BloodRayne 2 and Midway Arcade Treasures released yesterday
I picked up both of these games for xbox last night, and i am quite happy with them.
arcade treasures is pretty cool, has alot of games i loved playing in the arcades years ago. however, they arent quite as cool as they used to be. I guess once you see what games are capable of, the older ones arent nearly as impressive. But for $20, it gives me a chance to go back and play some of my favorites. I bought this mainly for 3 games:
Mortal Kombat 2
Mortal Kombat 3
NARC
all of which are still quite fun. there are a few other games that i rmember playing as well:
primal rage
pit fighter
guantlet 2
hard drivin (which i beleive was the first 3d racing game)
and there are a few games i never heard of before(and dont remember the names of) one of which is some kind of lumberjack game, you run around cutting down trees with your axe, and try not to trip over stumps, and avoid the bears that throw bee hives at you....it is quite bizarre.
moving on to Bloodrayne 2. I was very impressed with it. I enjoyed the first one, even though the combat was pretty limited to the attacks you could do. this one improves on it in just about every way. graphically, it looks better, you have tons of attacks and combos now. there seems to be more dismemberment as well. all of the good stuff is still there...the unlimited bullet time and other vampire abilities. sucking the blood from enemies to fill your health. the harpoon attack is different now, instead of just pulling people to you so you can feed on them...you can now whip them through the air and into stuff. you can harpoon someone and toss them into a fireplace, or onto a suit of armor that is holding a spear, impaling them. or even onto the mounted head of an animal on the wall, where they are impaled on the antlers.
there are also some acrobatic moves, but they are nowhere near as intuitive as in Prince of Persia. they dont have that "one fluid motion" feeling like POP. you can jump up and grab a pole, swing around it and flip to another..but it takes precise timing with the A button to cause her to leap to the next one..lots of times i found myself just swinging around the pole many times until i got it right. you can also climb vertial pipes, leap back and forth between fencing, and slide down rails.
the only thing i dont like about it is the guns. in the other one, you had all kinds of guns and you would just blast away, when they ran out of ammo, you tossed them, and picked up other ones later. now that could still be the case..but so far..i found some kind of vampire guns that have these big needle looking things on the front of them. They basically use blood as ammo. there is a blood meter for the guns, that holds 40 shots. once that meter is drained, you can still shoot, but it begins draining your health/blood meter. just like how you can feed on your enemies to fill your health/blood meter..you can also fill your guns this way. hit the feed button to begin feeding, then hit the shoot button, you will stop feeding, and take the guns and jam them into the victim, this will then begin to fill the ammo meter.
it is an interesting idea, but i would have prefered the old method of using normal guns.
if you liked the first bloodrayne, you will like this one alot. if you havent played either one of them..give this one a shot..it is good. it is quite satisfying to go up against an enemy, swinging your swords around, chopping off his arm and watching him run away as he screams "my arm...my arm" then chase him down and chop the top half of his head off.
there are also quite a few ways to kill people once you are done feeding from them...all of them are quite violent.
