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Intro
Developer Artoon sends out the Nightwalkers to seek out the human population in Vampire Rain. In a pitch of Splinter Cell sensibilities matched up with fear and shadow thriving vampires, Vampire Rain seems perfect game to get the goose bumps rising. Ready the night vision and load an extra clip, we are hunting vampires.

Game
Thirsting like a blood drinker I was eagerly looking forward to the release of Vampire Rain. In the last few months I’ve seen some nicely detailed screen shots and have read a number of documents on Vampire Rain’s pitch and supposed gameplay features. The pitch is a stealth-action horror game where you hunting vampires using stealth and high tech gadgetry. This type of game could fill the void of the horror games that has been missing this year besides the rehash of Resident Evil for the Nintendo Wii. Japanese developer Artoon has the idea, the game looks up to par, and the opportunity has been timed right... unfortunately the end product falls short and can not deliver on its divine gaming promise.

The problem with Vampire Rain is in the gameplay because every other aspect seems to be laid out with care including a brilliant opening sequence. I was all geared up through the first paces of the half-cut scene, half-action tutorial, so much that I felt the presence of a sleeper hit. Well that feeling was quickly drained as I continued through the tutorial and started sneaking and hunting for the bent back Nightwalkers. I excused Vampire Rain blatant Sam Fisher character rip-off and its relaxed control scheme, but I can not look past the jerky game mechanics and faltering programming. John Lloyd might have had an edge if he was working for Ubisoft, too bad this idea wasn’t hatched by another more capable team. I don’t want to bad mouth Artoon, but they have let down this gamer more than once in the past. Thank Blinx the time sweeping cat and his atrocious sequel.

For the curious, the story behind Vampire Rain takes place after a majority of the worlds population has been taken over by the Nightwalkers (vampires) as they continue to spread their diseases across the nation. You play an AIB (American Information Bureau) operative named John Lloyd. John Lloyd and a team of AIB operatives have the duty of eliminating the Nightwalker population while save the human population from their infective nature. The game promises a lot and the cut scenes do a great job of setting up a creepy adventure and then you start playing.

The twist in Vampire Rain is that the Nightwalkers are immensely strong and can overpower your player easily. This brings in the stealth of Vampire Rain, or you could call it avoidance of the game. You’ll spend more than half your time avoiding these deadly creatures rather than taking them on head first. This approach is quite different from almost every other vampire-esq. game where you are required to fight your way out of problems. Staying in the shadows and out of the Nightwalkers presence isn’t as interesting as it sounds because of the lazy level design and sleepy artificial intelligence of the enemy. For parts of Vampire Rain you will be climbing ladders and crouching behind objects waiting to move by the Nightwalkers, until its time to pump the lead into their carcass. A major problem to this atmosphere is a drab levels which are un-interesting and dull. At least in Splinter Cell you’re presented with different locations, new objects to interact with and multiple and interesting ways to take on, or avoid the enemies. You could say the small touches that add up.

Besides the interesting premise Vampire Rain is straight forward in its controls and gameplay. You won’t have a problem adjusting to the controls, even when they feel unresponsive. Vampire Rain feels a little ridged with the button mapping, or could it be the programming. At times simple movements feel sluggish like getting off walls along with jumping. For the gunplay Vampire Rain uses the over the shoulder perspective which works well when you’re trying to stay on your guard while sneaking.

Continuing to grab influence from Splinter Cell, Vampire Rain also has some high tech gadgets involved in its Vampire hunting. Like Fisher, Lloyd will use his green illumination of night vision which is called Necrovision in the game. Necrovision is slightly different than nightvision lets the user tell if a human is a Nightwalker in disguise because of the Nightwalakers emitting gas molecules. When scanning a person red means “avoid the monster”, and green, “ok, it’s a human”.  Like a lot of Vampire Rain the ideas are there, it’s the gameplay that needs to catch up. The majority of Vampire Rain I was waiting and hoping for something to happen and when it did, it was executed poorly and didn’t equal up with my expectations.

If you’re not feeling the love in the Single Player campaign, Vampire Rain offers a multiplayer component with the standard modes (CTF, Death, Destroy and Deathmatch). The achievements are mainly attached to the multiplayer component and not so much for the single player adventure. It could be that developers felt more strongly for the multiplayer content of Vampire Rain, or maybe its just lazy achievement planning. I wanted to snag a few achievements online before I finished up my time with Vampire Rain although I was hit with a particular snag... no one was online. Even after booting into the Xbox Live section of Vampire Rain I couldn’t find a soul online. Maybe I should have tried after midnight, I might have had better luck.

Gfx&Snd
The presentation and graphic quality in Vampire Rain goes up and down from fairly strong character models to bad lip syncing and animation for them. Vampire Rain reminded me of the quality of Lost Planet in parts like the cut-scenes and then like Bullet Witch in others like the textures and environments. You can’t win them all and Vampire Rain captures great mood with its Se7en styled alley ways and drenched setting and then falls short on the overall quality of the graphics.

For audio we have fairly some average voice acting which helps make the product more believable and become the strong point of Vampire Rain’s audio. The sound effects are a little under budget along with the light soundtrack, not to mention the horrible balancing between the effects, dialog and soundtrack. Stronger effects would have made a world of different in Vampire Rain because this is a stealth and horror oriented game. I found the Nightwalkers a little too light on the horror scale which could have been more intense with more evil sounds added to the mix.

Lowdown
Vampire Rain is an interesting idea that doesn’t come to full bloom. A horror flavoured stealth game with a Splinter Cell offense versus undead Vampire creatures could be something gamers really bite into. Poor graphic quality, lazy missions and level design really hurt Vampire Rain making the end product feel more like a budget title then the full price offering it is listed at. I’d have to advise gamers to skip Vampire Rain and wait for your interest to perk when it’s in the bargain bin where it belongs. There should be a sign above this bin, “Here lays another great gaming idea, gone wrong”. I would let these Nightwalkers creep into my wallet.

Gameplay: 5, Graphics/Sound:5.5, Innovation: 6, Mojo: 6 Final: 5.5 / 10

 
Reviewed by Downtown Jimmy | 07.20.07

Features

  • Supernatural foes: Battle the most lethal, wicked fast enemies ever.
  • Squad tactics: Lead an elimination squad using covert operations to survive and succeed.
  • Hi-tech advantage: Use specialized equipment like Necrovision and UV Knives to detect and defeat the Nightwalkers.
  • Environmental advantage: Use your surroundings wisely—rain, darkness, and rooftops are your allies.
  • Lethal reactions: Whatever you do … don't miss! Nightwalkers will overtake you within seconds

Vampire Rain

Publisher
AQ interactive

Developer
Artoon Co.

Genre
Action

US Release
July 2007

ESRB
Mature

Platform
X360

Details
1 Player
Dolby 5.1
HDTV 720p
Online 2-8
Xbox Live Aware
Leaderboards