After the rights to the BloodRayne series were transferred to Ziggurat Interactive, the first thing the publisher decided to do was re-release all the games on current platforms. However, the thirst for money and simple laziness can play a cruel joke…
This is already the second re-release of the game, the first was Terminal Cut, whose changes were very controversial and in most cases simply broke the game. ReVamped was released in 2021 on the following platforms: PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S and X, and Nintendo Switch.
To be brief, this is just a version of Unity Terminal Cut stuck into a virtual machine, but with minor changes. In today's article we will rely on the most accessible release of all – Nintendo Switch.
The first difference is that the version has an additional title screen asking you to press a button to start the game. After pressing the button, we are greeted with an additional game download. Apparently, this comes as a kind of virtual machine shell.
It's funny, but with the patches, the text on the new main screen was changed from “Press A” to “Press A to continue.”
The main menu was also changed, running the image through a neural network and changing the name of the game.
And if you go into the options in versions 1.0.0 and 1.0.2, you will notice that the developers were somehow not satisfied with the appearance of the Joy-Cons, and they changed their image with patches.
We can end the article here… But no, let's talk about the technical component of the game! Let's start from the very beginning of the game, and what was broken and then fixed:
1. In version 1.0.0, exclusively on Nintendo Switch, the bump cards for all characters and enemies were broken. This issue broke the detail of the characters, as well as the way the light fell on them. Fortunately, the glitch was fixed in version 1.0.2.
2. Game glitches that were not fixed with patches and that are not present in the PC versions of the game. Among them, I identified two glitches:
During a conversation with one of the officers before the fight with the Meat Grinder, one of the windows is broken. Despite this, the officer still releases gas, and in order to kill the officer, we must break another window, despite the fact that the first one is already broken.
The Meat Grinder's trap can be triggered right during Raine's final finishing move. This doesn't affect us while the scene is playing, but the scripts are clearly not functioning properly.
Other problems with the version that, unfortunately, I won’t be able to show you include:
A broken heavy weapon, or rather, one of the machine guns, which, if picked up, will disable the ability to fight and shoot. The glitch is not fixed in version 1.0.2 and can be cured by changing to another weapon. Sometimes the glitch goes away, and the game gives you the opportunity to shoot with weapons. If at the docks you first follow the officer on the bridge, and not on the submarine, then the game may freeze. The glitch was also not fixed in version 1.0.2, so players need to be careful.
Among all the other problems with the version, I would like to mention the low frame rate. It's hard to believe, but the game runs very poorly on Nintendo Switch, and the frame rate can drop to a ridiculous 13! This can be avoided on emulators, but who in their right mind would play the re-release through an emulator, ignoring the PC versions? Moreover, at the moment the game only works on Ryujinx, while on YuZu the emulator crashes without errors in particularly difficult places.
However, the reason for such a poor state lies in the reflections; for some unimaginable reason, at all levels where there is water, reflective surfaces, the game begins to slow down terribly. However, as soon as you move away from the water so that it is unloaded from memory, the game begins to run at quite adequate 30 frames, and sometimes even 60 if you play on an emulator. Unfortunately, no one bothered to fix the optimization, and the Nintendo Switch version performs worse than any other console of that time.
There is also an oddity that appears in the Terminal Cut version – the battle with the infected Commando Daemite proceeds with the early scenario! If in all versions before the re-releases the Commando simply dies without reaching half the life bar, then in the re-releases he can teleport to certain points in the mines. This phenomenon makes it clear that the development of versions was done on the basis of earlier versions.
To summarize, in general, there are no differences, and the condition of the Nintendo Switch version is not bad, it is terrible and deplorable! The new publisher did not care about the porting, dumping all the work on the Unity virtual machine, which had consequences. However, owners of new platforms in one form or another were able to play the old forgotten game about a sexy vampire again. Fans are grateful at least for such a revival of the series; after all, the game was forgotten.
What verdict will I give in the end? If possible, avoid the Nintendo Switch version as it doesn't work well. I don’t care about glitches, they are not critical, but performance and how the game plays is a serious issue. You can play absolutely any version, but I think the PC releases are the best.
That's all for me, see you in the next articles!
This is interesting