About a year ago, the developers at
Artoon released Vampire Rain for the 360 resulting in bad reviews from the
public and the media. They went back to the game and repackaged it and
re-titled it Vampire Rain Altered Species and released it for the PS3.
Unfortunately they didn’t really fix anything and the game is still not an
enjoyable title. Top to bottom this rerelease is flawed.
You play the character of John
Lloyd, a member of the Nightwalker Elimination Squad who looks like a blatant
cross between Solid Snake and Sam Fisher. Do all stealth fighters look the
same? They could have, at least, given him blonde hair or something else to
separate his brooding exterior from other, far more developed, characters in the
same genre. Lloyd is sent on most missions alone and away from his other three
team mates and forced to take direction on his earpiece from the stereotypical
squad leader Harrison and the overly-chipper communications officer Hanson.
Hanson is best described by his first line in the prologue, “This is my first
mission with the Nightwalkers, but it’s not going to be my last,” said in an
upbeat bravado that grates. All the characters are terribly voice acted, but
wait, I’m getting ahead of myself…
Your enemies are Night Walkers, who
are kind of a cross between zombies and vampires. They disguise themselves as
normal humans to walk around and can change into their vampiric form whenever
they want. The form they take is heavy on the cheese, involving hunched walking
and lightning fast reflexes that are unavoidable. If you are caught by one of
these beasties, you are toast. You can try to run, scale buildings, or dive
down dark alleys to hide, but they will always find you and with one strike you
are incapacitated and with another strike you are dead! Your weapons aren’t
that useful, so if you get caught, just wait to restart the level.
The story isn’t that engaging.
There is a super organization much like the FBI who is trying to cut-off the
Night Walker threat before it quickly escalates out of control. As Lloyd, you
are sent in to eliminate the threat and help free a town. There are lots of
warnings about how dangerous it is to be out on the streets at night; however,
there are a few civilians who wander around while you are sneaking about. If
it’s so dangerous, wouldn’t everybody flee? The voice acting in the myriad of
cut scenes is awful! There are times where you think that the actors might be
reading the script for the first time, or that they really didn’t have a good
grasp on the mood of the game…besides all this, the voices don’t even remotely
match up with the mouth movements during the cut scenes. Not even close.
The gameplay is pretty basic stealth
faire; avoid getting seen by your enemies while following a path to the goal
that involves scaling pipes, ladders and cutting through dark alley ways. You
get a limited arsenal of weapons that don’t pose much of a threat to the Night
Walkers because the only gun that is really useful is the sniper rifle (one
shoots the Night Walkers with a head shot), but that isn’t a very good
run-and-gun weapon. The pistol and various other sub-machines take too long to
kill the Night Walkers, so, unless you give yourself a very wide berth, you
shouldn’t even attempt to kill the enemies, just hide behind their peripheral
vision and get to the goal.
Level design is extremely straight
forward. You follow the pre-laid path without variations and without being able
to cut down different alleys or take other pathways to the goal. The city is
rife with potential for fun, but the level design restricts you so much that
there isn’t really a chance to enjoy. You play the same street in a few
different “levels” and learn to just follow the path of ammo you won’t even use
towards the goal.
You can utilize various vision
enhancements courtesy of the Sam Fisher style eye piece to aide you through the
well lit alleys and buildings. The night vision setting is supposed to help you
see in the darker levels, but even in the sewer (where you are first told to use
the night vision); the graphics and lighting are just fine. The night vision
only makes things unbearably bright and green, no real bonus. The other setting
on the eyepiece is a Necrovision feature that distinguishes between the living
(shown as green) and the undead immortals (shown as red). Without the
Necrovision locking on the enemy, you can’t see their vision cones on the
mini-map and therefore are really blind and most likely going to die.
As far as graphics go for the PS3,
Vampire Rain doesn’t keep up. They did upgrade from the earlier 360 version and
the rain effects are nice looking, but the physics and actions of Lloyd are very
stiff and robotic. The town itself isn’t that diverse in locale, and the
enemies are shrouded in a pixelated fog when they change (I think it was
intentional). Besides the terrible voice acting, the overall sound design was a
little flawed. In the survival-horror genre, music (or silence) can absolutely
make a game all the more frightening. The canned sound effects and so-so music
scheme in-game are basics. And, when you accomplish something large, like pass
a stage of levels, there is a “cheesy” accomplishment music that plays; it’s
very reminiscent of music that plays after winning fights in a Final Fantasy
game (where this music belongs).
Perhaps the most frustrating part
about this game was the loading screens. After loading 4 gigs of material onto
my PS3 hard drive at the initial startup, I would expect that all maps and
locations would be pre-rendered during gameplay and there would be little or no
load times. No, there are loading screens for loading screens. At the
beginning of each level there is a basic “loading screen,” then the game tells
you to press START, and then another “loading screen” comes on before you
even get in a level. There are also a lot of cut scenes to slow the action
down. Sometimes, there is a cut scene, then a loading screen, then you move a
little ways, then another cut scene…all of which makes the action very choppy
and very frustrating.
Vampire Rain: Altered Species
fails…at most everything. This game was frustrating at many levels, from the
horrible sound design, to the lackluster gameplay and graphics. You can’t
really enjoy the characters any because the voice acting is so awful, and the
concept isn’t fleshed out enough to be remotely engaging. I would recommend not
playing this, just pass on it.
Review Scoring Details Vampire Rain: Altered Species |
Gameplay: 2.5
This game lacks from all aspects
combining into a terrible experience. The gameplay is straight forward enough
because there is only one path to take during each level. The controls are
fairly basic for a stealth game, leaving little else to be desired. The only
thing I wondered was, why did they include a button to unholster your gun if you
can’t defeat the enemies with bullets…
Graphics: 3.5
The graphics are nothing special,
definitely an upgrade from the 360 version; however, still just sub-par to
average on the PS3. The rain effects were good, but at some points it looked
like the characters weren’t even walking, but gliding above the ground. The
stiff movements of Lloyd were also sub-par, needed better motion capture work.
Sound: 1.5
Everything sound-wise in this game
was wrong. The voice acting was atrocious, and they’re forced delivery of the
story sounded worse than my Mac telling me there’s an error on the computer.
The musical score was OK at best, but when you accomplish something big at the
end of levels, the music changes to something that I akin to a bad knock off of
Final Fantasy Victory music, ruining the ultimate mood the game should be
setting.
Difficulty: Medium
Concept: 3.0
When I think about stealth games,
I’m looking for something that separates one from the other, and vampires seem
like a perfect tool…but this game doesn’t even flesh out that concept at all.
Enemies are impossible to destroy, levels are far too linear, the main character
design appears to be an obvious rip-off of Solid Snake and Sam Fisher, and the
story wasn’t enjoyable at all.
Multiplayer: 3.0
There is online multiplayer
available; however, after playing through the single player mode, I can think of
other games I would want to play with my friends. The multiplayer includes the
basic scenarios: capture the flame, which is capture the flag, and deathmatch
mode. The bonus to the deathmatch mode is that you can become a Nightwalker and
own your friends because of your increased speed and agility over the humans…
Overall: 2.5
This game isn’t even fun enough to
be a waste of time. The gameplay was thoroughly unenjoyable for the genre and
style. A stealth-survival-horror game sounds like a lot of fun but
Vampire Rain: Altered Species doesn’t deliver on any level. There are too many
flaws in design and execution that prevent the player from ever enjoying this
title. Pass on this one.
