Vampire Night [PS2]

Like vampires? You'll like this. Taking a page from the House of the Dead omnibus, Namco's Vampire Night is a light gun shooter that combines gothic horror with gunplay galore. Thanks to a generous assist from the shooter-masters at Sega's WOW Entertainment division, Vampire Night is loaded to the brim with the unrelenting, trigger-pumping action.

You assume the role of Michel or Albert, two duster-clad vampire hunters with a bone to pick. Vampires and other unspeakable horrors have invaded a lovely little European villa, and these two boys are the only pistol-packing hooligans who can put an end to it.

From a first-person perspective, you'll run through snowy forests, dusty dungeons, and various unpleasant locations, pumping steel-tipped bullets into the undead. Naturally, your morale will be weakened by hideous voice acting, and terribly written cut-scenes that threaten to suck out your various internal organs. But, you'll be pleased to know that the now-classic "Don't come! Don't come!" line from The House of the Dead makes an appearance here.

Gameplay-wise, the entire package is a rather shameless House of the Dead clone – the enemies move at a high speed, and jump at you with melee attacks. The game branches out in several areas, depending on whether or not you rescue innocents – and considering the way that the enemies swarm around law-abiding citizens, you may accidentally plug a few civilians along the way.

The PlayStation 2 version is a fairly faithful port of the System 246-based arcade game, which probably isn't really saying much since it wasn't the best looking of arcade games. The game makes use of Namco's new USB-based GunCon 2 light gun for PS2, but will also work with the standard GunCon or the standard Dual Shock 2 controller for those dumb enough not to use a light gun.

For a look at the game, you can check out the 30 new high-resolution screens and 10 movies of the game in the Media section below. And if you want to check out our previous media footage, then check out our previous stories on the game.

-- Dave Zdyrko

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