Here I said I was going to do a more recent game, and I'm looking at a game from 2008. I guess it's more recent than 2005, so that must count for something. This game was also released for the PS3 as Vampire Rain: Altered Species. It combines aspects of stealth and sneakiness along with action and survival horror. Sounds pretty sweet right?
NO
This demo SUCKED. There was a choice of three missions. Two involved sneaking around to find things and the third had you sitting in an alley shooting vampires as they ran at you. And they were all awful. There was nothing in the way of tutorial or even a quick bit at the beginning showing you what buttons did what, not a great way to start. I started with the point and shoot in the alley, and wow, what a shitfest. You are armed with a shotgun that is painfully slow (I threw on Mass Effect after and the shotgun was definitely faster than Vampire Rain) and each vampire/zombie creature takes at least two hits to down. Your shotgun has five rounds and a slow reload. You miss a single shot? You're fucked. Why? Because you can take exactly one hit from the vampires (two is rare) before game over. So why the hell does the game bother to give you a health bar when you have about as much lasting power as a level 1 priest in Naxxramas?
Doing the stealth isn't any better. If a vampire sees you, there is no way to hide or otherwise get away. Your weapons apparently don't even work on them for the first third of the game. WTF? I get the whole Metal Gear Solid/Splinter Cell BS that they were trying to go for, but this is ridiculous!
In addition to that, for 2008, the graphics are very underwhelming. Observe:
Vampire Rain (2008)
Mass Effect (2007)
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006)
In addition to the lackluster visuals, you also get very sub-par voice acting. I was quite disappointed in both these areas, and it was the icing on the cake for this already craptastic game. I'm not alone in this thought, this game was not well received (although was slightly more so in Japan), and I'd never heard of it before. And for a game about vampires, they looked a lot like more like zombies with a bit of vampire thrown in. Granted, I won't complain about making a vampire scary, but they looked a little too Romero-esque. That said, I will take these things over this douchebag any day.
So in conclusion, this demo sucked, and the rest of the game does too. It's substandard in all aspects and too frustrating to even be mindless fun. It looks bad, the voice acting is bad, the lack of ability to defend yourself or throw the vampires off your trail is bad, the one hit-kills against you by every enemy is frustrating, and the lack of action makes it boring in addition to frustrating and bad. This demo blows. I'd recommend this about as much as I'd recommend syphilis. Skip it.
PS. News from the world of the Cynic and I. Check out the Cynic's newest vid here. But don't worry dear fans, this isn't the end by far, just a bit of a break. I haven't decided on the future of the TTOTM videos during this time yet, but there's at least one that I wouldn't mind doing, but that will depend. However, you'll see a lot more activity on this blog from both of us as a result. So stay tuned right here for more with the Cynic, as well as more Demo Reviews and such with me.
Cheers to all
Picky Mama Scholar
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