All in all, Countdown Vampires is like a horror movie without the horror.
User Rating: 3.9 | Countdown Vampires PS
Much like the horror film genre, survival-horror games can grow a branch full of bad apples in its tree; as a down-right dreck horror film can lack atmosphere, gore, and intelligence to its script and themes, so can a survival-horror game and Countdown Vampires takes the pick. Now as an avid survival-horror fan, I found great pleasure in simply finding another unpopular, low-grade survival-horror game that eluded my grasp during its first release, yet after the long hours of playing through Bandai's unremarkable little title and sitting down thinking in pain and exhaustion at wondering how far this game was influenced merely by the idea of presenting cool, unintelligent images of contemporary jargon rather than any chilling factors, it feels necessary to tell the world a different interpretation of perhaps one of the most widely recognized bad survival horror games. The premise sounds average as the players take control of young, fresh action stud Keith J Snyder (whatever the J stands for is never elucidated on, so make of it what you will; I think it stands for Jarion!): a homicide detective who works in the precinct of the fictional town of Sea Rim City who has been placed in the fictional city of Casino City on assignment as a VIP guard for horror movie director Randy Jones at a newly opened horror-themed casino called Desert Moon. As the festivities commence, proving the casino to be more of a dance club than anything else, a fire breaks out around some Gozer look-a-like dancers which activates the sprinkler system. However, the water from the system is a black liquid that not only extinguishes the fire, but turns the dancers into contagious, violent, shark-mouthed vampires that either start killing or infecting other patrons with their claws and teeth! From this beginning, one can imagine where the plot is going to go and there's a good chance that whatever guesses you have on what has caused everything from this point on will be right, because from this point in the story, there are nothing but plot holes and clichés, the former being in abundance. The only remarkable piece to the story is based off of your progression in the game as you will encounter different little sub-plots and characters on your second play through the game. Regardless of where you've been or what you’ve played, you know you've seen better graphics. I will admit I've seen worse as well, but sometimes the pretentious designs cease to amaze me. Our first presentation of the graphics presents some actually impressive physical movements of human characters in all of the FMV sequences. However, there isn't enough graphical goodness to perk one's interest in the game, as what good goes straight to the over-done as the in-game graphics consist of the ever popular 3D articulate character wandering around a number of pre-rendered, slightly blurry backdrops, coupled with a few CG scenes of dialogue and action which makes everyone's faces and physics look the same. The controls are also remarkably similar to other survival-horror games, as all of the basic functions, positive and negative, are present. The controls for movement are in blessed 3D, so moving up on the D-pad moves you straight forward and holding the square button makes you run as you move (which works around the Resident Evil style camera angles). The R1 button let’s you aim and you can manually position your guns in three positions, disabling you from walking as you aim. What few innovations to this part of the controls includes the use of reloading the weapon you have equipped by pressing the L2 button and being able to switch to another weapon in your inventory with a click of the O button. Your inventory is organized so that you can hold up to twelve items/weapons as well as files you pick up and mail that you can get from every save point in the game, which are police standard computer stations that let you link up with Keith’s precinct in a snap (sort of like Carrier’s use of computer stations for the save point that double as keeping record of the character’s investigation). The computer stations are basically your proper means of storage for items and weapons as well as receiving e-mails to fill you in on the sub-plots with the help of a fellow officer back at the precinct. Another little innovation to this lot is the addition of pacifying vampires as it follows the idea that the vampires were once innocent people that can still be saved. The method of pacifying and saving them is a little odd as you can use a tranquilizer gun in order to knock the vampires unconscious and douse them with an unlimited supply of White Water that Keith carries in order to turn the vampires back to normal. Doing this will also give you money that you can use to purchase health items, which come in the form of health bars, drinks and plastic bottles you can use to mix the drinks to make a stronger health item! As with these controls however comes into balance the flow of play: you traverse the different parts of the casino which include a horror themed resting place for VIPs, a small theater and a historic museum on vampires (wow, a place to drink, gamble, dance, watch movies, eat, sleep, bathe AND study! What doesn’t this casino have?). With the settings come various little puzzles that will help you get through the areas which, during the first part of the game, consist of excruciatingly easy safes and fairly conceived little puzzles and items to use on the puzzles in order to acquire whatever keys you need to proceed. Yet, the majority of the little keys you need to use on certain puzzles apparently didn’t come with instructions, so you’ll have to figure some puzzles (such as that cursed timed tombstone plate puzzle) on your own. What’s more, you’ll have to organize your weapons wisely as every single item, weapon and file appear in the shape of fist-sized, yellowish cardboard boxes and if one of those little boxes contains a key item for you yet your inventory is full at the time, you’ll have to go back to a computer station to make some space. Also, pacifying the vampires can be a royal pain as it takes ten darts to knock one vampire unconscious which leaves in most cases rooms full of other vampires that will force you to shoot them to death in order to save yourself from further injuries. The idea of making the enemies in the game mostly consist of vampiric-mutants rather than the ever popular mutant-zombie/plant was a good call, but even that concept won't make you enjoy the game more once you see what other monsters await you. Though I will admit at least one of the monster designs actually wasn't as bad as the rest (a purple blob creature with arms, a head and torso) and as much as I liked fighting psuedo-wrewolves and bipedal blood-sucking mantises, I can guarantee that you will hate the designs of just about every monster in this game. Specifically, the FMV designs chosen for the monsters are the goofiest as each monster with a lower jaw is presented with blocky, over-exaggerated faces, making them easier to laugh at and simultaneously feel embarrassed to see such silliness rather than drop a load in your pants at seeing what you’ll have to fight next, with the exception of the very first boss fight. The sound effects appear very basic at times, delivering sounds of gun shots and monster noises in a blasé fashion with nothing ultimately special to the effects no matter what the effects are applied to, either during game play, a CG or FMV movie. For me, the real downer to the game’s audio qualities next to the voice acting had to have been the music. Despite the fact that you can change the volume of sound and music in the game, you’ll notice that the majority of the tracks weren’t recorded at a high volume, forcing you to crank up the volume on your TV if you want to hear the music. Simultaneously, the music is hardly fitting for the settings; the soundtrack is so cartoony and triumphant at times that it’s no where near atmospheric, almost as if the composer was aiming for an RPG sound to the game. The only tracks that actually fit the majority of events like a glove were at least four and only one of those tracks actually carried a scent of atmosphere in its tones, making the survival-horror title even less horrific. The voice acting has given Countdown Vampires a piece of notoriety for being a dreck title, mostly because it’s hard to find a character with a good voice over, making the buff protagonist sound like a whiny little kid, and almost everyone else adding no charisma to their character’s lines. The dialogue alone should have its own comedy show, because you’ll be laughing like mad when you hear the characters talk. Also, if you're looking for enjoyable characters here, good luck, because although the majority of the characters are only presented until after the game has been beaten under certain conditions for the first time, the majority of the characters lack depth also. The only character I found myself savoring the presence of in the game was Mira Swish only because she defied both of these attributes by having a little depth and a considerably good voice over, but you won't meet her until disc two, so the pain will last from then on. Often times I've found the feature of skipping cinematic scenes to be sinful in a survival horror game, but in Countdown Vampires you have no choice but to wait out the dialogue; yep, no button can skip the normal scenes where the characters converse, only the scenes where the graphics try to show good design, which run few and far in between. All in all, Countdown Vampires is like a horror movie without the horror; the substance of the game is watered down by the flashy presentation of facing up against goofy vampires and monsters presented by a guy who doesn’t have the decency to put his trench coat back on and hide that stupid full body tattoo of his, much less use it for more inventory space or light defense against enemies all in the name of looking cool. If there were a sub-genre to the survival-horror genre called Farce-Horror, Countdown Vampires would fall right in to the category seeing how the content can’t be taken seriously at all. Simultaneously, the game has gained such recognition that it’s hard to find at most rental stores, so if you’re willing to play through the game and find whatever value you might enjoy in the game either it be the silly dialogue or just the tried and true survival-horror frame and structure, then caveat emptor, dear reader... caveat emptor. 
