Difficulty:

Very Hard

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Waste of time"

It sounded good. A stealth/action game with survival horror themes. 3 of my favourite genres in one game! But it was to good to be true, even if it was pre-owned for just £5 (about $8).

But really this game is pretty awful. Even the free DLC is horrific ( no pun intended). There are the basic guns you would expect, nothing more, and very basic level design. The majority of the game has linear levels but every now and then you can choose to go either left or right. Wow. There are invisible walls galore too, so you can't go far. There probably are out of level glitches but the game looks like an average ps2 game, so you wouldn't really want to go sight-seeing. Seriously, the characters and guns look decent enough, but everything is dark, grainy and even the shadows look last-gen. All of this leads to a very poor visual experience for this generation of consoles. The models are better than on ps2 and xbox, but it's so depressingly grainy and dull, a nice last-gen game looks better.

The gameplay is INSANELY hard. Probably because the developers struggled with the AI, and the rain that dulls the vampires' senses is also probably an excuse for them being pretty dumb. But even with their low IQs, they are almost impossible to kill. Granted, this is a stealth game but WTH? I almost actually completed the 2nd level but a vampire ( AKA nightwalker) came out of a door and around half a clip of assault rifle fire didn't kill it, but worse, it continued coming towards me. Shooting doesn't slow the enemy down, so you have just a few seconds before you are ripped apart. then comes the hugely graphic cutscene which has the nightwalker whic killed you biting your neck and LOADS of blood. It's cool and disgusting at 1st, but you'll see so much of it you get bored soon. Other features of this game merely copy rivals. You get a set of goggles that shows up nightwalkers from regular civilians, but that's basically the only interesting bit of kit.

I like cutscenes but in this there are TONS. It's so excessive it can really break up gameplay ( genuine shame ;P), and sometimes the scripting and acting is horrendous. Something along the lines of:
"There's so many nightwalkers. You'll be killed"
"Roger" *pause* "I smell trouble"
Well of course you smell trouble you idiot. As the man said, there's loads of this unkillable freaks a few metres from you. Durrr....
On a better note, the instruction manual is great. You get character analysises and info on the characters' backgrounds. Sadly, this is probably the best part of the Vampire Rain experience. It's that bad.

Good:
The idea
Good instruction booklet
Bad:
Well, the gameplay, level design, graphics, story, voice acting. I'm serious too..
Verdict:
Awful. There is a tiny, tiny bit of fun to have here, but it's overshadowed by everything else's incompetence. Splinter Cell Conviction 9.5/10, this 2/10. It's just not worth it.