Majesco's marketing department has done something very impressive with its BloodRayne property. With an appearance in Playboy, and upcoming comic book and feature film efforts, the red-headed dhampir has spawned a franchise, even as only her second game hits store shelves. Taking place decades after the first, BloodRayne 2 finds our protagonist nearing the end of her mission to rid the world of her evil dad's offspring, and she brings it with the sex and the violence, with cleaving and cleavage aplenty.

While the original BloodRayne was an entertaining if not amazing action game, it suffered from a few flaws that appear to have been addressed for the sequel. The graphics are much improved this time out, and the physics engine makes the inevitable cascade of flying body parts fun to watch for a while, but the most noticeable improvement is in the sheer number of things Rayne can do. Melee combat used to consist solely of mindless button mashing, but now a variety of moves and combos are available. Unfortunately, button mashing still works almost as well, giving the player little incentive to learn the intricate combos. The point is made nearly moot, since most players will end up relying on the more powerful and excessively violent "feeding fatalities". Sadly, unlike combos, these are few in number, and while initially quite satisfying, once you've decapitated your 99^th bad guy, it starts to get old.

Of course, it's always an option to just shoot people, too, which this time around means Blood Guns. Yes, that's right, Blood Guns. No longer the walking arsenal that gave the Nazis such a headache, Rayne discovers the legendary weapons early in the game, and they are her projectile weapons of choice throughout. This does away with traditional ammo-hunting, as the guns use blood for ammunition (I never did figure out how that worked), so when they run low, you can reload them with one of the aforementioned feeding fatalities. Fail to reload, however, and the guns use Rayne's blood as a reserve, draining your life in the process. Gunplay is solid, but less fun than melee combat on the ground, meaning you'll probably only end up using the guns when you can't reach an opponent.

While the combat is nothing to write home about, it's not the only thing on the list of improvements made. Rayne's new tricks also include pole-swinging, rail-grinding and wall-clinging. The acrobatic portions of the game are probably the most fun. It's not in the same league as Prince of Persia, but it's well-done and satisfying, and I wish there was more of it. The same cannot be said of the much-ballyhooed "killing puzzles", however. Each and every one of these so-called "puzzles" is solved in the exact same manner: flinging opponent after opponent into some object, be it a garbage masher, a fan, or whatever, until the game decides you've seen enough and can move on. It's really fun the first time, but the puzzles never get any more complex than that, and the novelty wears off rather quickly.

Other problems persist as well. While the graphics range from "nice" to "quite nice", the animation is often choppy, and there are some issues with collision detection. Rayne has a slew of new powers, but they are never used in a consistent and coherent fashion, making the end result seem like a series of mini-games rather than one big adventure. Fortunately, the "vampire apocalypse" storyline is told through well-produced and finely acted cutscenes that keep the game from feeling entirely disjointed.

An impressive amount of new stuff went into BloodRayne 2, which is the way a sequel should be, but it suffers perhaps for being too ambitious. If half the time spent inventing new combos, for example, had instead been used to find a way to make those combos useful, or if the puzzles became more complex throughout the game, or…well, any number of things. Which is not to say that this is a bad game. It's just so obvious that there were enough new ideas here to make a great game that were never fully realized. The original BloodRayne was a good game in sore need of polish, The sequel is a better game, for certain, but it appears that Terminal Reality left the Minwax on the shelf.