Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Reviewed on: Microsoft Xbox Also available for: Sony Playstation 2 and Nintendo Gamecube

The Good: Most of the show’s cast lends their voice talents. The Bad: Terrible camera, some wonky graphics, linear gameplay. The Verdict: Even hard-core fans of the show will have a hard time enjoying this game.

REVIEW:

Being a huge a fan-in-mourning of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I’ve been hard up for anything Buffy-related since the series’ passing this spring. It was with great excitement, then, that I popped Chaos Bleeds into my Xbox. Sadly, this follow-up to last year’s surprisingly good Buffy game is a big disappointment, inferior to the original in every way.

First, a synopsis for non-fans. Buffy Summers is a regular teenage girl that has been pegged as the Slayer, the latest in a long line of girls selected to fight evil in all its forms, particularly demons and vampires. As such, Buffy gets super powers - hyper strength, speed and healing ability - to fight the hordes of hell. In the meantime, she has to try to live the life of a normal teenager.

The show was a big hit for a number of reasons: it combined action, horror and humour with excellent writing and acting. The first game succeeded in that it managed to replicate those elements, and was technically sound.

Chaos Bleeds falls down mostly in its technical presentation. The game’s biggest problem is its camera, which in a third-person action game is enough to incite you to throw your console at the TV in frustration. The camera continuously swings around to face Buffy full-on, leaving you to guess where your enemies are coming from. This is infuriating when you’re in the middle of a fight - you may defeat a bunch of opponents and think the fight is done, only to have a vampire grab you from behind and suck away. Apparently, intuition isn’t one of Buffy’s super powers.

The camera gets even worse when you sometimes have to protect another character. Because it resists attempts to manipulate it, the camera can sometimes prevent you from seeing enemies sneak up behind the character you’re supposed to protect, which quickly lends to failing your mission, and thus the end of the game.

The game’s other big problem is the linear and illogical nature of its puzzle solving. Throughout the game, Buffy and company will have to solve puzzles in order to progress. The problem is, these puzzles don’t really make sense. On one early level, Buffy must assemble the pieces of a sundial in order to open a church door - no real explanation is given as to why the sundial is the way in. On a later level, Buffy must search Sunnydale’s sewers to find a key that will turn on a water pump, which will drain a room of toxic sludge. Exactly why would the key to the pump be in the sewers? Good question, and there’s no explanation from the game’s developers.

Many games have puzzles that straddle the line between logical and absurd, and this wouldn’t be so much of a problem in Chaos Bleeds if the objects you needed to solve them weren’t literally highlighted for you. This is what really makes the game linear - there is no interaction with the environment beyond what the designers have designated. So forget about throwing a vampire through that pool table sitting there in the middle of the room, but don’t forget to pick up your glowing stakes, conveniently lying around nearby.

Content-wise, the game doesn’t feel much like the show. Chaos Bleeds works as a lost episode of the show’s fifth season, and ultimately features Buffy and company going up against the First. Fans of the show will immediately realize there’s something off here, as the First was the ultimate villain in season seven, and in the end, the ultimate villain of the series. For fans, the game thus exists outside the series’ plot consistency, since the characters on the show were largely unaware of what the First was in season seven. This is a major transgression for a show that was so consistent in its plot and story.

Chaos Bleeds does manage to improve upon one complaint from the original game, and that’s in the ability to play other characters. Aside from Buffy, players will also control Willow, Zander, Spike, Faith, and even Sid the dummy, a demon hunter trapped inside a ventriloquist’s puppet. Each character handles differently and has their own fighting style - Willow, for example, is very weak in combat, but packs a number of powerful spells.

Most of the show’s cast lend their voice talents to the game, but the omissions are sometimes glaring. As in the original game, the Buffy stand-in voice does a fine job replacing Sarah Michelle Gellar, but whoever is voicing Willow does so quite poorly. Apparently, Gellar and Allison Hannigan are now too "big" to voice their characters, and are instead devoting their talents to creating cinematic gems, such as Scooby Doo and American Wedding. Most of the cast, including Anthony Stewart Head, James Marsters, Nicholas Brendon, Amber Benson and Eliza Dushku, are here.

The voice acting is fine and the sound is pretty good. The graphics, however, are hit and miss. While the backgrounds and environments are generally quite nice looking, the character models are looking pretty dated, and in some cases, pretty bad. The models look virtually unchanged from the original game, which is too bad - it would have been nice to see some improvement, however small. Some of the characters, particularly the females, look pretty bizarre. Buffy looks less like Buffy, Willow is wearing far too much makeup, and Tara’s lips are exaggerated to the point where she looks like Mick Jagger.

The game does feature some nice bonuses, including interviews with cast members, which are unlocked when you clear levels. There are also multiplayer options: up to four players can duke it out against each other. There’s also the hilarious bunny catcher mode, derived from one of the show’s running side jokes, where players must chase after multicoloured bunnies. Unfortunately, the multiplayer modes aren’t very well done and get tedious quickly.

As much as I wanted to, it was difficult to enjoy Chaos Bleeds. And if the game can’t please hard-core fans of the show, such as myself, it’s not likely to appeal to many gamers. Here’s hoping this franchise can right itself with its next release.