Gaming Target - Xbox: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds

Written by Alex Fitzgerald on June 10, 2003

Full Review: Interactive Sarah Michelle GellarЕnuff' said.

The original Buffy the Vampire Slayer video game was surprisingly a very solid title. Combining enjoyable action gameplay with familiar Buffy-like characters and storylines managed to hit a nerve with many fans of the TV series. Now, under the control of new-to-the-series developer Eurocom, Buffy fans will be getting a second dose of Michelle Gellar action with Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds

The game's plotline fits in nicely with the show's plotline, as the game's storyline will play out as a lost episode of the series that takes place in Season 5. The enemies this time around will be the combined forces of Ethan Rayne and the First. Players can also expect to see all of the show's familiar faces in the game, including Buffy, Xander, Faith, Spike, Willow, and Sid the dummy (all as playable players nonetheless). Some will be disappointed to find out that the character Dawn will be MIA for this game installment though, but hey, you can't have everything can you? (cough* This sucks! *cough)

The combat at this point looks like it will be very similar to the first game in that it will provide a fast-paced 3rd person mix of weapons and hand-to-hand fighting. The combat will be deeper this time around though, as the game's move list has been pushed up to a hefty 150+ moves, while the original only had about half of that. To vary up the action, this plethora of moves will be divided between all six of the game's playable characters, so each character won't feel exactly the same in the midst of a fight.

The deepest set of fighting moves of course is given to the game's main character Buffy. Unlike the other characters though, Buffy will be able to commandeer a wide variety of spells with spooky gothic names like Fireball, Shockwave, Hellfire, and Sunspell.

Buffy won't be the only character to have access to special abilities though, as the character Xander for example will be able to wield a wide variety of weapons that other characters can't. The character Spike, who is more bulky than all of the other characters, wields large weapons and pummels his enemies with brutality that the other playable characters simply don't possess.

To have some cheese topping to put on this gaming burrito, the fighting system also possesses a power meter, named appropriately the Slayer Power Meter. The meter essentially works like other fighting game meters, in that it will build up as you destroy enemies, and when it's full, you will have a brief amount of time to unleash a special attack far more devastating than any of your other attacks. Needless to say, this is bound to make things interesting.

To break up all the fighting game action Buffy will also have some puzzles that gamers will have to solve. Thankfully, these puzzles will go beyond just finding random keys to open random doors, as gamers will actually have to think beyond the confines of normal game design in order to solve. One example of the game's puzzles complexity involved releasing a massive amount of water into a room so that the water would raise an elevator to bring the gamer to the next part of the level.

The game is also set to feature a selection of multiplayer modes that players can indulge in when the one-player experience just isn't cutting it. The multiplayer modes included will be Survival, Bunny Catcher, Slayer Challenge, and Domination. Survival will be your basic endurance test multiplayer mode, as players will fight to the death against a set amount of enemies. Bunny Catcher is a little more lighthearted as the title signifies, making players compete in a mini-game style affair where you capture as many bunnies as you possibly can within a set amount of time. The other two modes are fairly traditional, as Slayer Challenge is a head-on fight between two players, and Domination is basically a Buffy-style king of the hill of the game.

One very important area in any licensed game is the audio, or more specifically the voice acting. Buffy fans needn't worry though, as Eurocom is taking the necessary steps to ensure that many of the real voice actors will be voicing their roles in the game.

Forget the voice acting though, the graphics are what's going to blow you away come the game's release. Even at this early stage in the game's development cycle, Buffy's all ready showing off environmental mapping, volumetric fog, great textures, and a steady 60 FPS framerate. Gentlemen, you may now begin to slobber.