VAMPIRE RAIN
Published by: Microsoft
Developed by:
A
XBOX 360 & PlayStation 3
INTRODUCTION:
Meet the Nightwalkers, a group of bloodthirsty demonic
vampires who prey on the weak an innocent throughout the dark city streets. As
for you? You’re John Lloyd, a member of the task force determined to wipe out
this vampire scum from our planet once and for all, seeing as how you’ve faced
them before. So grab a hold of your controller of choice and sharpen your
uhh..weapons, because there are a lot of stupid vampires to be killed.
GAMEPLAY:
What a truly painful experience. This unfortunately isn’t
much of a hack n’ slash adventure where you chop up your hordes of the undead in
hopes of salvaging your city. Now this isn’t the end of the world, as we’ve all
played great stealth games before, such as Splinter Cell (more on that later).
It’s satisfying to sneak up on people because you get to revel in the joy of
tearing them apart once you do.
But no, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You’ll
bumble from one checkpoint to another, and sometimes when you get the chance,
your weapon is completely useless, and you can’t even kill ONE friggin’ vampire
with it. Your pistol? Forget it. Not only does your aim suck due to sluggish
controls, but after you blow your ammo uselessly on the vampires, they’ll
eventually take a couple of swipes at you and kill you nearly instantly, leaving
you to curse and whip your controller at the screen. This is the single biggest
problem with this piece of garbage. It’s impossible and unfair, the main
gameplay mechanic is broken. Alternately, you can (and often have no choice but
to) wait out the bad guys and sneak past them after they go through their range
of motion a few times. Oh, and don’t forget that you have to scan the city with
Necrovision (in your goggles, see) to find out the vampires. Did I mention that
you only have a very short amount of time to do this? Like 10 seconds at once?
Ugh.
The only real way to take out the bad guys is with the sniper
rifle, which can be fun, but is also baffling due to the game’s main downfall:
the AI is damn near nonexistent. The game’s storyline says that the constant
rain in the city has caused the vampires’ senses to become “dulled”, which makes
no sense and is really just a way to say that their game f’n sucks. The vampires
are idiots. When you’re not engaging them in combat, they stumble around and act
like normal civilians, talking to each other and being..well, not scary and not
entertaining. Snipe one, and the others won’t notice- they’ll keep talking to
nothing. Although they’re stupid, they’ll still kill you a lot because of the
environment design. You generally only have one path to take, and one wrong turn
leads to instant death to which you can’t fight back from.
Gameplay: 3/10
GRAPHICS:
Vampire Rain isn’t the prettiest vamp out there. The enemies
are well textured, but the animations are very stiff and herky-jerky. With
Lloyd, you often have to wait for him to finish an animation before you can do
the next thing you’re trying to do (and you’ll likely be killed in the process).
You’ll also find a ton of clipping and really bad transitions
between animations. There are a couple of positives though- the environments
look good, and are fairly detailed. Unfortunately, these environments are few
and far between and constantly recycled. As for the other positive? The rain
effects are top notch.
Graphics: 4/10
AUDIO:
Sound doesn’t rise much above the rest of the game. The voice
acting quality and script is just godawful. Seriously, it is insulting to the
intelligence and completely laughable. Not to mention the canned music that
comes in fits and starts due to its context-sensitive nature. The only positives
here are the sounds of booming thunder, the rain, and the occasional howls and
other ambience.
Audio: 4/10
FINAL VERDICT:
Remember when I said I’d get back to Splinter Cell? Well,
Vampire Rain is like Splinter Cell with Vampires. Your main character looks just
like Sam Fisher, except without the skills or awesome voice provided by Michael
Ironside. You also have to sneak around a lot, except you’re a bumbler and your
weapons are as useless as a bra on a flat chick. The only thing Vampire Rain
succeeds in doing is making me curse at my television and wonder just what I’d
done to deserve a game that sucks in all the wrong ways. Please, don’t buy this.
Rent it only if you are in need of being punished (and even then, call a
Dominatrix).
FINAL SCORE: 3/10
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