Vampires Rain [import] review

We’re going to get straight to the point: Vampire’s Rain is a wretched game. It hates you, it insults you as a gamer and it plain doesn’t want you to enjoy playing your 360. Forget any twinge of excitement you may have felt from the trailer, or the whiff of promise that wafts out of the Splinter Cell-meets-Dracula concept - this is a game to avoid like Marmite-flavored herpes.

Why so bad? It’s tough to know where to start. The horrible, unrelenting grayness of it all is the most immediate problem. This game is bland from the dull city-street environments, right through to the waxy characters. Even the horror is painfully plain. Shoot a Nightwalker in the head with a sniper rifle and they’ll just stumble around before dissolving quietly into a puddle of green gunk. Discover a trio of your own men impaled on road signs, and instead of getting a quick fright you’ll be dumbstruck at how appalling the gore looks. If, that is, you still have the willpower to muster an emotion as complex as “dumbstruck.”

Even if you’re not the kind of graphics whore who won’t touch a 360 game that looks sub-Xbox, you’ll still be left cold. The plot is the kind of clichéd nonsense we’ve been bored of for years. The Nightwalkers are taking over the world, and your squad is sent in as back-up for a team whose mission was (because predictably, they’re dead by the time you arrive) to kill one of the vamp leaders. Your name is Lloyd, your brother was killed by the Nightwalkers; you’re out for revenge, blah de blah. Japanese developer Artoon skimmed the Big Book of Western Gaming circa 1994 and produced something so insipid that native gamers in the East will ignore it, and Western gamers will feel thoroughly insulted by it.