Review | Vampire Hunters
Format: PC | Genre: RPG/Adventure | Publisher: CMedia | Developer: Mayhem Studios | Release date: 31/10/09 | RRP: £13.95
By Lewis Denby
This review has been subject to one of the most preposterous embargoes I’ve ever known. Available since October, our review code of Vampire Hunters turned up some time ago, yet it’s only now that this write-up emerges. To be fair, there was no official obligation; simply a polite request that we hold the review for two further weeks if the score was going to be below average. A part of me wanted to rally against the nonsense and post a scathing review there and then, but hey. A couple of extra weeks with the game. That can’t be bad, right? Might even give me time to really learn what keeps its wheels spinning.
My conclusion is that moths do, when they can be bothered. When they can’t, it’s wind-powered, but there’s only a faint breeze to keep it moving, and even that often stops altogether. Occasionally the game just breaks, and refuses to let you do something you’re clearly supposed to be able to do. Like talking to a plot-essential character, or not getting stuck on the inside of a piece of scenery.
Its concept is neat. Vampire Hunters is a turn-based RPG with adventure game intermissions. In essence: you walk around, hunt for inventory items, solve some lightweight puzzles, talk to a few folks then fight some nasty vamps. There is no reason why it shouldn’t work. The reason it doesn’t work is because no one seems to have playtested the thing with a basic level of competency, and its pacing is so offensively sluggish that it’s a chore to get through just half an hour.
//Cooped up
Environments, even outdoors, are claustrophobic and constricting. When the game world does span out a little, you’re still kept locked up in a small of it area until a later point in the game. It screams for a more open playing field, more nooks and crannies to explore, more interesting developments along the way. Signposting is horrible. I spent a good hour trying to figure out a way to refuel a forklift truck, assuming doing so might be some arbitrary way to progress. Eventually I found the ladder I was supposed to climb up instead, hidden away in a dimly lit area around the back of a crane.
Dialogue is clumsy and artificial. Some of it feels like it’s taken from a completely different game, or perhaps a slightly disturbed mind. The camera is impossible. Sometimes, it’s possible to clip the viewpoint through a floor or ceiling and see the vast expanse of nothingness beyond. Controls are a standard keyboard/mouse combo, but there’s no side-step, so the A and D keys as well as the mouse turn your character. It feels oddly archaic and difficult to settle into, especially when the mouse sensitivity is way off. Movement speed is horrendous. I found myself instinctively tapping the jump button to speed things up. Except there is no jump button, which means you can’t climb over a wall or fence that’s clearly four feet tall, and have to spend ten minutes searching for a key in dark corners. A key that might be invisible, if the game feels like throwing that particular curveball at you.
Combat is the worst kind of turn-based. There are virtually no tactical options until a hideous way through the game. For the first hour, you select your attack type from a list of one, click on an enemy, watch it miss and then watch your foe slice you to death in two attacks. Heaven forbid you’re faced with multiple enemies. That means utilising various naughty medications like morphine, codeine (which is inexplicably more potent than morphine) and amphetamines. Except you can’t access them once you’re in a fight, and the game rarely gives you the choice whether to enter one or not. Frequently, you’re dropped straight into a battle from a cut-scene, and have to watch the bloody thing play out over and over until, by some miraculous fluke, you succeed. And then have to do it all again in two minutes time.
It’s a low-budget indie game that retails at £13.95. The email accompanying the review code was very keen I point that out. And I do feel a sort of guilty pang in my stomach as I write this. Making games is tricky; making substantially ambitious games is an enormous challenge. Huge, funded teams repeatedly fail to get this sort of thing right. And Mayhem Studios have at least nailed the music, if nothing else, with a brooding, swelling, twinkling score that perfectly fits the mood.
But it doesn’t excuse the bugs, and the tedium, and the insufferable lack of direction to the whole thing. It’s true: £13.95 isn’t a spectacularly high asking price. But if you’re prepared to put up with such an archaic experience, you could pick up a far better adventure and a far better RPG for the same amount.
3/10
Vampire Hunters is available from GamersGate or directly through the game’s website.
You gotta be cruel to be kind. Maybe they’ll go and have a little think and come back fighting.
Sounds like they knew all too well how crap it was when they gave it to you. How depressing must that be for anyone that worked on it?
I have never seen any of the bugs that this reviewer has seen. I have also not had problems with combat except in situations where I have missed a new weapon and I went back and got it. You get plenty of medicine to keep your health up during battle and on that note you can use medicine in battle. The areas are small which is typical of adventure games and since the areas are small you shouldn’t have a problem searching every square inch before doing anything else. (a very good way of getting equipment and medicine) I think the game is decent and is a fairly unique game especially since the last games to be released in the adventure/rpg genre were the Quest for Glory games.
“On that note you can use medicine in battle.”
Can you? It seemed to make no sense that I couldn’t. How is it done? If I’ve missed something really obvious I will certainly amend the review, but for the life of me I could not find a way to make this work.
When you start a combat, 4 buttons appear on the left:
1)Fighting
2)Spells
3)Tactics (Offensive/Defensive)
4)The INVENTORY =)
That last one is where you can choose stuff that you have for use.
Thanks for the reply. Yep, seen all of those. Perhaps a glitch with the review copy, then, because I can enter the inventory fine, select and deselect weapons, but clicking, double-clicking, clicking with fingers crossed and all combinations involving selecting medication does absolutely nothing.
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