Bloodrayne again
I feel the need to expound on my comments about Bloodrayne yesterday. Here's the story:
Bloodrayne has been out for a while on other platforms, and when I first saw it I checked the reviews, thinking that it looked like a cool little game and something I might get a kick out of. It was cheap to start with, a Majesco title after all, so it drew my interest.
And I'll admit, it drew my interest on a puerile level. Terminal Reality managed to craft together a heroine that instant calls forth something from the primal lizard-brain of any male or female with even a passing fancy for goth chicks. Rayne's red hair and comely figure is a mix of Franka Potente from "Run Lola Run" and the alternative-universe-vampire version of Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She drinks blood. She's hot. She wears black leather. Insert fap noises here.
What I'm surprised about is that the console reviews of this game are, on the whole, fairly complementary. There have been a few odd comments about the overwhelming banality of the story or the rather mediocre presentation, but it certainly hasn't been reviled.
Now, after playing through the first half of the game, I'm desperately unimpressed with Bloodrayne. And part of my disgust is because I'm playing it on a Mac, and the Mac conversion is, in my professional estimation, subpar from what we Mac gamers should expect. I'm seeing graphical glitches, hearing audio problems, and suffering various other indignities that I'm going to have to talk with Aspyr about to see if they're aware of or plan to fix.
But more than that, I find the game itself to be a tawdry, muddled, boring, hackneyed mess -- and that translates the same regardless of what platform it's played on. The game's story is crap. The voice acting is purely second-rate. It's just ba-a-ad.
Here's a cinematic analogy: Roger Corman has made decades worth of B-movies. Hell, he's the master: Attack of the Crab Monsters, the original Little Shop of Horrors, all those Edgar Allen Poe movies featuring Vincent Price, Carnosaur, Humanoids from the Deep, Deathrace 2000. Any level you slice it on, this is second-rate material. But you know what? It's fun. It's fun for two reasons: A) Corman has an eerie ability to find talent (Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Martin Scorsese -- all of them cut their teeth on his projects, sometimes when no one else would give them a chance) -- and B) the material is treated with a sense of irony and humor.
No such luck here. If Bloodrayne was at least a bit tongue in cheek, I'd probably like it. Hell, that's half the reason why I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer all these years: Because behind every cheesy plot twist, there's a wink and a nod that lets you know that Joss Whedon knows *you're* in on the joke. This is just empty, vapid, blah.
If this was a movie, it wouldn't be a approachable unless it was a rainy Saturday afternoon, all your friends were out of town, your TV was stuck on the Sci Fi channel, and you'd just finished doing some massive Nyquil-fueled gravity bong hits.
Even then, you'd laugh your ass off at just how atrocious it was.
It's certainly been enlightening, if for no other reason than to be able to frame the reviews I check out on occasion in a new perspective.
Comments
I haven't played Bloodrayne, but the anal-retentive in me can't pass this up:
Bloodrayne has been out for a while on other platforms
Except the PC. June 29th.
http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/categories/products/product.asp?pf_id=224466
This is the price we get when people scream and clamour for Mac-first ports, I guess.
As for Corman, don't forget Deathrace 2000. That's where Stallone got his first big role before he did Rocky, AFAIK.
I know I already threw this at you on IM, Peter, but I just want it out there for discussion and the ilk.
Posted by: Dan Dickinson | May 23, 2003 11:36 AM
Yeee-owch! I suppose I'm glad that we didn't work on the port. :) I have to admit that now I'm perversely curious to give this a try on the Mac. Mabye I need to turn out the lights and live in my parents' basement, like Chris Kattan in that goth skit on SNL, to get the full impact.
Posted by: Brad Oliver | May 23, 2003 01:02 PM
[quote]Yeee-owch! I suppose I'm glad that we didn't work on the port.[/quote]
Speaking of which, how's Elite Force II looking? :)
Posted by: Flargh | May 23, 2003 01:41 PM
Re: EF2 - I have no idea. That's entirely Duane's baby. He's in Austin and I'm in Phoenix, so I probably won't see it until it ships, if then.
I'm hoping that few people will read what I'm about to write. :) I hated working on the Elite Force XP. Not only did I find the game completely uninteresting and unenjoyable, but the pay sucked because it was just an expansion pack, which made it sheer torture for me. If I never have to do another Star Trek title again, I'll die a happy man.
Posted by: Brad Oliver | May 23, 2003 02:10 PM
Bloodrayne has nice tits.
Posted by: Kurtis Trent | May 31, 2004 01:27 PM