Yeah, I know. How can a game based on a movie filled with good old fashioned KILLING rate a “4”? Unfortunately, the few really cool and inventive aspects of Blade 2 are outweighed by a lot of major detractions. I’ll assume most of you are familiar with the story of Blade, a half man/half vampire armed with all sorts of knives, swords and guns who wages war against the seedy underworld of modern day vampires. Sounds cool, I know, but remember those detractions I mentioned? Well here’s how they bring down what sounds like a really cool concept.
The fucking god awful camera. I swear to God I felt like a retarded key grip trying to get the camera to center behind Blade’s head. To move Blade around in this game, you use the right analog stick of your controller. Sounds easy right? Wrongo, chief. Apparently pushing the stick UP and DOWN is the ONLY way you can move your character. Pushing the stick left or right rotates the camera around Blade and makes centering yourself towards enemies a daunting task.
Furthermore, hand to hand combat is pretty difficult to master. If you push the left analog stick towards an enemy enough times in the right rhythm, you’ll string together a pretty neat combo that ends with Blade sticking a huge fucking knife in the vampire’s head. However, these combos are pretty fucking tough to string together consistently. Knife in head. Good. Getting knife to go in head. Difficult.
This isn’t to say that the game doesn’t hold a lot of cool features and some genuine fun. Blasting vampires (I pretended they were Cure fans) with Blade’s vast arsenal of weaponry including pistols, machine guns and a boomerang looking thing called a “glaive” that decapitates the undead. Stupendous. However, you have to EARN all these weapons through a point system(killing enemies, meeting mission objectives). Not so stupendous. Would have been much cooler to experiment with the entire arsenal throughout every stage instead of not being able to unlock them till later.
Anyway, it’s a little rough around the edges, and I’d definitely suggest renting before buying. But if flat out slaughter and death is your deal, I’d say give it a shot.
