Countdown Vampires

Written by Tom Clare in PSOne Game Reviews, Thursday 3 January, 2008

Released: 2000
Developer: K2 LLC
Publisher: Bandai
Genre: Survival-Horror
Platform: PSOne
Region: US

Equipped with a trio of great Resident Evil's and the mother of all scare fests in Silent Hill, the PlayStation certainly wasn't short of quality games to represent its new-found survival-horror genre, as it emerged as perhaps the first generation of games console to have the capacity to truly scare the player.

And following the massive success of the aforementioned titles, it stood to reason that many imitators would arise. Surprisingly though, whilst many titles would mimic the distinctive controls and pre-rendered environments that were so popular in the mid-late nineties, few would go onto emphasise the 'horror' element. Countdown Vampires, released in 1999 in Japan and 2000 in the US, was one of the few titles that stuck closely to the original survival-horror blueprint. Though it garnered some attention from the gaming press, lukewarm reviews evidently dissuaded Bandai from releasing it in Europe, meaning a US import is probably the best bet for UK gamers these days.

Countdown Vampires does everything competently and some things rather well, but in its extensive efforts to mimic Resident Evil, it comes across more as an ill-judged homage than a heavyweight action game in its own right.

Things begin promisingly with an excellent FMV sequence (one of the best seen in a PSOne game) introducing us to the main protagonist; Keith J. Snyder, a police detective hired as a bodyguard to oversee the opening of a horror-themed casino. Things go wrong pretty quickly though as not only does the place catch fire, but a mysterious liquid released from the sprinklers turns the majority of the clubs inhabitants into vampires. Bummer. Elsewhere, all the clich�s and stereotypes are admirably catered for with damsel-in-distress Misato; a cryptic masked man in a trenchcoat and an evil scientist all making an appearance.

Initial impressions are fairly good; the general layout and configuration of the controls will be instantly familiar to fans of the survival-horror genre as it works on almost identical principals to the rest, right down to the 180 degree spin-on-the-spot move, meaning getting to grips with things will prove a breeze for seasoned campaigners. Credit where it's due - CV has its troubles but the controls aren't one of them, they are the some of the nippiest and most responsive in a game of this type.

It's also quite a nice looking game. Not perfect, though both the outdoor and indoor environments are well-designed and there's certainly some variety to the locations. The disco at the beginning best captures the horror atmosphere with its dingy neons, broken slot machines and general signs of disarray, but CV also tries its hand at an abandoned town, a laboratory and a place rather descriptively known as the Evil House, all of which are fun to explore, if not terribly original. The character design is a little short of Resident Evil 2's benchmark levels and the pre-rendered backgrounds are not quite as well-defined, but the animation is smooth and the plentiful FMV sequences help too. It also wins points for an easy to use inventory system, clear maps and well-spaced save points that fortunately don't require the collection of typewriter ribbons or any other such frivolities to use them.

There's more to a game than manoeuvrability and aesthetics however, and sadly elsewhere CV starts to feel uninspired. Whilst the inclusion of puzzles is always welcome in survival-horror games, Countdown Vampires' efforts seem almost deliberately hackneyed. They range from the utterly banal find-a-key-to-a-room-with-another-key train of the thought, to some extremely difficult code/password locks that, even in hindsight, seem obscure in their logic. It often makes hard work of simple situations; an example of this being when you come across an empty wine bottle, which must be filled and returned to its place on a wine rack to help you progress. Despite finding the item near a full bath tub, the game forces you to find a wine keg from which to fill it instead.

Rather lazily, all items found within the game appear as small orange packages - whether it's a shotgun or a key that you are encountering, and due to the positioning of some of the camera angles, certain parts of the scenery are not emphasised clearly enough, whilst it can also be a hassle moving your character around tables to pick up awkwardly placed items. Other hints of sloppy programming creep in here and there too; with some instruction/description lines not reading well in English and a sign that seemingly hasn't been translated from the original Japanese script.

Countdown Vampires has a to be in with a shout for the hotly-contested 'Worst Voice Acting In The Entire World Ever' award as the schlock-horror ham festival it produces makes Resident Evil seem like a well-conceived period drama by comparison. Ridiculous delivery of lines, camped-up menace and awkward pauses will have you laughing in no time. On a more serious note though, it does detract from the story somewhat and makes the horror-elements much harder to swallow. The music is slightly less offensive though it's hard to ignore the slightly-naff, b-movie whiff about it.

Amazingly, despite all this, there is still a degree of atmosphere to Countdown Vampires. Whilst the enemies are shameless Resident Evil rip-offs (right down to the green Hunter-esque creations with claws), they carry sufficient menace to make you think twice before shuffling around the next blind corner. The vampires look and move suspiciously like zombies though the fact you can use tranquilizers and holy water to immobilize and then cure them is a clever (if somewhat unnecessary) touch. Unusually, you can also gamble on a myriad of slot machines found in the casino, with victory giving you money to spend on maps and life-replenishing food located in slot machines. The combat is fairly good even though most of the weapons are a bit crummy, and the boss-battles (with the exception of a rather disappointing finale) are relatively varied in the challenges they pose.

The fact that it comes on two discs is a touch misleading, as Countdown Vampires isn't really any longer than the other survival-horror games of its time; the large quantity of video sequences perhaps contributing to the extra size. Baffling puzzles aside, the game can be finished in around ten hours first time through, and despite there being two difficulty levels, it's a game that most would settle for finishing once. There are some additional side-stories to uncover and the opportunity to play as Vampire Keith, though in reality, attaining these extras will prove too arduous a task for many to bother persevering with. Thus, Bandai's all-or-nothing reward system seems ill-conceived as simply finishing the game will likely get you nothing.

Resident Evil-with-vampires sounds good on paper, but though Countdown Vampires sticks to the survival-horror plan and has its moments, its lack of originality and unflattering comparisons with Capcom's classic means it ends up feeling less than the sum of its parts. As an import-only title, the $10 price tag is not too steep for a game that is by no means bad, though horror fans would likely have wanted something a little more substantial.

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