Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

Vampires are a creature common to the horror genre.  However, they haven’t gotten their due like zombies have in recent movies.  Zombies have been taken precedence over vampires with the release of Dead Rising on the Xbox 360.  Now vampires come out from the shadows and take prominence in Vampire Rain.  Does this title do them justice or would it have been better if they remained in the shadows.

In Vampire Rain (VR) you play as John Lloyd, a member of the American Information Bureau, a special combat unit that been established to deal with the Nightwalker threat.  You’ll use stealth to avoid the Nightwalker threat, and a wide assortment of weapons to take out the Nightwalkers when combat is unavoidable.  You’ll get assistance from the rest of your team, but for the most part, you are on your own.

The graphics in VR are serviceable, but you won’t be writing home about them.  The character graphics look generic, with bland textures on your character and the other members of your team.  The other characters that you see around town don’t have many different models.  Everyone walks around like they have a stick up their backside with movements that look rigid and awkward.  There are a few cops, a few normal pedestrians, and not much else.  In fact, the town looks dead.  This is surprising since the Nighwalker threat has been hidden from the city and isn’t something broadcast on the evening news.  The vampires don’t even look much like vampires.  They look more like zombies with fangs.

The buildings around town have very blurry textures and no color to them.  If you thought that Quake had too much brown, then VR has too much black and grey.  There really isn’t very much variety within the levels or the buildings within the levels.

A few positives exist on the graphical side.  The particle effects look very good.  Blood splatters all over from a vampire attack.  The rain beads on your uniform while the other rain drops fall down around you.  It’s too bad that you can’t see any puddles forming on the ground.

VR doesn’t have much background music.  The menu system looks like something from a government agency, so you have some serious music with a steady drumbeat playing behind you.  Most of the game is fairly silent which can rapidly bring up the tension as you sneak around.

The sound effect for a Nightwalker taking a bite out of someone was nailed by the sound department.  Unfortunately you’ll hear this sound so often you will get annoyed with it quickly.  We will get into the reason for that later.

The game is fully voice-acted.  While this would normally be good for a game like this, there are two problems with it.  First of all, the script is just plain bad.  They are some of the worst lines I’ve heard in a game.  Secondly, the voice actors sound bored the entire game.  There isn’t any real emotion behind them.  While we aren’t talking about bad like the original Resident Evil on the PlayStation, it is very close.

Third-person action game players should have no problems with the controls.  Left stick moves your character while the right stick changes your aim.  A jumps, B performs an action, X readies and holsters your weapon, and Y crouches and goes prone.  Left Trigger is used to cycle your weapons, while the Right Trigger fires your weapon.  The Left Bumper leans up against the wall and the Right Bumper reloads the weapon.  Night vision and Necrovision are left and right on the D-pad, respectively.

The controls aren’t bad, but they don’t feel tight.  You move around the area fine with the controls, but they don’t feel as responsive as they should be.  Every movement feels like there is a little bit of lag after you input your move.

VR starts out simply enough with you following your team leader to get rid of the Nightwalker threat in a West Coast city.  You follow him around and avoid being caught by any of the nightwalkers.  That’s the easy part.

Here you start your Sam Fisher impersonation.  Once you get to the next stage, you end up being on your own because it’s better to split up to avoid detection than to stick together.  Yes, it sounds like the plot of a bad horror movie.  You try to travel from the starting point to the rendezvous point without being detected.  Moving slowly does help, but there is a lot of trial and error in this process.  In fact there is so much trial and error that you’ll have to go through each level several times before you get it right.  You can be doing well, but getting noticed once spells almost certain doom.

You are given a wide variety of weapons in VR.  Unfortunately, you aren’t given very much ammo to actually have the ability to use them.  Not only that, but since you are fighting against vampires, they are quicker and stronger than you.  They can jump from long distances and kill you in two attacks. Having some nice weaponry won’t do you any good if you can’t use it quickly and effectively.

There are a few objects to help you determine whether someone is a Nightwalker and someone is a real person.  There is something called Necrovision that lets you determine whether someone is a person or a vampire.  You have a battery that recharges when it’s not in use, which is a good thing since the battery burns out so quickly.

You can use stealth to avoid confrontation.  You can either move around vehicles or along walls to avoid detection.  If you are being noticed, the screen changes so that you can feel the eyes of the vampire on you.  If you are in sight for too long you are going to get chased and most likely killed.  If you get out of sight quickly enough, then you can lose their lock on you.

Aside from training missions, this is the game in a nutshell.  Hide, move, don’t get noticed, get killed if you do get noticed, reload, rinse, and repeat.  If you like seeing Game Over screens, then this is the game for you.  Luckily it doesn’t take long to reload, but I’d rather be playing the game than watching loading screens.

VR takes a long time because the game takes a lot of trial and error.  It takes so much trial and error, it will take you a long time to finish the game.  Instead of being fun, the game ends up being frustrating and not worth your time.

VR includes a multiplayer mode with eight game modes.  They are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Death or Nightwalkers, Team Death or Nightwalkers, Destroy, Team Destroy, Capture the Flame, and Team Capture the Flame.  These are all pretty self-explanatory, and even if you don’t know about a certain type, don’t worry about it, because you won’t be playing this game online.  There aren’t any players on the servers playing this game.  This is really unfortunate because a majority of the Achievement Points are tied to multiplayer tasks.

Vampire Rain had a cool concept behind it.  Taking out Nightwalkers could have been cool in a stealth/action game in the Splinter Cell mold.  Unfortunately the game fails completely on several levels.  Even a game with a bad story can be salvageable if the gameplay is fun.  Unfortunately, this isn’t the case.  If you have a penchant for playing bad games to find out how bad these games really are, then this game is right up your alley.  Otherwise, stay far, far away from this game.

Gaming Trend Score

30

1. Graphics: 34
2. Audio: 33
3. Controls: 40
4. Gameplay: 24
5. Value/Replay: 22
6. OVERALL:30