Score
Gameplay:	5
Graphics:	8
Sound:	6
FunFactor:	4
PlasmaFactor:	5
Overall:	5.6

Vampire Rain Review
July 18, 2007 by Kenneth Seward, Jr.

I am worried about the health of developers nowadays. Some of them have fallen victim to a mysterious plague that somehow affects their productivity. As of right now, we are not sure where the disease originated or how it was able to spread to so many developers in a short time. What we do know is that it seems to effect developers working on next-gen games. Recent reports have shown that the developers affected by the disease are able to come up with great ideas for next-gen titles. However, during development, the infected developers continue to lose motivation until the game is finally released to the public. The end result is a potentially great game that sucks. Unfortunately I have to add the developers behind Vampire Rain, Artoon, to the list of casualties.

Blood Sucker!

 

In Vampire Rain you play as John Lloyd, a former Special Forces member who has joined the AIB. The AIB (American Information Bureau) has formed a secret combat unit charged with taking down vampires. John is the only person alive who has faced Nightwalkers (vampires) up close and survived to tell the story. He must help his team cleanse a city full of nightwalkers over the coarse of one night. It seems that the night they chose to eliminate the vampiric threat, happened to be when the city was expecting heavy rain. The rain helps to cloud the vampires’ senses, allowing them to be dispatched easier. Saying that Vampire Rain had potential is an understatement. This title could have started a whole new genre of video games. If done right, it could have combined the stealth genre (games like Splinter Cell) with the survival horror genre (Resident Evil) to create something unique. I am sorry to say that Vampire Rain fails at accomplishing that goal. Even if that wasn’t one of Artoon’s objectives, Vampire Rain is still a lack luster game.

During majority of the game, you will be stealthing your way through levels and taking down vampires. Because the vampires are so much stronger than you, running in with guns blazing will almost always get you killed. It’s a good thing the controls aren’t confusing. You can lean against walls using the left bumper, crouch using the Y button, jump with A, and perform actions with B. The right trigger fires your weapons and the left trigger cycles through them. If the control scheme sounds confusing don’t worry, the first seven missions/levels play like tutorials. Anyone who has ever played a stealth game will understand the mechanics. Each mission requires you to sneak somewhere, either to find something (files, missing scientists, ect.) or to kill key vampires. In between missions, you are shown cut scenes that help to progress the story. Riddled with cheesy, cult film like dialoged (which I happen to like), the story is slowly fed to you. This is where my complaints start. The characters in Vampire Rain lack any appealing qualities. I had a hard time caring what happened to them over the course of the game, even when the protagonists were introduced. What makes things worse is the fact that some of the plot points are never truly explained (and I don’t mean in the "wait for the sequel" kind a way). It also seemed like there were characters thrown in at the last minute in order to make the game longer. It’s safe to assume that I wasn’t amused when the end credits started to roll.

Another problem area in Vampire Rain has to do with the AI. Remember, we are dealing with Vampires here. Our five senses pale in comparison to theirs. Which is why your team decides to strike during a thunderstorm, as the rain hinders the vampires’ ability to detect humans. Well, the rain’s effect on the vampires seems to be inconsistent. On one mission, I was positioned on a rooftop getting ready to enter a building when I was spotted be a vampire about a block away. I had a few seconds to pull out my weapon in preparation for the ensuing onslaught. The vampire jumped from the ground, three stories down, landed on the roof and killed me. On another occasion, I was standing a few feet away from two talking vampires. I pulled out my sniper rifle and blew off one of the vampire’s head. The other one didn’t even notice that his comrade just lost a vital appendage and disintegrated inches away from him. He just kept looking in the direction where his friend once stood, while calmly smoking a cigarette. At least he stopped talking. One has to wonder, if the rain can apparently cause mental illness in vampires, why would they stand out in it?

On feature that I thought was cool, until I realized how useless it was, was the Necrovision goggles. This device gives you the ability to distinguish between the humans and vampires that lurk the streets. The only problem is that there aren’t that many humans on the streets. It would have been better if you had to hunt down a vampire with out alerting and/or killing innocent people. That would have been fun and challenging. The only good thing that the Necrovision goggles are used for is to make the vampires show up on your radar. While havening them appear on your radar is a plus, I still feel as though this feature was not fully fleshed out.

 

Bloody…

The graphic quality in Vampire Rain is the one aspect that didn’t seem rushed. If you were to swing the camera around, in order to get a close up view of your character, you will notice that the rain is making you wet as water drips from your clothes. When you get injured, blood seeps out of your mouth and makes its way down your cheeks. Killing a vampire results in he/she disintegrating (think about the movie Blade) into a pool of acid. The visuals are the only thing that makes Vampire Rain seem like a next-gen game.

I can’t hear you!

The sound quality in Vampire Rain is ok to say the least. What doesn’t make sense is that there is no ambiance. The only thing that drives the mood is the occasional music that seems to come and go randomly (unless your being chased by a vampire which causes the tempo to ramp up). Then there are the voice-overs. The characters that talk during the cut scenes are passable, but the ones talking during game play segments are horrible. One pair of vampires repeated the same four fraises every couple of seconds. To make matters worse, I could still hear them talking a good distance away.

Fun with Fangs!

Playing Vampire Rain doesn’t yield much fun. The story mode is boring and the multiplayer modes are laughable. During multiplayer matches, you are given the ability to transform into vampires. That would be a good thing if the experience weren’t so short lived (you can only be in this state for a few seconds before reverting back into a pitiful human).

Plasma Rain

There isn’t one thing, other than the graphics, that I can say stands out in Vampire Rain. Every good idea is bombarded with bad execution. This game had all the potential in the world but fell flat on it’s face during its development.

 

Bottom Line!

Vampire Rain has been officially added to the list of next-gen titles that are not fit for next-gen systems. Good ideas are present, they just weren’t implemented well. I hope Artoon’s next game will live up to its potential. Vampire Rain is definitely not worth its $50 price tag.