Vampire Rain Night Walker
Nightwalkers synonyms, Nightwalkers pronunciation, Nightwalkers translation, English dictionary definition of Nightwalkers. One, especially a robber or prostitute, who walks the streets at night. Informal US a large earthworm active at night 2. Any animal that is active.
The story revolves around a new special forces unit made to investigate the millions of disappearances that had been occurring, connected with the appearance of 'nightwalkers' - a kind of cross between vampires and zombies. They've got the 'no sunlight', 'really strong and fast', 'hiding in plain sight', and 'drinks blood' thing of vampires combined with the 'turn victims into things like themselves', 'hive mentality', and 'rotting flesh' of zombies. The player is John Lloyd, a soldier who is part of a four-man anti-nightwalker team.
The gameplay involves a few different elements. Stealth is important, though it consists of staying out of your enemies' lines of sight (you get a 'warning' of sorts if you're close to being detected). There's also a lot of crawling up drainpipes and ladders to get to the top of buildings in order to avoid detection. The emphasis is on avoiding fights more than participating in them - you're trying to reach the brain that controls all the nightwalkers, and killing it will kill them, so there's no real reason to kill any individual nightwalker.
You have a couple different gadgets, too; besides standard equipment like guns and nightvision, you also have 'necrovision' that points out any nightwalkers that might otherwise blend into a crowd. Scanning any target with necrovision shows you their line of sight, which is of course helpful for a sneaking game. Necrovision can also be used to illuminate targets for snipers - if they know who's a nightwalker without the nightwalker knowing they know, the sniper can take it out free of worry or counterattack. Besides snipers and other combat support, the other use of teamwork tend to be Splinter-Cell style 'I'll boost you up, then you pull me up' moves to get up on rooftops.
The nightwalkers themselves look like humans until they attack, at which point they turn into a muscular-but-rotting form. Certain weapons are better against nightwalkers than others - the pistol, for example, doesn't do anything to them except irritate them. In fact, unless you have your entire team firing at one, it's pretty much not going to go down. Pretty much any nightwalker can kill you in two hits, and even if you get the drop on them with a ranged weapon you rarely have enough ammo to take one down before you have to reload. So, in this way, it differentiates itself from Metal Gear Solid or Splinter Cell in that even if you sneak up on an enemy you can't really kill it - it's more about avoiding. In fact, that's one of the annoyances that's in this game - you're supposed to be loaded up with 'anti-nightwalker' weaponry, but you can barely kill one even as a group. Thus, the stealth sequences tend to be more about survival than about defeating the enemy - hiding, sneaking, and avoiding your enemies instead of fighting them. Only until later in the game can you even hope to deal with the nightwalkers.
The game has multiplayer - the nightwalkers against the humans, with a couple of different rulesets for how death is handled (either regular death or with dead humans turning into nightwalkers. There are also 2 bonus levels that are downloadable for free from the Xbox Live Marketplace.
The graphics in this game are pretty good. The city is blanketed by both night and rain (as befits the title); the explanation for the rain is that the unit moves when it rains because the vampires' senses are reduced. The rain is well illustrated and smooth-looking. The heads-up display is the main problem with the game - the bars look bland and boring against the game's environment, and just look like there wasn't a lot of effort.
The negative aspects of this game include poor control, difficult combat, and a low quality of 'horror' - basically, there's no suspense. Sure, you'll get killed if you get close to the enemies, but by the fifth or sixth time that a vampire has taken you out in two hits you won't really care anymore. Other than you, the main victims are people either grabbed or lured by the vampires into alleyways, where they are attacked. This kind of thing is sort of cliche for games (the screaming victim dragged into a hole who can't be saved). The stealth isn't very good, either, but again that's due to poor control more than anything. Your character doesn't ever handle particularly well, and considering the acute senses of your opponents this is less than helpful.
As a whole, this game gave a good try, but for a lot of reasons I didn't think it was enjoyable to play. It took a lot of elements from other stealth games but basically turned it from 'you're a secret operative who uses stealth to take out enemies' to 'you're a secret operative who hides from your foes so that they don't devour him'. It just wasn't a very impressive game to play.
5/10.
| Vampire Rain | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Artoon |
| Publisher(s) | AQ InteractiveXbox 360 Ignition EntertainmentPlayStation 3 |
| Director(s) | Shigeru Okada |
| Producer(s) | Naoto Ohshima |
| Writer(s) | Soshi Kawasaki |
| Composer(s) | Hideaki Miyamoto Masatoshi Moriwaki |
| Platform(s) | Xbox 360,PlayStation 3 |
| Release | Xbox 360
|
| Genre(s) | Survival horror, stealth |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
Vampire Rain (ヴァンパイアレイン, Vanpaia Rein) is a survival horrorstealth video game developed by Artoon. Vampire Rain was released for the Xbox 360 in Japan on January 25, 2007 and in North America on July 3, 2007. The game was later ported to the PlayStation 3 under the title Vampire Rain: Altered Species and was released in Japan on August 21, 2008 and in North America on September 2, 2008.[1] The game received negative reviews.
Plot[edit]
Vampires, known as 'nightwalkers', were found to be responsible for the disappearances of civilians in the United States and in other countries. The American Information Bureau (AIB) raises a black ops special forces unit which is deployed to the streets of Los Angeles.
Throughout the game the player is haunted by the vision of a young girl, who the player saved in a previous mission. Eventually the player finds out that his team leader has also seen her.
Later on it is revealed that the AIB, acting of their own accord, plan for America to enter full-scale war against the Nightwalkers. They send their own human/nightwalker hybrids to kill the player's group to get rid of the evidence, and send the rest of their forces against the Nightwalkers' headquarters in the city. The player defeats all the hybrids and vampires in their way, eventually meeting with the leader of the vampires in an attempt to keep the peace. Unfortunately, the leader also wants full-scale war against the humans, and plans to change the whole city into nightwalkers. The player is forced to fight and defeat him.
It turns out the head vampire wasn't really the true leader of nightwalkers in the city, as he was advised by two nightwalkers who were naturally born as vampires and can survive in the daytime. The player fights and kills the first. The second doesn't resist and offers the player the choice to kill him or not, claiming that the future of the nightwalker race will soon be revealed.
After the player has left the final battle, if he chose to end him the haunting young girl appears. She pours blood onto the ashes of the leader, and he is resurrected. If one chose not to kill him the lamenting leader vacates the premises only for the little girl to appear beside him and they walk off together.
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Gameplay[edit]
Vampire Rain is a stealth game similar in nature to the Splinter Cell or Metal Gear series. Players are tasked with navigating their character through city streets, while avoiding the vampire enemies that patrol the streets disguised as ordinary human citizens. Players often have to take alternate routes, such as climbing onto rooftops or through alleys, to avoid enemy encounters.
Unlike most stealth-action games, Vampire Rain places heavy emphasis on pure stealth. Enemies are extremely fast and can kill the player in two hits; the first hit usually immobilizes the player, giving the vampire sufficient time to land a second, killing blow. Additionally, for the first third of the game, players lack any weaponry that can kill vampires effectively without spending a large amount of ammunition. In effect, most attempts to initiate combat generally result in the player's death. Also, unlike most stealth games, there is usually no effective means to hide or escape once an enemy has spotted the player, which results in the player dying soon after being spotted. Successful completion of many missions thus generally requires total avoidance of enemies by figuring out the correct route to pass through the mission area without being detected.
Later in the game, players are given high-powered weapons which prove more effective against the game's vampire enemies. Also, there are a few pre-scripted action sequences that involve fighting against multiple enemies, generally with the assistance of teammates or special environmental hazards. The player's arsenal includes a handgun, submachine gun, assault rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, anti-armor rifle and a UV Knife used to stab an enemy from behind for an instant kill.
If the player collects enough 'Medals' that are either placed in hidden or difficult to reach spots throughout the game as well as passing certain missions under certain conditions such as within a time-limit, without needing to retry from a checkpoint or without killing any Nightwalkers will reward the player with extra side-missions and challenges.
Online multiplayer involves up to eight players in standard modes such as deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag, as well as the unique mode which allows one to become a nightwalker and fight opponents with extreme speed and power. All the firearms are available online and the gameplay is handled like in single-player.
Reception[edit]
The game was poorly received. Reviews ranged from lukewarm to scathing. GameRankings tallies the review average as 38.82%;[2] and Metacritic tallies the reviews at 38/100.[3]ScrewAttack gave it the 2007 SAGY award for 'Worst Xbox 360 Game of 2007' after receiving over half of the final total votes.
The reviews criticized Vampire Rain's enemy AI, controls, health meters for both the protagonist and enemies, and multiplayer modes. The game was also criticized for having elements derived from Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell but with much less appeal.[4] The game was criticized for being too hard and for the linear level design. However the game was complimented for its eerie music.[5]Vampire Rain: Altered Species was also poorly received. A GameSpot review admonished the updated PlayStation 3 version of game for not undergoing major changes from the Xbox 360 version.[6]IGN calls the Altered Species game 'a trainwreck'.[7]
In Japan, however, the game was better received, with Famitsu granting the game a score of 30/40.[8]
References[edit]
- ^Ignition and AQ Join Forces to Bring Vampire Rain: Altered Species to North America and Europe. Retrieved on June 3, 2008
- ^GameRankings: Vampire Rain Reviews
- ^Metacritic: Vampire Rain
- ^IGN: Vampire Rain Review, Part 1
- ^NZGamer.com's Vampire Rain Review. Retrieved on August 29, 2008.
- ^Gamespot's Vampire Rain: Altered Species Review.
- ^IGN's Vampire Rain: Altered Species Review.
- ^'Kotaku Magu: This Week's Famitsu Scores'. Archived from the original on 2008-05-10. Retrieved 2008-05-10.