Vampire Night

"Vampire Night is an action packed Light gun shooter that has you coming back for more."

This game is a collaboration between Sega and Namco. If you’ve ever played a light gun game from either of these companies than you know you’re in for a quality game. The game is actually more from Sega as it resembles the House of the Dead series, but it supports the highly accurate Guncon and Guncon2.

Gameplay 10
This has one of my favorite styles of Light Gun gameplay, the standard arcade, shoot everything on the screen. Well, actually there is some thing that you can’t shoot (I’ll explain later). In terms of actual gameplay this game has it all. Multiple paths, a large “training” mode, and the best feature is the special mode.

The arcade mode is a straight port from the arcade game. It features many different paths and a variety of Vampires. Unlike Time Crisis there is no ducking or hiding you have to kill everything before it gets you. The character design is good with many different Zombies ranging from your standard vampire to flying and ones that can go into other dimensions. All the characters take multiple shots to take down unless you hit the “sweet spot” that takes them down in one shot. A good twist that they added was the little octopus like creatures that are attached to humans. If you shoot the thing off the human is free. If you miss, the human turns into a vampire that will try to kill you. All in all this is light gun gaming at its best. The arcade mode is about 40 minutes long.

The Training mode consists of many tests such as accuracy and speed. These are good practice and buy completing all the difficulty levels you can unlock items for special mode.

Special mode is were you will get most of your replay value from this game. When you first go the special mode menu screen you get a mission to complete such as find the girls doll or save the mans wife from the octopus thing. When play special mode it is the same as arcade but you can complete those missions and you can destroy statues and pots to reveal silver. You can use silver to buy items such as shotgun bullets and warps. The warps are one of my favorite parts because they let you “warp” to different levels so you don’t have to play level 1 over and over when your mission is in level 5.

Graphics 9
The graphics look fantastic. They are crisp and I never noticed any jarred edges or blocky characters. The levels also look very nice as they vary form forests to castles to the sky. This game really utilizes to ability of the PS2 to give good graphics.

Sound 5
Well, the sound is a mix bag. The music in the background is good but is nothing memorable. The voice acting is an issue of its own. The voice acting is very cheesy and humorous, though not supposed to be funny. The voice acting isn’t REALLY bad, its just low quality.

Control 9
The control with the Light Gun is great. After calibration you’ll be able to hit everything you aim at. If you’re planning on using a Dual Shock controller please reconsider. This game was not meant to be played with a controller but in terms of light gun games using controller this game is better than most. There is one major flaw and that is, if you’re using a Guncon2 than your Guncon1 won’t be compatible with it. It is really weird because two Guncon1s and two Guncon2s work together but not a combination of the two.

Replay Value 10
For a light gun game this game has HUGE replay value. There are tons of items to unlock and over 20 missions in special mode. Also the multiple paths really make the game feel fresh when you play over and over. Although it has lots of things to do it won’t give you as “play time” as say an RPG but you probably aren’t buying a Light Gun game for a ton of Replay value anyways.

Pros
-Good Gameplay
-Guncon1 Compatible
-Lots of Replay Value

Cons
-Guncon1/Guncon2 Problem
-Only 40 minutes

Conclusion 8.6 (Rounded to 9)
This game is good mindless fun that will keep you coming back for more even after you have unlocked everything. This game is one of the best on a console. I would compare it to Time Crisis II but since they have different gameplay (duck ‘n shoot instead of shoot everything) I will just leave Vampire Night as the best shoot ‘em up.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/18/03, Updated 01/18/03