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- Thread starter potatojohn
- Start date
Modron
Arcane
- Joined
- May 5, 2012
- Messages
- 11,066
Thinking about that sequel that never came huh?
PrettyDeadman
Guest
Meet my main (Kaiser) and my Pawn (Duke):
Last edited by a moderator:
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
- 917
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.
howlingFantods
Learned
well played, Steam
Last edited:
Beowulf
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2015
- Messages
- 2,025
Reinhardt
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2015
- Messages
- 31,904
It's Another Eden. Rare breed - single-player gacha mobile jrpg. Basically you just play your jrpg and if you want - roll for more characters with paid currency game throws at you for ingame activities - from encountering new enemies to just walking the world. Writing is ok by jrpg games standarts but mostly in characters sidequests and in sidequests in general.
I heard later you will need dem 5* characters because they add new story chapters constantly and difficulty is ramping up but game is pretty generous for gacha genre - even some story characters are pretty good and can be upgraded to 5*. Also you can just get 2 free 5* from Persona 5 side story.
So you can play it as "collect your waifu party" game.
But there is also fucking white males
And cats
Fucking hyperinflation. He asks for 100 pearls when you encounter him first time but then their retarded womyn ruler launched pearl printer because everyone will be happier if they have more money...
A horse of course
Guest
I'd like to apologize for rating this poast "disagree".
Puukko
Arcane
This is making me want to play Anachronox now...
Gerrard
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2007
- Messages
- 12,793
Puukko
Arcane
Started my kawaii pantsu adventures in Atelier Ryza.
where's that from? Cool anime wallpaper on the background.
I'd still hit that. Don't judge me.
For me, it seemed exactly the same. The graphics options are identical.
turkishronin
Arcane
where's that from? Cool anime wallpaper on the background.
Chaos;Head
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