Unfortunately, the developers of Vampire Rain missed “Stealth Gaming 101″ because you are ushered down the one set path they want you to go. See a ladder or storm drain? Use it to scale the building.

See an alley? Use it to go around the guards. With most stealth oriented games you are given several different ways to accomplish your tasks. The objective of the game is for you to sneak through the city, avoiding blood suckers as best you can, all the while, moving towards your final objective. The gameplay doesn’t fare any better, bordering on controller throwing frustrating. The sound isn’t much better, with really bad voice acting, horrible death sounds, and even worse music. The animation of the main characters is decent, but the poor graphics detract from them. The city is sparsely populated, and the NPCs and nightwalkers you come across are blocky and move with stunted, jerky animations. As you wander the city, you come across nothing but 2D, drawn store fronts with no definition whatsoever. The game takes place in the span of one night, in a rainstorm, and offers some of the most washed out, fuzzy, and downright crappy looking graphics I have seen this gen. The graphics and sound in the game will definitely remind you of a decent looking PS2 game.

It especially gets irritating towards the end of the game, as it seems like there is a cutscene every minute or so.

This may sound like a decent back story, but the execution of it is less than stellar. You are sent to a town to take out the prime Nightwalker, which in turn will kill all the other vampires he controls. At your side you have several team members, from your tech guy to your token hot female character. Soon, the vampire race will take over the world in 900 days to be exact. Apparently these vampires are running around unchecked, taking out everyone in their path. John is tasked to take care of the “Nightwalkers”, Vampire Rain’s vampires. Vampire Rain places you in the shoes of a Sam Fisher knockoff named John Lloyd who works for a Third Echelon knockoff named the American Information Bureau. The newly released version for the PS3 tries to set itself apart from its’ predecessor by tacking on a crappy subtitle and moving some cutscenes around, but this doesn’t address the real problems with the game. Vampire Rain: Altered Species was released on the Xbox 360 last year to pretty bad reviews.

Vampire rain night walker