Friday, September 30, 2011
LA Noire Screen Shots Part 20 HD [Xbox360,Ps3]
LA Noire Screen Shots Part 20 HD [Xbox360,Ps3]
LANoire Screen Shots Part 20 The Last Part for the LA Noire Playlist, You can watch the older parts Here: www.YouTube.com/agent333322 - LANoire is ...Thursday, September 29, 2011
Batman:Arkham City - The Riddler Trailer HD
Batman:Arkham City - The Riddler Trailer HD
MSN has revealed The Riddler trailer for Batman: Arkham City which you can watch here! You can also find a new Riddler wallpaper at the official ...Wednesday, September 28, 2011
PS4 Vs XBOX 720-The Gaming Revolution
PS4 vs XBOX 720-The gaming revolution
I haven't include all the consoles; just a few to show the difference.Tuesday, September 27, 2011
New LA Noire PS3 Avatars Available On The PlayStation Store [HD]
New LA Noire PS3 Avatars Available on the PlayStation Store [HD]
These 7 new avatars feature characters from the LA Noire Original Artwork Collection and are available for $0.49 each in North America (European ...Monday, September 26, 2011
Project Cafe, Xbox 720, PS4, And E3 [CoD: Black Ops ...
Project Cafe, Xbox 720, PS4, and E3 [CoD: Black Ops ...
Click here to watch WA2000 is Beast? www.youtube.com Thanks for watching! Please rate, comment and subscribe if you want Hoped you enjoyed ...S-Factor Ft. Seraina - Play [HD] [320 Kbps]
S-Factor ft. Seraina - Play [HD] [320 Kbps]
Enjoy, this sick track, in it`s best quality ; )Subscribe For More Hell Of A Epic Music! Twitter: twitter.com. Pokemon Hardstyle Remix Theme Song ...Sunday, September 25, 2011
Nintendo Wii U Graphics VS PS4 / Xbox 720
Nintendo Wii U graphics VS PS4 / Xbox 720
Wii to 360/PS3 /= WiiU to PS4/Xbox720Saturday, September 24, 2011
Xmaster117: Revival ~ Techno Song
Xmaster117: Revival ~ Techno Song
best electronic psn down sony playstation xbox 360 xbox360 gta soundtrack main theme wallpaper desktop background halo reach house hard funky ...Friday, September 23, 2011
Xbox 720 Coming Soon? 2013 Or 2014
Xbox 720 Coming Soon? 2013 or 2014
It appears that there is a possibility of a new Xbox Console to be released sometime in 2013 or 2014 which is before the Xbox 360s last year of ...Thursday, September 22, 2011
Stream Movies And Music To Your Xbox 360
Stream Movies and Music to your Xbox 360
►►►Read First◄◄◄ Please support all the hard work by subscribing to my videos, I appreciate it ...Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Black Ops Open Lobby
Black Ops Open Lobby
PS3 PSN Night Friday 4th April 2011 Toxic Terrorzz Steam PC "Xbox 360" Wallpaper HD 720P 1080P Bravia Sony 32inch Youtube SgtPCGamer ...Tuesday, September 20, 2011
The Next Generation Of Gaming PS4, XBOX 720 AND Wii U Talk And Infomation ...
The Next Generation Of Gaming PS4, XBOX 720 AND Wii U Talk And Infomation ...
Thanks for watching please like the video and subscribe for more infomation on the next generation of gaming. The infomation provided is most ...Monday, September 19, 2011
PS4 And Xbox 720 Confirmed
PS4 And Xbox 720 Confirmed
So the playstation 4 from sony, and the new xbox system from microsoft. Have been confirmed... And of course we all didn't know about that already ...Sonic Generations - Music(Please See Description)
Sonic Generations - Music(Please See Description)
" "Modern Sonic" "Classic Sonic" "Green Hil" Song Soundtrack Kele Tenderoni wallpapers images Sega "Sonic team" HD PS3 "Xbox 360" Music frokenok3 ...Sunday, September 18, 2011
New Xbox 720 Out To 'Combat' The Wii.
New Xbox 720 out to 'Combat' the Wii.
Microsoft's latest preview of the production of project Natal (or Xbox 720 as we know it) gives the strongest hint yet that it will be ...Need For Speed Shift 2 Unleashed Launch Trailer HD
Need for Speed Shift 2 Unleashed Launch Trailer HD
The official Need for Speed Shift 2 Unleashed Launch trailer by Electronic Arts (with tiny edits). I claim no ownership for any footage, music ...Saturday, September 17, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
LA Noire Screen Shots Part 12 HD [Xbox360,Ps3]
LA Noire Screen Shots Part 12 HD [Xbox360,Ps3]
LA Noire Achievements / Trophies A Cop On Every Corner Complete a single street crime case. Johnny On The Spot Respond to 20 street crime cases ...Xbox 720: What We Want To See
Xbox 720: What We Want To See
See what goods we want Microsoft to come up with in their next Xbox console.Preview: The new design of the Xbox 360 dashboard
The current Xbox 360 dashboard is kind of a clusterf*ck. Netflix, Hulu, and ESPN integration are great (as I use them pretty much daily), but a redesign is clearly needed. You can point the finger at Microsoft for its state of disarray, but really the madness can be attributed simply to the rules of Chaos Theory: the belief that everything constantly moves from order to disorder.
When the last Xbox 360 dashboard makeover (NXE) arrived, everything was peaches n' cream. Avatars were populating like rabbits, and Facebook, Zune, and Netflix found a nice balance among the Xbox Live marketplace. Everything was in order.
Then Twitter, Last.fm, and Hulu joined the mix, the XBL marketplace exploded with content, Kinect finally launched, and thus the chaos began. Longtime 360 owners have learned to deal with how all these crazy things work. But for those unfortunate to have just stumbled into the dash, finding the latest and greatest through a sea of tabs and ads can be a chore. Oh, and for the 10+ million Kinect users out there who were promised voice and gesture connectivity innovation -- the kind the world has never seen -- well, don't get me started.
Performance, discoverability, and voice. These three simple things were etched into my brain as Albert Penello, Sr. Director of product management and planning at Microsoft, walked me through me the new dashboard last week. After meeting with Penello to check out this fall's dashboard refresh, I have to say Microsoft might finally have all the entropy they’ve created under control.
With the new dash fired up, speed and performance improvements were instantly noticeable. Whatever your navigation tool of choice is -- be it controller or gestures/voice for Kinect users -- getting from one end of the dash to the other is lightning-quick. Everything has a home under a much-better-structured tab system. Friends now fall under the social tab, and all the apps you’ve come to love or hate are under an appropriate app tab that “potentially opens up the possibility to do non-gaming apps," Penello said. It's not in the plans as of now, he added, but is definitely something Microsoft has thought about or is open to, at the very least.
Along with performance, Kinect integration is another aspect of the new dash I was taken back by. While the NXE eventually shoehorned in some functionality, support was very limited outside of starting and stopping videos with voice or pantomiming to pop up a separate interface. With the latest update, everything on the dash is Kinect-enabled. I watched Penello slide tabs over with his hands while sitting down as effortlessly as he would have with a controller.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Kinect support is just how well voice commands work. Like the gesture support, everything on the dash is accessible via speech. "The voice stuff is getting better and better all the time," Penello said. "A lot of the learning for voice is in the service; it's up in the cloud." And speaking of the cloud, it's still coming along with roaming profiles and some other unnamed gaming features.
While the new look is quite sexy, it would be a complete waste if Microsoft couldn’t deliver on discoverability with the new dash. For starters, the new layout -- which is very similar to their Windows Phone 7 "Metro" setup -- is extremely easy on the eyes. No longer do ads clutter up the navigation experience, nor are you required to scroll endlessly though sections to find the latest deal of the week. Everything is organized, and thanks to Bing Search, can be discovered in a matter of seconds.
As the cornerstone of this for the new dash, Bing Search makes finding content quick and reliable via voice or text. If it exists on XBLA, Zune, Netflix, or any other service on the network, Bing will find it. At the moment, Bing is limited to title search -- it can't handle in-depth searches on categories such as actors, directors, and genres -- but the possibility wasn’t ruled out. One thing that is cool about the search results is being able to have it display only movies, music or games via Kinect, simply by saying “Xbox show movies” or “Xbox show games.”
My only concern with Bing, right now, is how it delivers its results. The user interface isn't final, and thus there is currently no way of telling which service content is being selected from. For example, the show 30 Rock exists on both Netflix and Hulu, but how Bing will separate the search in case of multiples is still undecided. However, it’s still quite amazing to be able to find content without having to enter any applications.
Outside of design and functionality aesthetics, the biggest addition for gamers is the new “beacons” feature. Essentially, beacons are game invites that don’t expire. Want to play Halo or watch Netflix with friends, but don’t want to wait for them to get online to invite them? Set a beacon. Your friends will get an alert -- called a “toast” -- anywhere they are signed into Live (Windows Phone 7, Internet, and Facebook). They’re a great way to organize all online activities.
For the Achievement whore, Gamerscore will now be tied to Facebook without the help of a third-party program. Don't worry about being bombarded with updates, though, as the process is completely manual. Get a rare Achievement and want to rub it in your friends’ faces? The choice is yours. One interesting thing about Facebook that Penello did discuss -- more as a vision than an actual feature -- would be the ability of sharing thoughts about a movie you just watched, straight from the dashboard, rather than logging onto Facebook afterwards and typing it up.
Unfortunately, the much-anticipated Live TV, On Demand, UFC, and YouTube features weren’t ready to be shown. Microsoft is absolutely committed to delivering live TV and promised to have great announcements this fall. If they are as equally executed as the rest of the new dashboard, then Xbox 360 users have a lot to be excited for later this year.
What do you think of this redesign? Order achieved?
Source : http://www.destructoid.com/preview-the-new-design-of-the-xbox-360-dashboard-211133.phtml
When the last Xbox 360 dashboard makeover (NXE) arrived, everything was peaches n' cream. Avatars were populating like rabbits, and Facebook, Zune, and Netflix found a nice balance among the Xbox Live marketplace. Everything was in order.
Then Twitter, Last.fm, and Hulu joined the mix, the XBL marketplace exploded with content, Kinect finally launched, and thus the chaos began. Longtime 360 owners have learned to deal with how all these crazy things work. But for those unfortunate to have just stumbled into the dash, finding the latest and greatest through a sea of tabs and ads can be a chore. Oh, and for the 10+ million Kinect users out there who were promised voice and gesture connectivity innovation -- the kind the world has never seen -- well, don't get me started.
Performance, discoverability, and voice. These three simple things were etched into my brain as Albert Penello, Sr. Director of product management and planning at Microsoft, walked me through me the new dashboard last week. After meeting with Penello to check out this fall's dashboard refresh, I have to say Microsoft might finally have all the entropy they’ve created under control.
With the new dash fired up, speed and performance improvements were instantly noticeable. Whatever your navigation tool of choice is -- be it controller or gestures/voice for Kinect users -- getting from one end of the dash to the other is lightning-quick. Everything has a home under a much-better-structured tab system. Friends now fall under the social tab, and all the apps you’ve come to love or hate are under an appropriate app tab that “potentially opens up the possibility to do non-gaming apps," Penello said. It's not in the plans as of now, he added, but is definitely something Microsoft has thought about or is open to, at the very least.
Along with performance, Kinect integration is another aspect of the new dash I was taken back by. While the NXE eventually shoehorned in some functionality, support was very limited outside of starting and stopping videos with voice or pantomiming to pop up a separate interface. With the latest update, everything on the dash is Kinect-enabled. I watched Penello slide tabs over with his hands while sitting down as effortlessly as he would have with a controller.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Kinect support is just how well voice commands work. Like the gesture support, everything on the dash is accessible via speech. "The voice stuff is getting better and better all the time," Penello said. "A lot of the learning for voice is in the service; it's up in the cloud." And speaking of the cloud, it's still coming along with roaming profiles and some other unnamed gaming features.
While the new look is quite sexy, it would be a complete waste if Microsoft couldn’t deliver on discoverability with the new dash. For starters, the new layout -- which is very similar to their Windows Phone 7 "Metro" setup -- is extremely easy on the eyes. No longer do ads clutter up the navigation experience, nor are you required to scroll endlessly though sections to find the latest deal of the week. Everything is organized, and thanks to Bing Search, can be discovered in a matter of seconds.
As the cornerstone of this for the new dash, Bing Search makes finding content quick and reliable via voice or text. If it exists on XBLA, Zune, Netflix, or any other service on the network, Bing will find it. At the moment, Bing is limited to title search -- it can't handle in-depth searches on categories such as actors, directors, and genres -- but the possibility wasn’t ruled out. One thing that is cool about the search results is being able to have it display only movies, music or games via Kinect, simply by saying “Xbox show movies” or “Xbox show games.”
My only concern with Bing, right now, is how it delivers its results. The user interface isn't final, and thus there is currently no way of telling which service content is being selected from. For example, the show 30 Rock exists on both Netflix and Hulu, but how Bing will separate the search in case of multiples is still undecided. However, it’s still quite amazing to be able to find content without having to enter any applications.
Outside of design and functionality aesthetics, the biggest addition for gamers is the new “beacons” feature. Essentially, beacons are game invites that don’t expire. Want to play Halo or watch Netflix with friends, but don’t want to wait for them to get online to invite them? Set a beacon. Your friends will get an alert -- called a “toast” -- anywhere they are signed into Live (Windows Phone 7, Internet, and Facebook). They’re a great way to organize all online activities.
For the Achievement whore, Gamerscore will now be tied to Facebook without the help of a third-party program. Don't worry about being bombarded with updates, though, as the process is completely manual. Get a rare Achievement and want to rub it in your friends’ faces? The choice is yours. One interesting thing about Facebook that Penello did discuss -- more as a vision than an actual feature -- would be the ability of sharing thoughts about a movie you just watched, straight from the dashboard, rather than logging onto Facebook afterwards and typing it up.
Unfortunately, the much-anticipated Live TV, On Demand, UFC, and YouTube features weren’t ready to be shown. Microsoft is absolutely committed to delivering live TV and promised to have great announcements this fall. If they are as equally executed as the rest of the new dashboard, then Xbox 360 users have a lot to be excited for later this year.
What do you think of this redesign? Order achieved?
Source : http://www.destructoid.com/preview-the-new-design-of-the-xbox-360-dashboard-211133.phtml
Review: BloodRayne: Betrayal
Very few people can claim to love BloodRayne as a franchise, and there's a reason for that. The original titles were critically derided, the series of Uwe Boll movies are particularly grotesque, and the comic books are obscure as Hell. However, when someone's looking for fans of BloodRayne, they need look no further than myself.
So, when news of a new BloodRayne game dropped, I was beyond excited. The fact that it appeared to be taking its cues from Castlevania was an added bonus, and the stage was set for a game that would finally make BloodRayne a respectable series as opposed to an eternally guilty pleasure.
However, this game's name -- Betrayal -- is stunningly appropriate, because I feel like I've been stabbed in the back.
BloodRayne: Betrayal is a sidescrolling platform/beat 'em up game that aims to take the old school approach to difficulty in games. Unfortunately, the "old school approach" means taking gameplay from a time when challenge wasn't about tight design and strategy, but about using broken mechanics to artificially inflate the danger, while lazily throwing as much crap at the player as possible. If that was WayForward's goal, then it passed with flying colors.
The biggest problem with Betrayal is that its controls are entirely too sloppy for a game that requires very precise commands. A big part of this problem lies in the art style. Games that take a hand-drawn visual style often feel "floaty" due to the indulgently animated characters and lack of distinct attack boundaries. There's a lacking sense of tactility to the fighting when compared to something that uses sprites or polygons, and if Betrayal's combat was insistent on being such a chaotic mess, it really ought to have sacrificed the pretty comic book aesthetic in order to take a graphical approach that complimented, rather than directly hindered, the gameplay.
This problem is exacerbated due to the fact that Rayne controls like garbage. For a start, she can't simply walk, instead breaking into a full sprint the moment you nudge the D-Pad (and you have to use the D-Pad, because analog sticks confuse her). She also cannot stop running without a lengthy "skid" animation, which makes her utterly useless for the game's myriad, ridiculously punishing platform sections. To give us a character that can't move without sprinting and can't stop without skidding, then throwing her into platform sections where moving ledges are thinner than she is, seems almost to satirize the problems inherent in games that put style over substance.
Betrayal's awful lack of appreciable control is carried over into the combat, which can quite accurately be described as a cluster of the purest fuck. There's a fairly predictable formula to the game, with each level splitting itself evenly between platform sections and miniature "arena" areas where a pre-set number of enemies spawn. I'm having a hard time deciding which section is the least fun.
As stated earlier, WayForward took the Battletoads approach to game design, where a developer feels it can just throw a ton of enemies around and exploit broken design elements in order to call itself tough. For starters, Rayne can't block attacks, and her only means of defense is a worthless dash move that propels her a pathetically short distance and usually just throws her into fresh trouble. Whenever Rayne gets knocked down, she takes too long to get back up, allowing the half-dozen enemies on-screen to ready a new attack. It's not uncommon to get knocked down, then get knocked down again as soon as Rayne recovers. In fact, this can happen repeatedly, all because WayForward thought a lengthy recovery animation was more important than creating a protagonist that was halfway useful.
Rayne is laggy due to the extra hand-drawn animations, unresponsive for reasons unknown to me, and seems willing to fight the player's commands to her own detriment. Even something as simple as turning around to face an enemy behind you seems impossible to do in a swift and efficient manner. She has some contextual attacks that usually just get her hurt -- for instance, she'll stomp on a downed enemy, which is rather useless when you want to attack the opponent that's still standing up and happens to be stood next to the grounded one. Rayne can hit an enemy, then hold a button to suck its blood for health, but if the potential victim is stood next to a creature that cannot be drained, Rayne invariably attempts to grab the one that blocks her attacks, which opens her up to a counter-move from the foe player's really wanted. Don't even get me started on the random attacks that have forward moment even when Rayne's stood still, which is great for sending her off ledges and toward her doom.
There's not even a lot of depth to the game. Combat is only slightly more advanced than Streets of Rage (and half as tight), and despite taking some cues from Castlevania, it lacks anything that made Konami's games so great. There are no real upgrades or level gains (outside of the option to boost your gun ammo or health with every five hidden skulls collected), the expertly designed maps are replaced by dull left-to-right levels, and the precise controls are replaced by something far too watery to deserve a place among the sidescrolling greats.
The only things that Betrayal copies verbatim from Castlevania are a range of small, annoying enemies that bob up and down while traveling across the screen. Yes, of all the things to steal from Castlevania, BloodRayne: Betrayal decided to steal Medusa Head enemies -- universally considered among the worst enemies in gaming history. The fact that WayForward had such a rich variety of excellent games to draw from, and came away with only Medusa Heads under its arm, confirms to me that the developers were far more eager to create an unfair, frustrating trainwreck of a game above all else.
I will at least say that some of the boss fights, as hard as they are, actually approach something resembling conscious gameplay design. They're pretty tough, and often just as chaotic as regular combat, but the addition of appreciable patterns and worthwhile tactics make for a brief respite from the absolute garbage circus that makes up the rest of the game. Defeating the boss monsters actually manages to feel satisfying, which is about the only time BloodRayne ever deigns to encourage positive emotions.
The final straw came for me in Chapter 13 of 15, a level already considered by many to be the point where Betrayal crosses a very real line. Rayne has to fight ghosts while head-stomping on a bunch of respawning flies. One false move and she falls to her death. These ghosts can apparently attack without requiring attack animations, and the laggy controls means that it's incredibly difficult to transition from attacking the ghosts to stomping on the flies. Not to mention, you get hit just once and you'll die. Add that to the already worthless control scheme and it becomes the point where I decided Betrayal had thieved enough of my time, and I bid adieu to what is, without a doubt, one of the most deeply unpleasant and miserable experiences of my gaming life.
I have no regrets. I'm sure there'd be some twisted, prurient sense of pride in completing the game, but it's not worth it, especially with the brutal scoring system that docks points for everything and delights in slapping an "F" grade on anybody but the most practiced and perfect of players. It's quite fitting that an already mean spirited game would go out of its way to discourage players and tell them that, even though they just finally beat a difficult level and should rejoice, they still technically failed because they didn't beat it quick enough. Some gamers will celebrate such a harsh and punishing game, but the less perverse among us do not believe that fun is measured by how much of your time and energy is thoroughly wasted on busted, lazy gameplay.
All of this is punctuated by the complete lack of personality that BloodRayne features. The game certainly looks gorgeous and there's plenty of blood, but the gore seems a cynical and shallow mockery of the sassy silliness that made the series what it was. Rayne's original personality is completely gone, replaced by a flat and featureless character. The story barely exists and tells a rather boring story about a man who turns into a bird, and there's just no raunchy, ridiculous humor to any of it. It's a po-faced, bland affair, and the beautiful graphics only serve to contrast the ugliness apparent in everything else.
I've had my ass kicked by many games over the years. Sometimes, such as with Demon's Souls or Metal Arms: Glitch in the System, I loved it. Other times, as with many of those crippled "old school" games, I've not been a fan. However, BloodRayne: Betrayal is the only game I've played where I've actively been put in a lasting bad mood. Betrayal is a game that actively alters my disposition, to the point where I don't feel happy for quite some time afterwards. It's an obnoxious experience that goes out of its way to make players feel bad, proudly reveling in the kind of gameplay that's considered old fashioned for a very good reason.
There are those out there that will join Betrayal in its revelry -- the kind of people who claim Battletoads isn't difficult and expect adoration for their gaming prowess. The kind of people who think that members of their preferred gender will find them intensely attractive because they find Ninja Gaiden to be so easy. Those people are a dying breed, and BloodRayne: Betrayal is a vestigial relic from an ignorant age, despite its graphics attempting to make one think otherwise. Its gameplay is ripped straight from the NES era, and it's high time everybody recognized that 95% of the NES' games were shit. If Betrayal was released in the eighties, it would not be in the rarer 5%.
Awful design, a counter-intuitive art style, and an obscenely cheap approach to difficulty makes BloodRayne: Betrayal a game that should be avoided by all but the most masochistic and deranged of gamers. The deep revulsion that this game inspires within me cannot accurately be described, but it is measured only by the intense, burning disappointment I feel as a fan of the series. WayForward can do so much better, and better is what BloodRayne needed.
Source : http://www.destructoid.com/review-bloodrayne-betrayal-210976.phtml
So, when news of a new BloodRayne game dropped, I was beyond excited. The fact that it appeared to be taking its cues from Castlevania was an added bonus, and the stage was set for a game that would finally make BloodRayne a respectable series as opposed to an eternally guilty pleasure.
However, this game's name -- Betrayal -- is stunningly appropriate, because I feel like I've been stabbed in the back.
BloodRayne: Betrayal is a sidescrolling platform/beat 'em up game that aims to take the old school approach to difficulty in games. Unfortunately, the "old school approach" means taking gameplay from a time when challenge wasn't about tight design and strategy, but about using broken mechanics to artificially inflate the danger, while lazily throwing as much crap at the player as possible. If that was WayForward's goal, then it passed with flying colors.
The biggest problem with Betrayal is that its controls are entirely too sloppy for a game that requires very precise commands. A big part of this problem lies in the art style. Games that take a hand-drawn visual style often feel "floaty" due to the indulgently animated characters and lack of distinct attack boundaries. There's a lacking sense of tactility to the fighting when compared to something that uses sprites or polygons, and if Betrayal's combat was insistent on being such a chaotic mess, it really ought to have sacrificed the pretty comic book aesthetic in order to take a graphical approach that complimented, rather than directly hindered, the gameplay.
This problem is exacerbated due to the fact that Rayne controls like garbage. For a start, she can't simply walk, instead breaking into a full sprint the moment you nudge the D-Pad (and you have to use the D-Pad, because analog sticks confuse her). She also cannot stop running without a lengthy "skid" animation, which makes her utterly useless for the game's myriad, ridiculously punishing platform sections. To give us a character that can't move without sprinting and can't stop without skidding, then throwing her into platform sections where moving ledges are thinner than she is, seems almost to satirize the problems inherent in games that put style over substance.
Betrayal's awful lack of appreciable control is carried over into the combat, which can quite accurately be described as a cluster of the purest fuck. There's a fairly predictable formula to the game, with each level splitting itself evenly between platform sections and miniature "arena" areas where a pre-set number of enemies spawn. I'm having a hard time deciding which section is the least fun.
As stated earlier, WayForward took the Battletoads approach to game design, where a developer feels it can just throw a ton of enemies around and exploit broken design elements in order to call itself tough. For starters, Rayne can't block attacks, and her only means of defense is a worthless dash move that propels her a pathetically short distance and usually just throws her into fresh trouble. Whenever Rayne gets knocked down, she takes too long to get back up, allowing the half-dozen enemies on-screen to ready a new attack. It's not uncommon to get knocked down, then get knocked down again as soon as Rayne recovers. In fact, this can happen repeatedly, all because WayForward thought a lengthy recovery animation was more important than creating a protagonist that was halfway useful.
Rayne is laggy due to the extra hand-drawn animations, unresponsive for reasons unknown to me, and seems willing to fight the player's commands to her own detriment. Even something as simple as turning around to face an enemy behind you seems impossible to do in a swift and efficient manner. She has some contextual attacks that usually just get her hurt -- for instance, she'll stomp on a downed enemy, which is rather useless when you want to attack the opponent that's still standing up and happens to be stood next to the grounded one. Rayne can hit an enemy, then hold a button to suck its blood for health, but if the potential victim is stood next to a creature that cannot be drained, Rayne invariably attempts to grab the one that blocks her attacks, which opens her up to a counter-move from the foe player's really wanted. Don't even get me started on the random attacks that have forward moment even when Rayne's stood still, which is great for sending her off ledges and toward her doom.
There's not even a lot of depth to the game. Combat is only slightly more advanced than Streets of Rage (and half as tight), and despite taking some cues from Castlevania, it lacks anything that made Konami's games so great. There are no real upgrades or level gains (outside of the option to boost your gun ammo or health with every five hidden skulls collected), the expertly designed maps are replaced by dull left-to-right levels, and the precise controls are replaced by something far too watery to deserve a place among the sidescrolling greats.
The only things that Betrayal copies verbatim from Castlevania are a range of small, annoying enemies that bob up and down while traveling across the screen. Yes, of all the things to steal from Castlevania, BloodRayne: Betrayal decided to steal Medusa Head enemies -- universally considered among the worst enemies in gaming history. The fact that WayForward had such a rich variety of excellent games to draw from, and came away with only Medusa Heads under its arm, confirms to me that the developers were far more eager to create an unfair, frustrating trainwreck of a game above all else.
I will at least say that some of the boss fights, as hard as they are, actually approach something resembling conscious gameplay design. They're pretty tough, and often just as chaotic as regular combat, but the addition of appreciable patterns and worthwhile tactics make for a brief respite from the absolute garbage circus that makes up the rest of the game. Defeating the boss monsters actually manages to feel satisfying, which is about the only time BloodRayne ever deigns to encourage positive emotions.
The final straw came for me in Chapter 13 of 15, a level already considered by many to be the point where Betrayal crosses a very real line. Rayne has to fight ghosts while head-stomping on a bunch of respawning flies. One false move and she falls to her death. These ghosts can apparently attack without requiring attack animations, and the laggy controls means that it's incredibly difficult to transition from attacking the ghosts to stomping on the flies. Not to mention, you get hit just once and you'll die. Add that to the already worthless control scheme and it becomes the point where I decided Betrayal had thieved enough of my time, and I bid adieu to what is, without a doubt, one of the most deeply unpleasant and miserable experiences of my gaming life.
I have no regrets. I'm sure there'd be some twisted, prurient sense of pride in completing the game, but it's not worth it, especially with the brutal scoring system that docks points for everything and delights in slapping an "F" grade on anybody but the most practiced and perfect of players. It's quite fitting that an already mean spirited game would go out of its way to discourage players and tell them that, even though they just finally beat a difficult level and should rejoice, they still technically failed because they didn't beat it quick enough. Some gamers will celebrate such a harsh and punishing game, but the less perverse among us do not believe that fun is measured by how much of your time and energy is thoroughly wasted on busted, lazy gameplay.
All of this is punctuated by the complete lack of personality that BloodRayne features. The game certainly looks gorgeous and there's plenty of blood, but the gore seems a cynical and shallow mockery of the sassy silliness that made the series what it was. Rayne's original personality is completely gone, replaced by a flat and featureless character. The story barely exists and tells a rather boring story about a man who turns into a bird, and there's just no raunchy, ridiculous humor to any of it. It's a po-faced, bland affair, and the beautiful graphics only serve to contrast the ugliness apparent in everything else.
I've had my ass kicked by many games over the years. Sometimes, such as with Demon's Souls or Metal Arms: Glitch in the System, I loved it. Other times, as with many of those crippled "old school" games, I've not been a fan. However, BloodRayne: Betrayal is the only game I've played where I've actively been put in a lasting bad mood. Betrayal is a game that actively alters my disposition, to the point where I don't feel happy for quite some time afterwards. It's an obnoxious experience that goes out of its way to make players feel bad, proudly reveling in the kind of gameplay that's considered old fashioned for a very good reason.
There are those out there that will join Betrayal in its revelry -- the kind of people who claim Battletoads isn't difficult and expect adoration for their gaming prowess. The kind of people who think that members of their preferred gender will find them intensely attractive because they find Ninja Gaiden to be so easy. Those people are a dying breed, and BloodRayne: Betrayal is a vestigial relic from an ignorant age, despite its graphics attempting to make one think otherwise. Its gameplay is ripped straight from the NES era, and it's high time everybody recognized that 95% of the NES' games were shit. If Betrayal was released in the eighties, it would not be in the rarer 5%.
Awful design, a counter-intuitive art style, and an obscenely cheap approach to difficulty makes BloodRayne: Betrayal a game that should be avoided by all but the most masochistic and deranged of gamers. The deep revulsion that this game inspires within me cannot accurately be described, but it is measured only by the intense, burning disappointment I feel as a fan of the series. WayForward can do so much better, and better is what BloodRayne needed.
Source : http://www.destructoid.com/review-bloodrayne-betrayal-210976.phtml
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