It’s looks like Splinter Cell and it plays an awful lot like Splinter Cell but this is definitely nowhere near as good as Splinter Cell. Vampire’s Rain essentially boils down to a small budget version of a big budget game. Everything feels very familiar but plays like something from the N64 era. If you’re a covert action fan and you can’t stand the wait until the next big release in the genre this might be worthwhile but everyone else should stay far away.


A quick look at the action.
The game starts you out with a series of tutorial like missions that give you a feel for how to play. The face buttons let you crouch, climb, let go of what you’re hanging from, and draw your weapon. Left trigger cycles your weapons and the right one shoots when your weapon is drawn. When it’s not drawn you do an awkward looking kick. This is particularly funny seeing as there is no way in hell you could ever kill anything in the game with a kick. Like a lot of the game, it seems to just be there to mimic other games. Right shoulder reloads while the left shoulder lets you stick to a wall. The d-pad lets you switch between UV and night vision goggles. And last but not least, after about 7 levels you’ll be able to use the UV goggles to do sneak kills on the enemies in the game.

As the main character Loyd you’re constantly hiding from and occasionally fighting off the one enemy in the game known as a Night Walker. These devils are pretty much zombies and are dumb as dirt but pack a horribly mean punch. Essentially if one sees you first you’re dead. Even if you see it from two blocks away and start unloading your gun it won’t matter unless you have the insanely powerful shotgun or sniper rifle. I honestly have no idea why they even put the pistol and machine gun in the single player game as they’re totally useless as a defense. The Night Walkers morph when the see you and gain ridiculous speed along with super jumping abilities as well making escape rarely possible. That is unless you happen to get them trapped in geometry or in a pathing situation where they can’t figure out how to get to you.


The random snipe the approaching enemies level.
While hiding from the enemy you’ll often be climbing ladders and pipes, hanging from ledges, and crouching to avoid detection. The first few levels feel fine if a bit linear but once you start hitting the meat of the game the level design flaws become light as day. You’ll start out a level heading in one direction only to hit a dead-end maybe 5 minutes later that makes you return to where you started. I always enjoyed these types of games where there were multiple paths to sneak to your goal, not one and a bunch of dead-ends. In every single level there is only one single general path that you can take to complete the mission. It’s annoying and is a serious fun killer.