
- May 5, 2012
- Messages
- 11,359
Thinking about that sequel that never came huh?
PrettyDeadman
Guest
Meet my main (Kaiser) and my Pawn (Duke):
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It's time for another replay
I can feel some positive tingling as well.
John Carpenter - The Fog
SMA nurse was very rude to me, so I gave her a bag of laughs.
Oh, hi Beckett.
I missed you my jelly friend.
Is there anyone who doesn't like Larry ?
Visiting the king with the iron crown
.
Let's see who stops first.
I always read posts made by agent orange with Damsel's voice in mind.
Oh, you sweet naive undead girl.
Jack is back baby!
Sir, you don't look healthy.
My cutie ghoul girl is waiting for me.
Until next time
I can feel some positive tingling as well.
John Carpenter - The Fog
SMA nurse was very rude to me, so I gave her a bag of laughs.
Oh, hi Beckett.
I missed you my jelly friend.
Is there anyone who doesn't like Larry ?
Visiting the king with the iron crown
.
Let's see who stops first.
I always read posts made by agent orange with Damsel's voice in mind.
Oh, you sweet naive undead girl.
Jack is back baby!
Sir, you don't look healthy.
My cutie ghoul girl is waiting for me.
Until next time
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2014
- Messages
- 924
Freddi Fish 2
A horse of course
Guest
Bloodrayne (moderate spoilers)
Let's get two things out of the way. First, Rayne is not your wife. She is MINE. Second, I usually put stuff about modern systems at the end of the writeup, but I should warn you that I had a lot of problems with the GoG release of Bloodrayne, from black screens at the menu to broken videos, to crashes on the end boss. In the end I used dgvoodoo and deleted all the videos to get past everything. So as with all GoG releases, don't assume that paying for it means it'll work better than an abandonware iso. Though it's probably your own fault for expecting Polacks to do a good job. Anyway, on to my thoughts!
Terminal Reality were involved in two (known) major projects during Gathering of Developer's implosion - a first-person survival horror, and a more action-oriented Nocturne 2. Forced to go cap-in-hand to a more mainstream publisher, the developer scrapped the horror game and went with the latter title, which was seen as more marketable. Soon enough, Bloodrayne was announced: A violent and sexy third-person, fully 3d action-adventure in which the half-vampire agent Rayne battles demons, mutants, vampires and Nazis across America, Argentina (which is not in America) and Germany in the quest for ancient artefacts said to be the key to resurrecting a terrible foe. I know it's fairly common knowledge, but for those unaware, canonically speaking Bloodrayne is the third Nocturne title in everything but the legal sense, as Terminal Reality didn't want to release the rights to the Spookhouse IP but still wanted to keep the possibility of merging the two universes later down the line. For example, the "Brimstone Society" directing Rayne are obviously Spookhouse, the "Dark Man" who opposes her induction into the group but is later attached as her handler is obviously the Stranger, Rayne originally used the revised costume worn by Svetlana (likely the "half-sister mentioned in the intro) from Blair Witch, the final episode of Bloodrayne is set in the same location as Nocturne's first, and a couple of characters are even referenced directly.
Terminal Reality have dispensed with any pretentions of survival horror for their first foray into mainstream success (and my first experience with the developers all those years ago), so slicing things to pieces for hours had better be enjoyable. And for the most part, it is. Combat is fast-paced and controls are responsive enough that you'll soon be running rings around enemies, chopping off the choicest bits of meat. Nocturne's dismemberment system returns in great form - human enemies in particular being very reactive to the loss of various body parts. Cut off an arm and the enemy will flee shrieking from the room, claret painting the walls. Chop off a leg and they hop up and down, pawing uselessly at the spurting stump before toppling to the ground. Chop off both their legs and they'll mewl in pain and terror as they drag themselves across the floor, leaving a trail of crimson ruin. A cursory effort has been made to integrate the violence into gameplay, as certain enemies will be particularly resistant to going down unless they're decapitated, whilst others can be easily dispatched with a blade to what presumably constitutes their spinal column, though all this really boils down to is that from the player's perspective, quick slashing attacks are usually better than the slower, acrobatic moves further down the combo chain. Rayne can't just tear everything to pieces all the time, however, as she is a vampire and as such relies on feasting on enemies rather than health packs or chicken dinners. Grabbing an enemy will incapacitate them and let you suck them dry at your leisure or use them as a human shield in the middle of battle. Whilst fighting hordes of weaker human enemies is usually fun enough, melee combat is sadly far too shallow to be fun against other melee-oriented enemies. You can usually dodge most of their attacking by simply running in circles, and there's no blocking, parrying or clever timing to it. Against bosses your best bet is to simply activate a "blood rage" powerup once you get enough strikes in and take them out before they rip you to shreds. In fairness, these were early days for third-person melee combat, but the real test of a game's combat is whether you would want to just drop enemies into an arena and fight them for fun. In this regard, Bloodrayne doesn't compare so well to much more sophisticated and enjoyable melee systems like that of Bungie's Oni.
Naturally, the standard array of pistols, shotguns, automatic weapons and grenades are also available to Rayne, alongside a special slot for more powerful weapons like a panzerfaust or sniper rifle. These are mostly just window dressing, as I paid no heed to what weapons I was carrying until near the end of the game. Aside from guns and blades, Rayne's main assets (ahem) are her supernatural powers and superhuman leap. The earliest powers you'll gain are a useless "aura vision" and a much more useful slow-mo mode, which can be used indefinitely and really helps those who find the game a little too hectic. The last power is a sort of first-person scope ability that is pretty much worthless outside of two sequences. Meanwhile, Rayne's athletic abilities will be tested more in some levels than others, with some tightrope walking and platforming here and there that shouldn't pose too much of an issue, since failure usually results in a harmless tumble rather than game over. One notable exception is a level called The Bridge, where the player must flee an inferno only for parts of the platform to spontaneously explode beneath them and dump you back to the start of the mission. Yes, there are some frustrating parts due the game's checkpoint system, which usually negates no more than a few minutes progress, as later on there are levels that could set you back 15 minutes. In longer missions this promotes a much more cautious approach not conducive to the game's strengths.
Technologically the game is a huge step up from Nocturne, with more detailed models and textures, 3d environments in place of pre-rendered backgrounds, bump-mapping in DirectX 8.1, a greater variety of facial expressions, and higher resolutions. But the change to a third-person full 3d game does come at a noticeable cost. The large environments are an impressive achievement but many are lacking in those little details pre-rendered backgrounds provide, and since you're usually just running past most of them to get to the next objective, individual scenes lack character and personality - something fixed camera positions and interconnected levels were often so good at. A great illustration of this comes in the final episode, where the menacing Castle Gaustadt of Nocturne becomes little more than window dressing for Rayne's slicing-and-dicing. Still, sound design is an improvement over the previous two titles. Argentina and Germany are one long concert of gunfire, rumbling detonations and piercing screams, whilst background music mingles adrenaline with echoes of muffled terror.
Unsurprisingly, a small modding scene grew up around the game, with some fixes for broken scripts, re-enabling a missing level, and adding some extra checkpoints to the hardest missions. Most custom content consists of new skins for Rayne or swapping models around, though I recall that a lot of these were actually created for Bloodrayne 2 and then back-ported to the first game. I wouldn't class any of these as vital to the experience, though a teenage me would probably disagree. Many of these were lost when sites like gamevixens went down, but you can still find links to them here and there. I have a small archive myself if anyone needs it.
To some degree, I'd say that Bloodrayne is the last Nocturne game. Not in gameplay, of course - strip away the extreme gore and JUGGYDANCESQUAD cheat and it's a fairly average action title - but tonally it retains a certain degree of that 20th-century American folk horror vibe (especially in episode one), and the influence of pulp media is still very much evident. The sequel is more of its own beast, firmly ensconced in the "Bloodrayne Universe" and no longer part of the Nocturne family. So let's wave goodbye to The Stranger, Svetlana, Doc Holliday and the gang. Nice knowing you, Spookhouse.
Let's get two things out of the way. First, Rayne is not your wife. She is MINE. Second, I usually put stuff about modern systems at the end of the writeup, but I should warn you that I had a lot of problems with the GoG release of Bloodrayne, from black screens at the menu to broken videos, to crashes on the end boss. In the end I used dgvoodoo and deleted all the videos to get past everything. So as with all GoG releases, don't assume that paying for it means it'll work better than an abandonware iso. Though it's probably your own fault for expecting Polacks to do a good job. Anyway, on to my thoughts!
Terminal Reality were involved in two (known) major projects during Gathering of Developer's implosion - a first-person survival horror, and a more action-oriented Nocturne 2. Forced to go cap-in-hand to a more mainstream publisher, the developer scrapped the horror game and went with the latter title, which was seen as more marketable. Soon enough, Bloodrayne was announced: A violent and sexy third-person, fully 3d action-adventure in which the half-vampire agent Rayne battles demons, mutants, vampires and Nazis across America, Argentina (which is not in America) and Germany in the quest for ancient artefacts said to be the key to resurrecting a terrible foe. I know it's fairly common knowledge, but for those unaware, canonically speaking Bloodrayne is the third Nocturne title in everything but the legal sense, as Terminal Reality didn't want to release the rights to the Spookhouse IP but still wanted to keep the possibility of merging the two universes later down the line. For example, the "Brimstone Society" directing Rayne are obviously Spookhouse, the "Dark Man" who opposes her induction into the group but is later attached as her handler is obviously the Stranger, Rayne originally used the revised costume worn by Svetlana (likely the "half-sister mentioned in the intro) from Blair Witch, the final episode of Bloodrayne is set in the same location as Nocturne's first, and a couple of characters are even referenced directly.
Terminal Reality have dispensed with any pretentions of survival horror for their first foray into mainstream success (and my first experience with the developers all those years ago), so slicing things to pieces for hours had better be enjoyable. And for the most part, it is. Combat is fast-paced and controls are responsive enough that you'll soon be running rings around enemies, chopping off the choicest bits of meat. Nocturne's dismemberment system returns in great form - human enemies in particular being very reactive to the loss of various body parts. Cut off an arm and the enemy will flee shrieking from the room, claret painting the walls. Chop off a leg and they hop up and down, pawing uselessly at the spurting stump before toppling to the ground. Chop off both their legs and they'll mewl in pain and terror as they drag themselves across the floor, leaving a trail of crimson ruin. A cursory effort has been made to integrate the violence into gameplay, as certain enemies will be particularly resistant to going down unless they're decapitated, whilst others can be easily dispatched with a blade to what presumably constitutes their spinal column, though all this really boils down to is that from the player's perspective, quick slashing attacks are usually better than the slower, acrobatic moves further down the combo chain. Rayne can't just tear everything to pieces all the time, however, as she is a vampire and as such relies on feasting on enemies rather than health packs or chicken dinners. Grabbing an enemy will incapacitate them and let you suck them dry at your leisure or use them as a human shield in the middle of battle. Whilst fighting hordes of weaker human enemies is usually fun enough, melee combat is sadly far too shallow to be fun against other melee-oriented enemies. You can usually dodge most of their attacking by simply running in circles, and there's no blocking, parrying or clever timing to it. Against bosses your best bet is to simply activate a "blood rage" powerup once you get enough strikes in and take them out before they rip you to shreds. In fairness, these were early days for third-person melee combat, but the real test of a game's combat is whether you would want to just drop enemies into an arena and fight them for fun. In this regard, Bloodrayne doesn't compare so well to much more sophisticated and enjoyable melee systems like that of Bungie's Oni.
Naturally, the standard array of pistols, shotguns, automatic weapons and grenades are also available to Rayne, alongside a special slot for more powerful weapons like a panzerfaust or sniper rifle. These are mostly just window dressing, as I paid no heed to what weapons I was carrying until near the end of the game. Aside from guns and blades, Rayne's main assets (ahem) are her supernatural powers and superhuman leap. The earliest powers you'll gain are a useless "aura vision" and a much more useful slow-mo mode, which can be used indefinitely and really helps those who find the game a little too hectic. The last power is a sort of first-person scope ability that is pretty much worthless outside of two sequences. Meanwhile, Rayne's athletic abilities will be tested more in some levels than others, with some tightrope walking and platforming here and there that shouldn't pose too much of an issue, since failure usually results in a harmless tumble rather than game over. One notable exception is a level called The Bridge, where the player must flee an inferno only for parts of the platform to spontaneously explode beneath them and dump you back to the start of the mission. Yes, there are some frustrating parts due the game's checkpoint system, which usually negates no more than a few minutes progress, as later on there are levels that could set you back 15 minutes. In longer missions this promotes a much more cautious approach not conducive to the game's strengths.
Technologically the game is a huge step up from Nocturne, with more detailed models and textures, 3d environments in place of pre-rendered backgrounds, bump-mapping in DirectX 8.1, a greater variety of facial expressions, and higher resolutions. But the change to a third-person full 3d game does come at a noticeable cost. The large environments are an impressive achievement but many are lacking in those little details pre-rendered backgrounds provide, and since you're usually just running past most of them to get to the next objective, individual scenes lack character and personality - something fixed camera positions and interconnected levels were often so good at. A great illustration of this comes in the final episode, where the menacing Castle Gaustadt of Nocturne becomes little more than window dressing for Rayne's slicing-and-dicing. Still, sound design is an improvement over the previous two titles. Argentina and Germany are one long concert of gunfire, rumbling detonations and piercing screams, whilst background music mingles adrenaline with echoes of muffled terror.
Unsurprisingly, a small modding scene grew up around the game, with some fixes for broken scripts, re-enabling a missing level, and adding some extra checkpoints to the hardest missions. Most custom content consists of new skins for Rayne or swapping models around, though I recall that a lot of these were actually created for Bloodrayne 2 and then back-ported to the first game. I wouldn't class any of these as vital to the experience, though a teenage me would probably disagree. Many of these were lost when sites like gamevixens went down, but you can still find links to them here and there. I have a small archive myself if anyone needs it.
To some degree, I'd say that Bloodrayne is the last Nocturne game. Not in gameplay, of course - strip away the extreme gore and JUGGYDANCESQUAD cheat and it's a fairly average action title - but tonally it retains a certain degree of that 20th-century American folk horror vibe (especially in episode one), and the influence of pulp media is still very much evident. The sequel is more of its own beast, firmly ensconced in the "Bloodrayne Universe" and no longer part of the Nocturne family. So let's wave goodbye to The Stranger, Svetlana, Doc Holliday and the gang. Nice knowing you, Spookhouse.
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