BloodRayne

Now here's a game with teeth.

BloodRayne is an Action Adventure Third-Person Shooter developed by Terminal Reality and published by Majesco. The game has spawned a sequel, BloodRayne 2, a series of one-shot comic books, and a movie with two direct-to-DVD sequels. The protagonist, Rayne, is a half human/half vampire, known as a Dhampir.

The third installment, BloodRayne: Betrayal (developed by Way Forward Technologies), was released early September on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network.

Most of the games can also be bought in GOG.com and Steam.

Tropes used in BloodRayne include:
  • Animesque: BloodRayne: Betrayal's artstyle.
  • Anti-Hero: Rayne, she doesn't particularly like humans, but she hates vampires.
  • Argentina Is Naziland: Almost a 1/3 of BloodRayne takes place in a hidden Nazi base in Argentina. Then again, another third takes place in Germany proper.
  • Artificial Stupidity : Mooks getting stuck in corners and vampires slowly dying by standing in daylight.
  • Aura Vision: It helps Rayne find her objective's location and conveniently shows how much health the non-boss enemies have (bosses have their own life meter).
  • Badass Boast: Half her quotes throughout the series, but her boast to Hedrox is especially epic.
  • Bare Your Midriff: Rayne, obviously.
  • Big Screwed-Up Family: Kagan's.
  • Black Eyes of Evil: Ephemera's.
  • Blood Bath: The final boss chamber in the second game has a fountain full of blood in which both Rayne and Kagan (her vampire father) can heal themselves.
  • Bloodier and Gorier: BloodRayne 2 was this to the original. BloodRayne: Betrayal for the series overall. And it's rated T!
  • Body Horror: Daemites possessing a soldier to name a few.
  • Born-Again Immortality: A Flower Child's life cycle is a true cycle. They can die and be reborn a seemingly unlimited number of times, provided they aren't killed before reaching physical maturity. Once they die, a large plant grows from their grave (that plant being whatever type of flower they’re based on). This plant bears a 'fruit' which is basically a womb, in which the Flower Child's new body develops. They are then 'born' exactly one year after their death, in the form of a five-year-old child.
  • Bulletproof Human Shield: One of the heroine's special moves is to grasp an enemy goon, bite down on his neck, and while wrapped around him, spin him around to block enemy shots, using him as a Bulletproof Human Shield and gaining health at the same time.
  • Bullet Time: One of Rayne's powers/a part of gameplay in both games is the option to use this technique, representing her heightened reaction times and senses.
  • The Cameo: The Boy and His Blob show up in Chapter 15 in BloodRayne: Betrayal.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Ephemera. Together with her sister Ferril, she plotted to kill their father and take over. Then, she (literally and figuratively) backstabbed and threw Ferril off a tower. When Rayne meets her for the final battle, Ephemera calmly tells her that she is waiting for the right moment to do Kagan in.
  • Colossus Climb: Slezz is a variation. You have to climb inside her to cut her heart out. Rayne is not happy with this turn of events.
  • Combat Stilettos: And they're actual stilettos.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: During Ephemera's boss battle, if Rayne touches the water in the pond, she gets hurt. Ephemera on the other hand, despite being a full vampire, remains unaffected by it.
  • Conspicuous CG: In BloodRayne: Betrayal, most of the blood splatters, explosions and slime splatters are this. It mildly clashes with the game's otherwise 2D-art style.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • The third act of the first game has several continuity nod references to the first act of Nocturne, the survival horror game from which BloodRayne was a spinoff of.
    • Rayne is half-sister to Svetlana Lupescu.
  • Creepy Crossdresser: Implied in BloodRayne 2:

Mook:Nice boots miss, after I've kicked your ass I may prance around in them.

  • Cutscene: The first two games uses FMV sequences in some parts of the game's story.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Rayne, particularly in the second game, has more snark than even Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
    • "You saw the blades, what did you think was gonna happen?"
  • Dhampyr: The title character.
  • Die, Chair, Die!: Oh yes! Chairs, statues and even pianos aren't safe from Rayne's armblades.
  • Disposable Sex Worker: Well, more like recyclable, street people are drained of blood to create the Shroud.
  • Disposable Vagrant: See above.
  • Dual Boss: The twins, Simon and Sigmund, while Wulf and Beliar are more of a subversion: you fight both at once, but they attack each other, too.
  • Dull Surprise: Rayne for most of the first game talks in a monotone, just displaying enough emotion that you know what's going through her mind. Nothing really seems to shake her (as she said at the start of the game, "I'm just confident in my abilities"), with few exceptions. Then Wulf kills Mynce for real. Then she flies into an Unstoppable Rage. The sequel has much less of this, as Rayne does a lot more cracking wise and occasionally expressing real horror when she realizes what the plan of the Kagan Cult is.
  • Epunymous Title: The series title plays on gallons of blood you'll be spilling with the games' titular character.
  • Exposition Fairy: Mynce in the first game, and Severin in the second.
  • Expy: Originally, Rayne was supposed to be Svetlana Lupescu of Nocturne fame, but this was scrapped.
  • Famous-Named Foreigner: So many, but one name is really, really an embodiment of this trope: Dr. Bathory Mengele.
  • Fan Service: Rayne was one of the first video game characters to pose nude in Playboy. There are also a few fan mods to the PC version that make her nude.
  • Five-Bad Band: The second game:
  • Flipping the Bird: Rayne does this enough to make one think she's channeling Stone Cold Steve Austin: she does it at least four times during the first game's ending, before flipping off her handler at the start of the second game.
  • Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Scratch the friendly part: she is working to wipe out Nazis and cults, but she's very much an anti-hero, doing it for her own ends rather than any "good" benefit for others.
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: The latest game in the series, BloodRayne: Betrayal is a 2D Hack-n-Slash that's quite frankly Bloodier and Gorier than the first two games. Blood splatters everywhere, mooks are grinded up by blades, beheaded, cut in half or worse. And it's a T-rated game.
  • Ghostapo: The first game's central premise is that the Nazis are seeking occult relics for the purpose of gaining supernatural powers, and Rayne's mission is to stop them.
  • Giant Mecha: She fights them in the first game, and practically squeals with joy at getting to drive one. The giant pink things Rayne fights in the second game are organic ones.
  • Gorn: One of the few games where you can cut someone in half... vertically.
    • In BloodRayne, you're able to grind your enemies up in blade saws.
  • Grand Theft Me: The second act of the first game features parasites that do this.

Parasite: I'll wear you like lederhosen.

  • Grievous Harm with a Body: Most of the killing puzzles involve throwing minions at something until it breaks.
  • Guns Akimbo: Rayne does virtually nothing but this in the first game, with the exception of some larger weapons. In the second game, the only guns she gets are dual wielded, but they function as the whole usual arsenal. In BloodRayne: Betrayal, Rayne only uses a handgun (albeit a Magnum) and a laser cannon.
  • Guns Are Worthless: Despite the wide variety of firearms available in the first game, guns are only really effective against common Mooks. Some tougher enemies and bosses take very little (if any) damage from bullets, or are difficult to hit in the first place (especially Daemites). Compounding this problem is the fact that guns don't hold much ammo and can't be reloaded; Rayne discards a weapon upon emptying the magazine, and must pick up another to replace it. On top of all this, Rayne's blades and harpoon are generally more efficient weapons anyway, and it's entirely possible to play through most of the game without firing a shot.
    • In BloodRayne: Betrayal, however, Rayne's Magnum is actually quite powerful, able to knock most mooks off their feet.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Rayne and other Dhampir's.
  • Heal Thyself: Rayne drinks the blood of her enemies to restore her life bar.
  • High-Pressure Blood: Oh lordy.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Only in the first game; Rayne finds a pair of mystical blood-powered guns in the second. The first game does have a cheat which displays the weapons; however, it's interesting how the lot stays strapped to her back.
  • I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Rayne feels this way towards her father Kagan, who raped her mother and drove her mad. All his daughters hate him, in fact.
  • Jiggle Physics: There is a cheat code in both games that allows you to increase both Rayne's bust size and the jiggliness.
    • Disturbingly, the jiggle physics in the first game tends to turn on and off quite routinely, leading to a case of uncanny cleavage when Rayne is speaking.
  • Large Ham: Jurgen Wulf in the first game, Kagan in the second.
    • Feral has a lot of fun with her villainy as well.
  • Meaningful Name: Ferril, Ephemera, Severin to name a few.
  • Melee a Trois: The final confrontation of the original game between Rayne, Belial and Jurgen Wulf. Before that, the twins.
  • Mission Control: Severin in the second game serves this function.
  • Mr. Fanservice: For someone with so little screentime and absolutely no action scenes, Severin has become this more handily than anyone else in the franchise. It's because of Severin that Kagan hasn't been fitted with leather pants. It's because of Severin that all other ships arrive presunk.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Daemite + host body.
  • No Ontological Inertia: A funny subversion at the end of BloodRayne 2. After Rayne defeats the final boss, she observes that his primary work, an alchemical cloud covering the land that allows vampires to walk under the sun, has not dissipated. Rayne remarks off-handedly to her partner, "I half-expected everything to go back to normal once he was dead. I guess that wasn’t very realistic, huh?".
  • No Swastikas: The PC and Xbox versions removed all swastikas and other Third Reich symbolism.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Dhampir, actually. Water, sunlight, healing by drinking blood and apparently having the grace of a Cirque de Soleil performer and the body of a lingerie model.
    • The full-blooded vampires are a varied bunch as well, with Ephemera being an Intangible Girl who can teleport through shadows, Hedrox, a bestial creature with a Doppelganger Attack, and Slezz, an ancient and monstrously inhuman "Babylonian Winged Shakkab" described as a "born vampire". The only two vampires who seem to match the usual profile are Zerenski and Kagan.
  • Painted-On Pants: Rayne's default outfit.
  • Parental Favoritism: Ephemera is Kagan's favorite daughter.
  • Power Tattoo: Ferril's body is covered in moving tattoos.
    • The Dark Rayne outfit you get as a bonus gives Rayne some nice tribal tats as well.
  • Serrated Blade of Pain: The female Mad Scientist duel-wields amputation saws.
  • Sociopathic Hero: Subverted by Rayne. She has no qualms about slicing someone in half, but she actually makes a point of trying to emphasize her humanity, like her freak-out when Mynce died.
  • Spikes of Villainy: Subverted. The heels of Rayne's boots are a pair of spikes.
  • Standard FPS Guns: In BloodRayne 2, the 'blood guns' mimic the effect of several weapons:
    • Blood shot = Pistol.
    • Blood stream = Automatic weapon.
    • Blood flame = Flamethrower.
    • Blood hammer = Rocket launcher.
    • Blood bomb = Time bomb (blows up enemies after a short period).
  • Stripperific: Rayne's outfits in the second game. Her default outfit speaks for itself, of course.
  • Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Actual jetpack Nazis in the first game.
  • Third-Person Seductress: Rayne in the first two games, who provides some eye-candy while slicing her enemies into ribbons.
  • Throw-Away Guns: In the first game. Once the magazine for the weapon Rayne's holding are emptied, she tosses them out of her inventory.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change: The first game is a fixed-camera, Max Payne/Jedi Outcast style third-person shooter which incorporates melee combat. The second game is a free-floating-camera, Final Fight-style fighting game which incorporates platforming and auto-lock shooting. It's a moderate, but significant shift. The third game is a 2D hybrid of Castlevania platforming and Devil May Cry combat. Compared to the first two, it's a REALLY significant shift.
  • Unwinnable: There's a glitch in BloodRayne 2 if you don't use your harpoon to open the path before killing some Mooks.
  • Vapor Wear: Ferril is mostly nude, if you took her markings away from her.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: In the mines, you may notice a few doors have been barricaded from the inside with a few Nazis hiding in them. Rayne will actively taunt these poor fellows who are just hiding from the Daemites, even though they offer no resistance; in fact, they are out right cowering. They are free health should you need it, but damn. BloodRayne 2, meanwhile, has many, many different ways you can dismember the human body.
    • Dismembering was very much possible in BloodRayne 1, particularly with Insane Gibs Mode on. And how it felt... shaving off surplus limbs then watch the Nazi in question writhe in agony/far away screaming/try to get away? Blowing off heads? Mincing them into thin little body pieces?
  • Voice with an Internet Connection: Specifically in BloodRayne 2.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: Rayne's sunlight weakness is kind of expected, being half vampire, but water? Seriously? In BloodRayne 2, you can get killed by the sprinkler system.
  • Why Am I Ticking?: In BloodRayne: Betrayal, Rayne can either drain an enemy of blood for health or infect them with some sort of virus that turns them into walking acid bombs that she can detonate at will, which can cause chain reactions.
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