Video Game / BloodRayne 2

BloodRayne 2 is a 2004 Action-Adventure Third-Person Shooter developed by Terminal Reality and published by Majesco. It is the sequel to BloodRayne.

The sequel takes place decades after the first game ends, set around modern times where the dhampyr Rayne must take down an evil cult formed by the offspring of her vampire father Kagan, who has created a substance that's blocking out the sun, allowing vampires to roam free.

Followed by 2011's BloodRayne: Betrayal, a 2D action platformer.

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This game provides examples of the following tropes:

• Aborted Arc: BloodRayne 2 ends on a big cliffhanger. However Betrayal never picks up on this, and there hasn't been word of a follow-up since. With the series currently dead, it's unlikely to ever see a resolution.
• Aerosol Flamethrower: Rayne makes this quip while watching as ninja minions fruitlessly slash at the implacable roach golems.
  "Right now I'd bet you'd like to trade in those big swords for a couple of cheap lighters and a can of hairspray, huh?"
• After the End: The ending shows that Kagan's Vampire Apocalypse can't be reversed, despite his death, and that humanity is now a small Brimstone-led resistance movement living in underground bunkers while hordes of monsters rule the surface. Rayne and Severin are on the outs with Brimstone, and Rayne herself has to inherit her father's empire despite her distaste of everything related to vampires and humans in order to try and save the humans on the surface.
• Archnemesis Dad: Kagan is this to Rayne. Being a Child by Rape from a complete bastard of a vampire will do that to you.
• Artistic License - Firearms: Kagan's Elite Mooks wield guns that look like Pancor Jackhammers (an automatic shotgun that never went into mass production) but act more like machine guns. Oh, and they wield them one-handed.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Ephemera and Ferril are the best fighters in the Cult of Kagan (other than Kagan himself), which is not surprising considering they're Rayne's full-blooded vampire half-sisters.
• Bad Guy Bar: The second mission starts in a bar filled with tattooed punks who attack Rayne with baseball bats, crowbars and whatnot.
• Banister Slide: Rayne can slide down banisters and any type of thin pipes. Friction with her Combat Stilettos produces sparks doing so, and she can bisect the mooks that are unfortunate enough to stand in her way with her blades while sliding.
• Barrageof Bats: The first boss of the game is Bloodrayne's half-brother Zerenski. He is fought on the rooftops of his mansion. During the fight, he commands a cloud of bats to hinder Rayne's progress, and even turns into three bats to hide in the cloud.
• Batter Up!: Some of the lesser mooks will arm themselves with baseball bats to try and attack Rayne with.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted really hard with the female minions - most of them are very Stripperiffic and just as attractive as the lead, but they are as prone to dismemberment as the male minions are.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Kagan's. When the token good one still kills hundreds of people, you know this is an understatement.
• Black Eyes of Evil: Ephemera's eyes are completely black and she's one of the villains.
• Blood Bath: The final boss chamber has a fountain full of blood in which both Rayne and Kagan (her vampire father) can heal themselves.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Even compared to the first game, the second one has more detailed gore and its increased emphasis on hack-and-slash type game-play only furthers this.
• Bloody Murder: The Carpathian Dragon pistols fire "rounds" made of alchemically processed blood.
• Boring, but Practical: While Dilated Perception is largely deprecated by Super Speed, it's not entirely useless. This ability is the only one you can use even when your blood-lust meter is empty, allowing you to even the odds when nothing else is available.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: On the subject of Rayne's mother, Kagan is, "terrible with names, but I trust she died painfully, like the rest of her family". He seems to be trying to anger Rayne, but it is also true that he raped many human women to sire dhampyrs, and then killed them and their families afterwards as "policy".
• Cain and Abel: Rayne has been hunting and killing her half-siblings for decades. Ephemera, Ferril, and Xerx all try to kill one another at some point.
• Cast from Hit Points: If Rayne fires her guns without filling their reservoirs from the blood of her enemies for ammo, they drain hers instead.
• Chain Pain: Rayne's harpoon chain can hurl foes like ragdolls with it.
• Child by Rape: Rayne's origin.
• 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.
  Rayne: I have bowel in my hair.
• Combat Sadomasochist: The vamps who sometimes sound like they're enjoying themselves a little too much while Rayne kills them.
• 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, though this could be a side effect of her shadow manipulation powers.
• *Cough* Snark *Cough*: Rayne, before her first fight with Xerx:
  Rayne: Severin?
  Severin: Yes he's on the list... Your half brother, Xerx is like, three down from the top... don't you ever read anything?
  Rayne: [coughs] Fuck off!
• 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.
• Creepy Crossdresser: Implied
  Minion: Nice boots, miss. After I've kicked your ass, may I prance around in them?
• Crowbar Combatant: Some of the punks will attack Rayne with crowbars, when it's not baseball bats.
• Daddy's Little Villain: All of Rayne's sisters are Kagan's lieutenants.
• Dark Action Girl: Ephemera.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Rayne was born from her mother's rape, and the human side of her family was all killed by her father.
• Deadpan Snarker: Rayne, has more snark here than even Buffy.
  Rayne: You saw the blades, what did you think was gonna happen?
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Carpathian Dragons are mystical guns powered by blood, and they attach themselves to Rayne by jamming tubes into her arms. Her cries of pain sound a bit... orgasmic. Rayne herself hangs a lampshade on it:
  Severin: [listening to her screams over the radio] Rayne, are you there? What happened?
  Rayne: Oh, I'm fine. It's just they're so... beautiful...''
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Ferril's death at the hand of Xerx. After giving a crazy rousing speech to her men earlier and a shorter angry one to Rayne, she is quickly dispatched by one of Xerx's sun cannons just before the boss fight.
• Elite Mooks: Ephemera's S&M ninjas, who can block frontal feeding attempts, and Kagan's ancient vampires, who wear Nazi uniforms and fight with a heavy machine gun in one hand and a sword in the other.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: There are least two vehicles that explode if you throw people at them.
• Evil Sounds Deep: The villainous Kagan's voice is so deep that it sounds monstrous and inhuman.
• Exposition Fairy: Severin, whose role to provide Rayne with info as she goes about with her adventures.
• Extremity Extremist: All vampires seem to favor kicks in hand-to-hand combat. The female vampires even more-so as while the male's can throw one-to-two punches, the former never throws a single punch.
• Fantastic Racism: Most of Rayne's family has this towards dhampyrs and humans. Kagan refers to dhampyrs as "mongrels", "tainted" and continually refers to Rayne as "it". This doesn't stop him from raping human women and using his dhampyr offspring in his army. Ferril believes that any full-blooded vampire should be able to best a dhampyr, even if it's Rayne and Ephemera expresses mild disappointment that their adversary isn't "at least full-blood".
• Flipping the Bird: Rayne does this to Severin at the start of the game.
  Severin: Oh that's nice; both hands on the banister, please.
• Game Mod: Besides the nude ones, there's a fan-made HD mod for this game's PC version that enhances the textures with high-resolution ones, as well as allow the game to run on resolutions higher than the default ones. It also features a lot of pictures of Kristanna Loken as Rayne replacing many photos and painting in the game, for some reason.
• Giant Mecha: Xerx's creations resemble these, only they're made of flesh. Plus, Xerx himself fights Rayne in a larger
• Gorn: The Blood Bomb weapon causes enemies to shatter into blood and body parts, and a move Rayne can do while feeding that leaves her foe as nothing but a torso. It's even a gameplay mechanic; the player frequently encounters sequences where they need to throw a number of enemies into something painful (a helicopter rotor, a vat of chemicals, etc.) to progress.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Most of the killing puzzles involve throwing minions at something until it breaks. She can also score free knockdowns (but no damage) by throwing enemies into one another.
• Guns Are Worthless: Averted as the Carpathian Dragons have virtually unlimited ammo (providing you 'reload' them with blood) and several very useful modes.
• Guns Akimbo: The Carpathian Dragons are duel-wielded.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Rayne can do this to enemies vertically here.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: The Kestrels, ninja vampires.
• I Do Not Drink Wine: Rayne uses the quote herself during the party at Zerenzki's mansion.
• I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Rayne feels this way towards her father Kagan, who raped her mother and drove her mad before killing her and her entire family. All his daughters hate him, in fact, but Ephemera and Ferril want to replace him, Rayne just wants him dead.
• The Joys of Torturing Mooks: Certain puzzles can only be solved by using your harpoon to throw your enemies into deadly hazards.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Rayne wears a gorgeous black party dress in the second game's first mission, and she gets to kick plenty of ass of course. It's even possible to unlock it to wear at all times.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Rayne. By the end of the game, Severin notes that Rayne should lead the humans, even if she doesn't particularly care for them.
• Large Ham: Kagan and his children
  • The minions count as well.
    Minion: Turn the pumps back on! LET IT FLOOOOOWWW!
• Mad Scientist: Xerx. He invents the Sun Gun and Shroud, among others, and is a sycophant to Kagan.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: Kagan has sired many offspring with many women, mostly without consent.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Kagan is a title of an emperor in Mongolic and Turkic languages, fitting his status as a Vampire Monarch.
  • Ferril is a homophone of feral; wild and uncontrolable, reflecting her Hot-Blooded, impulsive nature.
  • Ephemera comes from the word "ephemeral"; short-lived and fleeting, fitting both her nature as a Living Shadow and her disloyalty towards her father.
• Mêlée à Trois: In the final levels of BloodRayne 2, Rayne must fight her way to the top of Kagan's downtown highrise, which is already under siege by Ferril's forces with all factions attacking the others on sight.
• Mirror Boss: The Kestrel mini-bosses, female Dhampyr mercenaries and Ephemera all imitate Rayne's dual-wielding combat style.
• Mission Control: Severin is Rayne's handler from Brimstone Society and is always accompanying her on the job.
• 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.
• Ms. Fanservice: Rayne, Ephemera, and Ferril all definitely qualify.
• Mook Horror Show: Two mooks in Xerx's tower lock themselves up in an office to wait out Rayne's passing. These are the ones with the cockiest sounding voice-sets, the ones taunt Rayne as provocatively as possible, yet when you knock on their door, they wet themselves.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Sometimes present during the boss fights:
  • In one of the exterior courtyards of Wetworks, Rayne has to a fight a dhampir mercenary. The arena is partially lit by sunlight which slowly burns Rayne but not the mercenary.
  • The boss fight with Ephemera requires you to trap one of her shadow portals with water. Although water hurts Rayne, Ephemera - a full-blood vampire - is completely unaffected by it.
  • The penultimate fight against Xerx in his bio-armor has him using the sun-cannon which is totally harmless against his human minions. Even if they're not yet vampires, it's still odd that the minions are not severely burned by concentrated beams of pure sunlight.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Rayne wears an evening gown in the first mission (and there is a variety of them as unlockable outfits) that has a plunging neckline.
• No Ontological Inertia: A funny subversion at the end. 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 OSHA Compliance: The amount of uncovered jet engines and turbines would surely be a problem for any real factory.
• Older Than They Look: Rayne is close to 90 when the game starts, but looks no older than 25.
• Old Hero, New Pals: The sequel takes place about 60 years after events of the first game, so it has an entirely new cast of characters, like her partner Severin, or Kagan's children who lead the Cult of Kagan.
• Parental Favoritism: Ephemera is Kagan's favorite daughter. All this amounts to is him having the tiniest iota of respect for her.
• Redhead In Green: One of the dresses Rayne can wear is jade colored with an Asian theme.
• Second Chapter Cliffhanger: Its ending has the profile of a typical second part of a Two-Part Trilogy; complete with the antagonistic factions gathering to pull off a The End of the World as We Know It and leaving the narrative in suspense. It's ultimately subverted since there's no third game to resolve the Myth Arc and the plot gets its Conclusion in Another Medium —i.e., the comics.
• She-Fu: Rayne, as well as female Dhampyrs and Kestrels, put a lot on emphasis on fancy jumps and kicks of all kinds.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Sadly, no. The Carpathian Dragons' Blood Spray mode combines minimal ammo reserves, low rate of fire, ridiculously short range, and terrible per-shot damage even at point-blank range into one of the worst shotgun-type guns in gaming history. Not even grinding the gun to level 3 changes anything about its abysmal performance.
• Shout-Out: The rail-grinding is clearly inspired by Sonic the Hedgehog.
• Standard FPS Guns: In BloodRayne 2, the blood guns mimic the effect of several weapons:
  • Blood Shot = Pistols
  • Blood Stream = Machine guns
  • Blood Spray = Shotgun
  • 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, but she has quite a few alternates.
  • Little Black Dress: Her evening gown from the first mission, a Sexy Backless Outfit complete with Navel-Deep Neckline.
  • Redhead In Green: The same gown, colored green.
  • Dragon Lady: Above, with a dragon pattern.
  • Cowgirl: Her cowgirl outfit, complete with chaps and oversize Bowie knives for her blades.
  • Japanese School Uniform: Complete with too-small underwear under her skirt and katanas for blades.
  • Evil Costume Switch: Rayne's "dark" outfit, with black cargo pants, ash-white hair, tribal tattoos, and a wallet chain which reaches from her hip almost to her shoe.
  • 24-Hour Armor: Rayne's armor outfit. It's a full plate armor complete with halberds instead of blades. It's also the only one of her outfits which fully hides her bust, as it doesn't conform to the "boobplate" standard.
• Transhuman Treachery: The human servants of the Kagan Cult are motivated as a "Dark Gift", which means if they a good enough job, they will be turned into vampires.
• Trashcan Bonfire: In the Meatpacking District chapter, Rayne is in an area with multiple barrels that each have a fire burning in them.
• Tyke Bomb: Essentially the result of Kagan's policy of raping women to sire dhampyrs, them slaughtering the child's entire family to leave them with no one else to turn to and raising them into an obedient and loyal army. Trumain got to Rayne before Kagan could do the same with her, though not in time to save her family.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: There's a glitch in one part if you don't use the harpoon to drop a ceiling on some mooks then you will be hardlocked into that particular hallway until you reset.
• Updated Re-release: BloodRayne 2 and its prequel received a Terminal Cut re-release in 2020 on GOG.com and Steam, which features improved rendering and 4K resolutions, upscaled FMVs, higher resolution uncompressed textures, and native XInput controller support.
• Vapor Wear: Ferril is mostly nude, if you took her markings away from her.
• Voice with an Internet Connection: Severin rarely appears in person, and mostly guides Rayne from afar.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Xerx. He's the only one of Kagan's children that we see who is actually loyal to him, having spent years putting him back together after Trumain blew him up. Despite his loyalty and desire for Kagan's approval, however, the game makes it clear that Xerx is looked on with disdain by everyone in the family.
• White Sheep: Rayne is the only (relatively) decent individual among a family of monsters. It helps that she wasn't raised by Kagan. Kagan alludes that Trumain raised other offspring of his in addition to Rayne, but they do not appear in the story.
• Worthy Opponent: Ephemera seems to consider Rayne this after fighting her for the first time.
  Ephemera: "You're more interesting than I thought. We'll meet again?
• You Killed My Father: Kagan wiping out Rayne's mother's family is why she hates him so much and what motivates her to kill him and the rest of his family.