Vampire Rain

When it rains and shines, it's just a state of mind

But like the emotionally battered partner in an abusive relationship, you might well return for more punishment against your better judgement. Certainly, for at least the first four or five hours, the learning curve is so exasperatingly steep that we wouldn't blame any sane gamer for throwing their chips in and going off to find something more fun to do. However, when it's your job to plough through games like this, occasionally you break through the pain barrier and start to see things slightly differently. In a curious way, we started to (whisper it) quite like Vampire Rain once we began to learn how the game wanted us to play it.

As some kind of twisted, perverted reward, Artoon even starts to give you the kind of weapons you wanted at the very beginning - like a sniper rifle, a shotgun, and little UV knives that allow you to pull off one-hit-kill sneak attacks. As grateful as you'll be at finally being able to dish out some punishment to the Nightwalkers, you'll want to beat the Artoon team about the face and neck for being so god-damned bloody-minded. From about the seventh level onwards, having the occasional ability to snipe, stab or blast the slavering horde to death makes the game instantly about 300 times more fun than it was when you were only allowed to creep around in the pouring night time rain. But even then, ammo is in such short supply that you can't exactly go gung-ho. Even the long-awaited first boss encounter is a hilarious conservation project requiring 100 per cent accuracy. Fortunately by that stage you're well schooled in the need to save every bullet.

Getting to a stage where the game feels enjoyable is a long, dark, painful road. I haven't felt this much brutality meted out by a game in the name of fun since Call of Cthulhu. Unfortunately, Vampire Rain falls a fair way short of joining that overlooked gem in the Cult Horror Classics camp by virtue of its dreadful storyline, voice acting so bad it's mesmerising, and the fact that this is clearly an Xbox 1 title held over for a belated 360 release with literally no next-gen polish to speak of.

Can you hear me?

At times you'll really believe that the script and voice-overs must be some sort of knowing nod to bad B-movies, but that's just being generous. More likely, it's yet another case of a Japanese developer getting lost in translation and employing the 'special' cast that seem to have a knack of inflecting in a way only heard in horror videogames over the past 12 years. Bless 'em.

Regarding the technical shortcomings, Vampire Rain has the look and feel of a game whose origins date back to the early part of the decade. Literally nothing you'll see in the game would trouble the PS2, never mind the Xbox, and upscaled onto the 360 it looks alarmingly bland at times. Although the comparisons to Splinter Cell are undoubtedly on the money, you'd only have to boot up Pandora Tomorrow on a 360 to realise that Vampire Rain doesn't even come close to matching it for visual opulence. Sure, Vampire Rain is being released at a lower-than-usual price, but that doesn't excuse shoddy Operation Winback-esque animation and uninspired artwork. Even online this is being sold for GBP 29.99, when I'd have trouble being convinced to part with a tenner if I'm honest - even as a massive fan of the genre.

Some have highlighted the eight-player Xbox Live options as surprisingly enjoyable. That's as may be, but online gaming presupposes that there are other people in the world also playing it, and on that score Vampire Rain is likely to fail miserably. For the record, there are four main modes with team variations of each. You've got Deathmatch, Death or Nightwalker, Destroy (Domination by another name, where you have to head for an object and stand in its proximity to score points) and Capture the Flame (bet you can't guess what this one's like). Cynicism aside, the four maps included are nicely designed, and the online modes finally give the previously useless weapons in the single-player game a purpose. In the grand scheme of things, though, few people are going to be giving Vampire Rain's online modes any airtime in preference to the mighty alternatives out there, and the promise of downloadable content is highly unlikely to make any difference.

Like many of Artoon's games down the years. Vampire Rain had the potential to be something special, but ended up crippled by some hugely questionable design errors. We say 'errors' rather than 'decisions', because at no point does it make sense to routinely make the player suffer at every turn. Nor does it make sense to design an open-ended map and then make it nigh-on impossible to succeed unless you choose the path the designers want you to. Factor in the utterly broken combat, hilarious dialogue, repetitive music and uninspired visuals and it's a major surprise that Microsoft would even want to publish the game at all. Unless you've got an unusually forgiving nature and reservoirs of dogged determination, then Vampire Rain is a game best avoided.