Vampire Night

"With Blood Thirsty Vampires with guns, you just can't go wrong."

Vampire Night is a Light Gun game which is one of the few on Playstation 2. You play as a team of Vampires (2-Player Action) and progress through 6 levels fighting very different bosses in each. There are 2 main modes of play. Arcade, which you just play through the levels without paying 4 quarters per game, and Special, which is more of a mission game. In special, you play through the same 6 levels but try to do a special mission, which is mainly shoot some object on the screen. Each mission you pass, you earn silver which is used to buy better guns. There are various levels of difficulty and you can pick the amount of Credits/Continues you have, so you can play at your own challenge level. And if your Guncon 2 isn't working, its the gun, which is terrible. So don't get upset when it brakes, which is within 2 days.

Graphics

Dark Castles, Zombie Enemies, and a few FMV's show excellent effort put into the graphic design of Vampire Night. It's not the best that the Playstation can offer, but is still very, very good. The cut-scenes are no Final Fantasy X here, but still they are as realistic as animated demons can get.

Gameplay

There isn't much to say here. You just calibrate your Guncon and then blast away at the screen. Don't get me wrong, it's one of the best ways to play a game, and I love it.

Sound

BANG! BANG!! BANG!!! Sure, you may go deaf after a while, but that's why the screen flashes to show that you shot something too. The background music is reasonable, and there are pretty good voiceovers during the cutscenes, as well as sounds made by enemies and infected humans. It all adds to the part of the demon invasion.

Story

I'd say that the one point taken off for my rating would be here. The story was pretty bad. Especially the ending, which was very disappointing, and you can't shoot to skip the ending cut-scene either. You play as two cool Vampires with guns trying to save the human race. You meet this annoying little girl along the way who seems to attract the bad guys. I personally think she should have been shot in action, accidentally, but that's the way the designers made this game. There's no avoiding her.

Overall

For the most part, this game is really fun to play with your buddies. There are only 6 levels, which doesn't take too long to play through with max health options, but has a strong replay value. What game where you don't shoot things with a light gun has no replay value? Every so often, my friends and I play this game and we have fun. If you have a Guncon (regular), I would recommend buying this game. If you plan on buying this game with the Guncon 2 included, DON'T!. The Guncon 2 breaks very easily, within 2 days as mentioned above. It is worth it to spend the extra few bucks on the regular Guncon, then you can pick up these kind of games for the regular $50. I doubt this is a game available for rental (with the Guncon), so if you can, borrow it. If you like this game, I would also suggest looking into Time Crisis 2, and Ninja Hunter, both for the PS2.

Thank you for reading my review and I hope it helped you in your decision of acquiring this game.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/18/03, Updated 02/18/03