Vampire Rain

Written by Troy Matsumiya  on June 26, 2007

Final Glimpse: Kicking vampire butt the Sam Fisher way.

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Don't you hate it when vampires invade your city? After all, they're mean, ugly, messy eaters and have really bad breath. So who you gonna call to exterminate these pesky pests?

Why, Sam Fisher of course.

Oops, looks like Sam's too busy making Splinter Cell: Conviction. Looks like we'll have to settle for John Lloyd, who coincidentally looks like a love-child between Sam and Solid Snake. But that's okay because John is a member of the American Information Bureau, a special government agency tasked to eliminate those annoying vampires, or Nightwalkers as they're officially called. Normally it would be a pretty straightforward task; simply load up your arsenal of pistols, SMGs, shotguns and sniper rifles with silver bullets and merrily blast away. But these Nightwalker nasties are tough; they move with frightening speed and agility, are able to leap distances that would shame a velociraptor, and can take a ton of damage while dishing out even more. In other words, doing the old run-and-gun is likely the fastest way to get yourself killed.



Therefore, using stealth is the recommended way to kill these blood suckers. Stick to the shadows, climb up pipes and ladders to rooftops so they can't see you, shimmy along ledges, slide down zip lines, flip on your night vision goggles, sneak up behind them and go for the silent kill. If this all sounds familiar, you're right: it looks pretty much like Splinter Cell complete with similar outfits, gear and crouch-walking and climbing animations ? but with vampires!

And rain ? lots and lots of rain. You see, rain dulls the Nightwalkers' superhuman senses, giving you a tactical advantage as you sneak around and pick them off one by one. Unfortunately, the rain is only forecast to last a couple of days so you won't be able to dawdle around ? no coffee breaks for you!

Unlike Splinter Cell, John has a few unique tricks up his sleeve. His goggles include a technology called Necrovision that can highlight Nightwalkers in red while humans show up as green. John also moves a heck of a lot faster than the sluggish Sam when engaged in fire fights; in fact, he moves with quick arcade-like speed which may not look realistic but should come in handy when dodging the Nightwalkers' quick and powerful attacks.

Also unlike Splinter Cell are the graphics; they're decent, but nothing to get too excited about. However, the character models are nicely rendered and the vampire death effects are pretty cool. The animation is a bit jerky and cartoon-like but hopefully this will be cleaned up when the game hits our shores. Like most Japanese titles, the game will be filled with a ton of CG cutscenes that will advance the story.

Happily, the game will support online multiplayer for up to eight people, consisting of deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag modes. Multiplayer is pure twitch shooting, a stark contrast to the tactical sneakiness of the single player campaign. There will only be four multiplayer maps but more could be made available through downloadable content.