Vampire Rain

Even though Vampires are very cool subject matter for video games there are hardly a handful of games out there that have managed to exploit the Children of the Night to their true potential. Awesome movies like Blade II translate to lack luster and horrid video game adaptations that absolutely suck (Oh come on, I had to use that once) while games like Vampires The Masquerade Bloodlines are way too buggy to enjoy even though they are excellent in quality. And now we have Japanese developer Artoon (Blue Dragon) attempting to fuse horror with stealth in their latest offering, Vampire Rain, the results of which are pretty horrifying (not in a good way unfortunately).


Before you start the game you’re treated to a pretty cool looking cut scene that has an innocent girl stalked and slaughtered by a night stalker only to become one herself. This cut scene actually gave me a bit of hope and made me believe (momentarily) that the game had some potential but as soon as I fired up the tutorial I knew I was in for a rough ride. I can confidently say that Vampire rain boasts of one of the most annoying and anal tutorials ever made; you run, climb, duck, crawl for like a minute followed by two minutes of badly done cut scenes and this phenomenon is repeated over and over again until you reach the second mission.

DiRT

Before we get into the review of the game at hand, there’s a small confession I need to make and it won’t be easy for some of you to digest but well, here it comes nevertheless … I did not like Forza Motorsport 2... There I said it! Now before you go ahead and brand me a heretic you should know that I have nothing against this particular game per say; it’s just that I don’t like racing sims as such and driving around at painstakingly slow speeds just doesn’t appeal to me. So why am I reviewing DiRT? Well for starters we really didn’t have anyone else to review it (Nikhil was busy working on GRAW2) and more importantly, the game isn’t as anal and as Sim-ish (and by Sim I mean Simulator, not the EA game) as I expected. It’s fast, enjoyable, a lot more forgiving than most racing sims on the block and is something casual gamers can sink their teeth into.


The first thing that hits you as soon as you fire up the game is the sleek way in which the game’s main menus have been presented. Once you’re done drooling over the snazzy visuals you can choose to take part in a multitude of events that include Career, Championship, and Rally World and Xbox Live. As the name suggests, Career is the game’s single player campaign that’s divided into eleven tiers and before you can start racing you have Travis Pastrana (freestyle motocross champion) giving you the lowdown on how you can go about handling your DiRT-y career. Each of the above mentioned tiers are divided into a bunch of varied races like Rally, Rallycross, Hillclimb, CORR, Crossover etc. and it’s this variety that keeps the game from becoming monotonous. But unfortunately, a lot of the tracks look and feel the same so I would suggest playing the game at regular intervals (unless you’re a fan of the series). Every race requires you to choose a particular vehicle most suited for that terrain so you’ll be blazing through the desert in your dune buggies while you can tear up the concrete tracks with your Mitsubishi Evo.