Vampire Night
Score: 90% ESRB: Teen Publisher: Namco Developer: Sega Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 - 2 Genre: Shooter
Graphics & Sound: Those of you who played House of the Dead in the arcade and then on Dreamcast will appreciate the fun of seeing Sega's Vampire Night make a jump from the mall to your crib. Obviously, PlayStation die-hards didn't get a chance to play much HotD, unless it was at the arcade, so there's even more reason to love Namco for bringing this to PS2. And, for many folks it will be the first time to try out the update to Guncon for PS2. This puppy runs smooth and fast, like it should in a good conversion. Each locale you fight in has lots of little detail, and some beautiful reflective effects. The vampires are awesome, and the transformations they make from infected villagers are almost cool enough to make you not want to save villagers. ;) Option settings let you change the way your cursor displays on screen, which is especially nice for 2-Player games where things can get a bit confusing to sort out. Most exciting for fans of the arcade version is a Special Mode that contains new stuff, and a chance to play a Vampire Night you haven't seen before. Throughout the game, as any arcade player will tell you, the voice talent is so bad as to be almost unbearable. It's not so much a translation as an exercise in codebreaking, with you moving closer to the TV to read the subtitles and wondering who ever thought these people sounded convincing! It's laughable at best, definitely something that makes you appreciate more well-scripted and performed games like Half-Life and Metal Gear Solid. In lieu of good voice acting, the better side of sound is effects and music. The music is gothic in tone, fitting the mood and building excitement for brief vampire encounters and boss battles. And that's not gothic as in 'Marilyn Manson' you young whippersnapper! Wait until you check out these bosses! You'd better bring some ointment and a clean wrap for your bloody trigger-finger...
Gameplay: Arcade goers will know the arcade mode, but may have missed some of the vital information on the backstory of Vampire Night. In 2006, after lying dormant for three centuries, The Immortal One rises and begins to infect innocent victims with a plague that threatens to wipe out humanity unless stopped. Being the Guncon toting heroes we are, we step up to save the day, one villager at a time. There's a nice mix of characters in this game, so the shooting becomes highly strategic. Not just the random villager here, but a whole slew of infected folk who need your help and NPCs as well. Seems the master vampire left his victims in a state of walking servitude to a Sarcoma, a little leech-like thing attached to their body. If you can hit the Sarcoma and knock it off, you've saved a person's life and an innocent person at that. But, if you miss the Sarcoma, the villager is taken over immediately and transformed into a hideous beast. Sound gruesome, but you're bound to lose a few in the process. Obvious point benefits come from saving villagers rather than turning them to vampires and forcing their extermination, but nailing those Sarcomas can be tough. Luckily, there's Training Mode. In this mode, you walk through 17 stages of shooting that test speed, accuracy and judgment. Hidden bonuses are located in training, so perfect scores and good results give you new stages to play. The main modes offer some great action, both for single and double shooters. Arcade is of course the classic, containing 6 levels of quick-trigger, vampire-blastin' badness. Plug in another Guncon or Guncon 2 and you're able to replay this mode with a friend. The only real difference is that life credits are split between both players, making things a little more difficult. Where diligent arcade players will have seen most or all of the previous mode, Special Mode has a similar style of gameplay that also mixes item collection and mission-based action into the strew. Playing through the Arcade Mode, you'll find that shooting objects in the background can reveal special power-ups, but in Special these same areas hide silver, which can be cashed in to purchase special items. Completing quests is another way to earn silver, and Special Mode is really driven by tasks you get from villagers. Those damn villagers always want something, don't they? Really, this is all just a sweet pancake rolled around more of the action you love from Arcade Mode, so don't be lured into thinking it's all that different. It's fun, though, and especially with full 2-Player support. Other little bits of eye-candy are the Hunter's Files, which let you browse player profiles, NPCs and enemy run-downs in a slideshow format. Or, you can just stare at your ranking all day and shout, ''I'm the King! Vampire Hunter Supreme!''
Difficulty: In my estimation, Vampire Night requires more accuracy and skill in many areas than House of the Dead. The whole Sarcoma thing means you have to hit a small growth on a person and miss the rest of their body, and so you either have to be a very good shot or wait until the villager gets really close. The latter option may prove hazardous to your health. And, the enemies and bosses with small, moving weak-spots also mean your sharpshooting skills will be tested. Difficulty can be changed, along with granting yourself more lives and more continues, so it's more than possible to adapt Vampire Night to almost any gamer's need. Especially with two players, this is mostly frantic, mindless fun and not too taxing. Just the way Sega intended...
Game Mechanics: So, if you don't know it yet, both the original Guncon and the new Guncon 2 are supported in Vampire Night. Instructions on calibrating both are included in the manual, but I only dealt with the Guncon 2, which didn't need any tweaking. Also, the manual shows how to set up the game to use one Guncon and have the other player on a Guncon 2, which isn't as easy as you might think since the Guncon was pure RCA and the new version includes USB. Sometimes, depending on the way you configure, special options available only to the Guncon 2 can be extended to the Guncon, which the manual outlines in detail. Gun settings aren't too hard, but you want them done right since it IS a gun game... And, by the way, to set the record straight, the Guncon 2 is orange to avoid controversy from gun-shy parents and anti-gun groups who might protest the realism of a black or silver gun and point to incidents like the one where police shot a boy carrying a toy gun because they thought it was real. Save me from the people who think Namco just made a poor color choice... The way you expect things to be, standard shooting rules apply for Vampire Night, down to the 'reload by shooting off-screen' and the familiar display of health and ammo. One thing that will strike HotD gamers as different is the crosshair symbol that remains on-screen. You can choose different shapes and sizes, which really comes in handy during a heated 2-Player game, but seeing where your shot will go without having to pull the trigger is a different experience. Sometimes, especially with flying objects, I almost found the visual crosshair to be distracting, but it's a nice feature and well implemented. Sometimes, the engine showed its edges in places, not with slowdown as much as jaggies and seams. But, things play smooth enough to keep the action hot, and nothing about the engine will keep you from enjoying the experience. If you thought killing zombies or dinosaurs was fun, try Vampire Night. It's more fast-paced, sets a tone somewhere between HotD and Castlevania, and if you can forgive the incredibly awful voice action, will give you the heebie-jeebies. Now THIS is the kind of gun game I've been waiting for on PS2!
-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock
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