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Review: Vampire Rain – it sucks!

by Mike Bantick

Saturday, 01 September 2007

On first glance, Vampire Rain has some of my favourite constituents, Vampires, and errrr, Rain. The blurb on this Xbox 360 exclusive sounds great, combing the stealth elements of Splinter Cell, with the action of Buffy. Can it give the shot in the neck we expect from a combination of these elements?

Vampire Rain
	Developer	Artoon
	Publisher	Microsoft
	Rating	M

Xbox 360

Lets get right to the bottom line, no it does not. Developer Artoon was obviously concentrating on their much higher profile (and successful in Japan) Blue Dragon, they really dropped the ball on Vampire Rain.

But let me state right from the start; I did not get far into this game before launching into this review. I know this is a big no-no in the game review world, but heck, you cannot force me to endure Vampire Rain any longer than I did. It is simply not worth the effort.

To check I even roped in a couple of mates to make sure I was making the right judgmental call – they agreed, Vampire Rain (VR) is one of the poorest titles available for the Xbox 360 platform.

So what went wrong? Let’s begin with the basics; graphically VR would look bland on the PS2, previous generation console. Drab samey textures of uninspired and unpopulated wet urban landscapes. Couple this with non-existent sound effects and your visceral experience is ho-hum in the extreme.

Next, the storyline: In a city overrun by the *mysterious* Nightwalkers, the government sanctioned military powers-at-be decide that the best way to tackle hoards of near-invincible Vampires is to send in a couple of black clad folks with a pistol or two, in a black ‘pizza’ van and all.

Send in a tank for gods-sake. Still we wouldn’t have a game then would we? Actually that makes the tank option even better.

After a painful set of tutorial levels, giving Lloyd – your on screen man – the ability to creep around the mission map, scaling illogical ladders to platforms (built on the sides of buildings for no apparent reason), shimming along rails, leaping through the rain sodden nights and sliding down pipes, only to be eaten suddenly by a hidden Vampire, restart the level and try again.

Nine times it took me to get through one training level, the assessment screen at conclusion describing ‘nine’ as ‘Normal’ and giving me an average rating. Nine is not “Normal”, Nine is a slog.

It may be, that things improve well into the game, it may be that the odd weapon you (once again, illogical) find scattered around the levels actually can inflict damage on the Nightwalkers, rather than simply annoying them into killing Lloyd.

There may be a whole plot twist that brilliantly brings the narrative to an exceptional and spell-binding sensible conclusion. And there may be different locations that are presented in dazzling graphical wizardry along with an aural massaging of your ear-drums.

But I doubt it.

Take this review for what it is; a short-lived, frustrating attempt at what is essentially a poorly designed puzzle game. Not the stealthy, suspense driven game I suspect the developers were striving for. It is a shame in today’s electronic entertainment world, there is undoubtedly many hours of work gone into this creation, much of it, it seems, wasted.

Wear garlic cloves, carry wooden crosses and stakes, shower in holy water, do whatever necessary to avoid Vampire Rain. Anyway, cannot hang around – BioShock beckons.

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