E3 2011: BloodRayne: Betrayal

The character of Rayne hasn't had a good run of late, but developer WayForward (of Batman: Brave and the Bold fame) is trying to resurrect the undead female vampire's fortunes in the new side-scrolling beat-'em-up BloodRayne: Betrayal. We played a few levels of this game revival, and we're pleased to say there's still some hot blood to be found in the veins of BloodRayne.

Betrayal is a side-scrolling action game that sees you take on evil as the half-breed Rayne. As a beat-'em-up heroine, she has several moves at her disposal: she can shoot from her pistol (ammo's pretty limited, though), attack opponents with a sword, run, jump, and perform a dash maneuver. Dashing is BloodRayne's only method of defense, because it renders her invulnerable for a short period of time.

Because of her vampire blood, Rayne can also grab opponents and suck their blood dry. Drinking your opponents' blood recovers health, while biting them and quickly releasing them again makes them infected. Infecting enemies is quite handy; pressing the taunt button while infected enemies are onscreen will cause them to explode. Explode an infected enemy around some low-health enemies, and you can set off a chain reaction of exploding bodies.

Rayne controlled quite well during our hands-on and responded quickly to commands. Pretty soon, we were jumping, slicing, and dashing our way quite happily through the game's early stages, which had Rayne taking on some low-level enemies whose main strength was in numbers. As a half-vampire, Rayne's health will slowly drain if she stands in direct moonlight, but thankfully, grabbing enemies and using them as snacks is a handy way of replenishing lost health. As we progressed deeper into the game, we came across new types of enemies, such as a froglike creature who was best dealt with via a dash attack, and giant-sized flies that flew from nests.

The game itself looked quite sharp and impressive, with the 2D hand-drawn animation having a unique style. BloodRayne: Betrayal, which is set to feature 15 levels--will be released as a downloadable title for the 360 and PS3 in the third quarter of this year.