Vampire Rain (Xbox 360)

.Well where to start with this game is the main question, but I guess i'll start from the top. Just the other day I was browsing my local games distrubutor in town, and came across this game in the post Christmas sales and was drawn to it. The premise of the game looked promising, a Splinter Cell type stealth genre game mixed with Vampires what more could anybody want? But let me be the first to say that this concept worked much better on paper than ...
...game up and was treated to a very nice graphically pleasing intro cut scene, and thought that the game could only follow suite, but boy was I wrong. Once the game had started, the graphics looked dated and box-like something of which you would expect from an old console not that of a next-gen console such as the Xbox 360. And this was only the beginning...

The storyline of this game, is basically telling us the tale of John Llyod and ... more

.Well where to start with this game is the main question, but I guess i'll start from the top. Just the other day I was browsing my local games distrubutor in town, and came across this game in the post Christmas sales and was drawn to it. The premise of the game looked promising, a Splinter Cell type stealth genre game mixed with Vampires what more could anybody want? But let me be the first to say that this concept worked much better on paper than in actual practise.

I first loaded the game up and was treated to a very nice graphically pleasing intro cut scene, and thought that the game could only follow suite, but boy was I wrong. Once the game had started, the graphics looked dated and box-like something of which you would expect from an old console not that of a next-gen console such as the Xbox 360. And this was only the beginning...

The storyline of this game, is basically telling us the tale of John Llyod and how him and his team of commandos are fighting a secret war against the Nightwalkers(Vampires) who are somehow apparently going to take over America in precisely 908 days(Who knows why it has to be so accurate...). Even though it tells us this, it never really expands on this idea of the Nightwalkers taking over America, and the game just progresses into various mundane missions, and full of completely unnecessary cut-scenes dragging out simple mission goals.

The game quickly descends into tedious trial and error gameplay, this is down to the very linear manner of the level lay-out, and the fact that there is most probaly only ever one set path to complete the level with. I realised this when I was playing the game, when I saw a Nightwalker on the corner of a street, and decided to go over the top of a building and around to avoid the creature, only to be instantly devoured by another lurking in the shadows... after many attempts at different routes I realised that I could infact just dash infront of the original Nightwalker to proceed to my goal... Along with this linear gameplay, the game may appear to be very open, providing the player with a quantious amount of alleyways and the like to explore and ladders to climb, but oh no. Each mission you are bound by an invisible barrier, and aren't allowed out of the designated area that is specified for that particular mission.

Another reason this game lacks, is the fact you are given literally no chance of survival if you're spotted by a Nightwalker, it's almost a case of, if you're spotted you're dead no matter what, even if you're on top of the highest building they'll get you. Pretty much every weapon you get in the game is basically useless; it takes more than a whole clip of submachine gun or automatic machinegun to take one of the creatures downs. Whilst at the same time they move so fast, it appears that they are beaming from place to place, and incorporate this with them having the able to kill you in two hits, the first incapacitating you, and the second being the killing blow, which will then result in quite a graphic scene of bloodshed on your part, which is remotely entertaining... for the first few times.

Later on through the game, you do get some weapons which allow you to actually kill the Nightwalkers, yes that's right kill them. Such weapons are the Sniper Rifle and the UV knife, but ammo for them is very sparse ( Yes, you heard right, you need ammo... for a knife!!) and the weapons disappear at the end of the levels anyway, and leave you with the useless automatic machine gun again. At any rate, the number of Nightwalkers increases so much in the later levels with these weapons it's pretty much suicide to try and kill them anyway, as the sheer quantity will overwhelm you either way. And even though these Nightwalkers are so deadly, it doesn't seem to add any sense of danger to the game, as the AI used for the them is terrible to put it nicely, there's no "what's that noise over there", and then they'll proceed to investigate the noise in the shadows, like most other stealth genre games, also little things like the fact they never shuffle their feet, cough or even talk to other Nightwalkers just decreases the atmosphere and makes them ultimately not as scary as they could of been, but instead you get a flashing eye special effect to notify you've got a few seconds to get out of sight before you get mauled to death by a Nightwalker.

It's entirely reasonable for someone, say like myself to of looked at this game and hope for something good. It's just to bad that anyone unlucky enough to of had to trudge through this masochistically awful adventure would more than likely of wanted to plunge a stake through their own heart by the end of it. But I do have hope, in that a games developer will see the potential in this genre mash-up and create a half decent game, as the potential is definetly there. 

...less