Vampire Rain (X360) Review
Posted by Chris McCarver on 08.03.2007
Insert witticism involving vampires and massive amounts of sucking here.
Publisher: AQ Interactive/Microsoft Game Studios
Developer: Artoon
Platform: Xbox 360 (also available for Playstation 3)
ESRB Rating: M (blood and gore, intense violence)
Release Date: July 3, 2007
Review by CHRIS McCARVER
Ah, missed opportunities. The unrequited high school crush, being caller #9 when the radio station wanted caller #10, deciding against the Honey Bacon Club the day before Quizno's pulls it off their menu... life's full of missed-it-by-that-much disappointments. Kind of like when Japanese publisher AQ Interactive handed developer Artoon (Blinx the Time Sweeper) the keys to a potentially cool concept: a military stealth-ops game, but with vampires. "Metal Gear meets Castlevania" seems rather nifty from the design document alone, but when the result is the epitome of shovelware that is Vampire Rain, one can only marvel at the sheer level of apathy that made this game one of the worst titles I've ever soiled my Xbox 360 with.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to siphon this guy's gas.
Graphics
Fair warning, this is going to be the only time I'll be saying anything good about this game. Because, quite frankly, it really isn't that bad to look at. While the cutscenes are a little murky and stiff, not to mention suffering from bad English-dub lip-sync, the actual gameplay graphics are a cut above-average. The dismal landscape of a city fallen to the undead looks as though everybody left town and forgot to turn the lights out. The buildings and other structures are varied in style and size and there are lots of places to climb on, up, and around. Visually, the character models are nicely detailed and adequately show off the effects of the constantly pouring rain on their clothing, though I had a major issue with the fact that Artoon basically swiped the Sam Fisher black-ops outfit whole-cloth. Way to innovate, guys.
Other minor complaints: the animations are a little stiff and disjointed, and, while better than that of the cutscenes, the lip-sync is a bit off as well.
That's it for the good points, folks. Brace yourselves.
The true cause for the vampire conquest: preoccupation with surfing for Morgan Webb bikini pics.
Gameplay
The story breaks down like this. Earth has been overrun by vampires (sorry, "Nightwalkers" as the game insists on calling them) to the point that the bloodsucker population is less than three years from supplanting that of humanity. Entire cities have fallen under vampire rule, and the hapless humans can't stay out of the cities because of some seductive aroma the 'Walkers give off, making them all too easy for the feasting. You play as John Lloyd, a member of a government covert-ops group dispatched to infiltrate downtown Los Angeles and locate and kill a "Prime Walker," which will destroy any Nightwalkers spawned from him (lop off the head, the body dies, you get the idea). Essentially, you and your three teammates have to stealth your way throughout the rain-drenched city, since Nightwalker senses are hampered by the rain, and perform various missions in preparation for the final throwdown with the Prime. Unfortunately, as cool as this all sounds, the promise of the concept is washed away by some of the worst gameplay imaginable.
First off, forget any illusions of gunning down vampires with your bad-ass assault rifle. It ain't happening. Though you do eventually get more powerful weaponry later in the game (and even then finding ammo for them is a pain), your starting gear is woefully useless when faced with enemies for which the word "unbalanced" is an utterly inadequate description. The vampires are nigh-unkillable; I personally emptied an entire clip into one and got chopped into oliveloaf in two claw swipes while I was in the middle of reloading. You can't retreat, you can't do hand-to-hand, eye contact pretty much equals suicide in this game. The enemies in this game are fast, invulnerable, and have a 99.99999% chance of slaughtering you if they see you.
The last thing Daniel Benzali expected was some commando pulling his pants down to show him his "Murder One" tattoo.
Now, this is a stealth game, mind you, so I can appreciate that the vampires are supposed to be tough enough that sneaking past them becomes preferable to facing them head-on. The problem here is that the game is so impossibly linear that if you don't sneak exactly the way the developer wants you to, consider yourself chunky salsa. Usually there will be only one singular path that might get you past the vampires assuming you're lucky enough, and it doesn't help that the game is rife with invisible walls in the form of a bitchy radio message from your commanding officer telling you to "stay on the mission!" whenever you venture too far outside the scripted play area. Exploration and thinking outside the box are apparently not encouraged.
Vampire Rain is rife with examples of "What were they thinking?" design elements that the fact this thing made it past beta-testing is in serious question. You have guns and find ammo power-ups all over the gamescape; why bother if the guns you have are completely useless against your enemies? Since Nightwalkers look human until "vamped out" for the kill, you have "necrovision" that tags passersby as Nightwalkers or not (as well as establishes their cone of vision on your in-game radar); why bother if nearly every NPC is a Nightwalker to begin with, and for that matter, why do your goggles have a battery life equivalent of a PSP after an all-night Loco Roco marathon? And why couldn't you just have the cones of vision visible on the radar without having to go to the trouble of scanning them anyway? (Methinks someone's been playing the Metroid Prime a bit overmuch.) For that matter, the vision cones are pretty much useless to begin with anyway; chances are if you can see a vampire, they can see you regardless of whether you're in the cone or not.
"Okay, now whatever you do, don't tell them the salsa's from New York City..."
I'm all for a good challenge, but when the enemies are this nearly insurmountable, the gameplay this unforgiving, and the overall design this completely flawed... well, there's difficulty for the sake of challenge and there's controller-tossing infuriation. Guess which side Vampire Rain lies on in that argument.
Sound
Oh, good God, the voice acting. I call it acting on a technical basis only, because the dialogue and its delivery remind one of a grade-school production of Blade: Trinity. The fact that the script is weighed down with crippling levels of exposition is bad enough. But when you combine it with voice acting this degree of phoned-in, it reaches a whole new level of dreadful. The music is capable enough, but it doesn't move much beyond your typical creepy and morbid low-toned string section that we've heard in nearly every horror game and movie for the past couple decades. The sound effects themselves supply enough of a creepy ambience, but again, nothing new here.
Lasting Appeal
Lasting appeal? Puh-leeeeze. Playing through the main mission levels are bad enough, but wait, there's multiplayer over Xbox Live, right?
Yeah, there's multiplayer. And it reeks on so many levels.
First off, the multiplayer game modes are largely out of the tack-on-multiplayer-'cause-the-kiddies-like-it playbook, including one-on-one and team deathmatch as well as a thinly-veiled CTF mode. The one standout is "Death or Nightwalker" in which whoever gets killed becomes a Nightwalker. You remember all the balance issues I mentioned before. You'll see 'em in spades here. You can go ahead and get yourself killed in this game mode, since you'll just transform into a bloodsucking 20th-level death-machine that your buddies will have next to no hope of fighting.
Fun Factor
Calling this game fun is like calling L.A. rush hour brief. The game is painfully out of balance both in single-player and multiplayer, gameplay is frustrating at best and gnawing-through-your-console incensing at its worst... I really can't find much to enjoy about this game, which is a shame considering the concept alone probably sold the publisher right out of the gate. I remember Splinter Cell having this kind of problem early in its franchise life due to its trial-and-error style of play, which is much what Vampire Rain offers here. Even as Ubisoft learned from their mistakes, their game was still solid despite its flaws. With Vampire Rain, all you see is the flaws. And that adds up to one more entry to the cheapie box at the Wal-Mart electronics department.
Ned: the world's most dangerous cosplayer.
The 411
Vampire Rain is abysmally bad. Though the graphics are semi-nice, the gameplay is what shoves a stake deep into what passes for this title's heart. A game which has you sneaking through a vampire-infested city should feel a lot more freeform than this title does, which is constraining, way too linear, frustrating, and paired with one of the worst narratives this side of a season-3 Forever Knight marathon. I'm hoping Artoon will learn from their errors here if a sequel comes to mind, though I imagine this game's chances of getting a sequel run about the same as Kindred: The Embraced getting renewed. I advise egregiously against buying this game, renting it, borrowing it, or even walking past it on the EB shelf without showering within 30 minutes of exposure.
Graphics
7.5
Well-textured environments, rain effects react well with structures, character animations a bit stiff
Gameplay
2.0
Needlessly frustrating level design, near-invincible enemies, rife with gameplay features with little or no point
Sound
2.5
Nice ambient audio, bad voice acting, music creepy enough but standard morbid horror fare
Lasting Appeal
2.5
Standard package of XBL multiplayer modes, Death or Nightwalker mode carries over balance issues from single-player game
Fun Factor
0.5
A badly designed game in every sense of the word, story is Z-movie fodder at its worst, cannot recommend more highly to avoid this game
