Title Vampire Rain Date 08.03.2007 Genre Action, Stealth Platform Xbox 360 Developer Artoon Publisher AQ Interactive

It starts so innocently. You go to your local game shop, you are looking on the wall of games that you want to plow through for a given weekend, and you stumble upon a game like Vampire Rain.

The front cover is a bit cheesy, and you wonder how good a game with such lame box-art can actually be. You then flip over the box to see what the game is about, and...

HOLY CRAP! It looks like Splinter Cell meets Blade, and all of a sudden you are wondering if they are going to have a copy of the game in the store, as you think you just found that summer title that everyone has overlooked. Look at this!!! - you got a bunch of special ops guys dressed like Sam Fisher, and talk of weapons like UV knives, and Necrovision.

"A city soaked in darkness, rain and terror." And it is rated M, which gives the hint of a truly graphic horror game with the gameplay of Splinter Cell.

So you part ways with your $60 and drive home thrilled that you might be in for a real treat at about 2am when you decide to play the game to get the full effect...

...fast forward to the said 2am. There you are firing up Vampire Rain and the introduction plays. What beautiful graphics. There are not many games that look like this out there - you secretly wonder if any Ubisoft people defected to Artoon to help make this.

Then it happens.

Sadly the game starts, and every amount of anticipation that you had for this game is washed away in the worst game mechanics that the generation has seen to this point.

John Lloyd (the character you play as) appears to be in better shape than Sam Fisher is, and is clearly younger. Yet, oddly, he moves slower and seems far less dexterous than Sam Fisher. Perhaps this is not a fair comparison to make, as the two games are made by different companies. However, Splinter Cell is clearly a source of inspiration for the game on several levels beyond simply the character design, and considering the level of permeation the Splinter Cell series has on the gaming community, you have to hold up your end if you are going to come at ANY game with even the smallest level of inference to the series.

Artoon failed miserably at this. The difference between Sam Fisher and John Lloyd is the difference between a Navy Seal and a plebe at Annapolis.

This would not be such an issue if the mechanics after the fact were not so botched. You have super-powered weaponry, yet you might as well be throwing the bullets at the vampires as pumping round after round of gas-carbine propelled missiles at them is futile. Basically, the way to play the game is lodged completely in stealth, which defeats the purpose of any vampire game. Simply put, the idea of running through this game like Wesley Snipes is out of your head within twenty minutes - and this means that the fun in the game is thereby gone as well.

Further, aside from looking like Splinter Cell, the game loses sight of that quickly as the fact of the matter was that Sam Fisher was more than a simple tool - he was a weapon. John Lloyd is anything but.

The combination of these issues - John Lloyd being lame, and the vampire's overwhelming strength (you can literally empty more than one clip into a vampire and they won't go down, and to add insult to injury, when the finally do die, their corpses are poisonous and deplete life from you if you step on them) - makes the game almost impossible to play. Sure, its Blade, only the main character is not even played by Sticky Fingaz (who is certainly no Wesley Snipes in his interpretation of Blade), but rather Eddie Griffin. The story and the fact that the game features multiplayer is entirely lost - the only thing on your mind is biting the neck of the store clerk who gave you that funny look when you walked out with the game earlier.

Game Score

D

Reviewed By: Contributed