Last night, I sat, half awake, as the clock rolled over to 3am Mountain Standard. That's the time when Microsoft usually posts new demos on Xbox Live. Last night in particular was supposed to be the night the demo for Shadowrun was supposed to go up. Unfortunately, it seems Shadowrun has been bumped to tonight, so I shut my Xbox off and went to bed. A new Xbox Live Arcade game, Pacman Championship Edition had gone up, but it wasn't that important to me (having played it today, I can say that it is infact much, much, much more fun than vanilla Pacman).

What I didn't know, however, is that the Japanese Xbox Live Marketplace had been updated. A demo had been posted for the odd title called Vampire Rain. For those of you who don't know what Vampire Rain is, it's a stealth action game like Splinter Cell, but with a twist - there are no terrorists in this world. Instead, you find yourself sneaking past Vampires (called "Night Walkers" here) that roam the eternally rain-drenched streets; and with good reason: These Vampires are extremely dangerous. Vampires are much, much faster and much, much more agile than you are. If a Vampire should see you, it can quickly and easily get to you - it'll zip across a street in the blink of an eye; jump 100ft into the air to catch you on a rooftop, and when it gets close to you - all it takes is a couple slashes from it's long claws and you're dead. Once a Vampire has spotted you and begun chasing you, there is practically no escape. Run as fast as you can, but it won't be long before you're staring at the GAME OVER screen. It's not Survival Horror, and it's not Tactical Stealth... think of it as a Stealth Horror title.

Thus, for the ease of which you die, the game has a high level of tension. The game toys with you, often when traversing the dark rooftops of the city you're in, a vampire will leap up a few feet in front of you, before jumping to another rooftop without seeing you. Though the game does give you guns, so far they seem to do very little - opening fire on a vampire just draws their attention to you, which is usually a very bad thing. Also, like Splinter Cell, the game provides you with a visor with different display modes - two, to be exact. The first is the mainstay: Nightvision. It's obvious what that does (lets you see in total darkness).

The second one is by far the most useful; it's called "Necrovision". Necrovision not only shows you if a person is a vampire or not, it also clearly identifies light and dark areas; giving you a very clear idea of where to hide and where not to hide. If an area appears white, a vampire will be able to see you in it. If an area appears black, you will be mostly hidden. The final and most useful part of Necrovision - once you see a vampire with it, it is "identified", allowing you to see the vampire's full range of vision, like Metal Gear Solid.

The demo provides you with four missions. "Stealth is Key", "Avoid & Conquer", "Head for the Shrubs" and "Shoot & Survive". The top two missions appear to be taken from singleplayer, while the bottom two are arcade-like time trial missions where your goal is to do a certain action as quickly as possible; kind of like Metal Gear Solid's VR Missions. At the end of each mission you're ranked based on how well you did (shots fired, accuracy, damage taken, how many times you had to restart the mission, how long it took you, etc.). The Demo suggests a fifth mission may become unlocked should you complete the previous four missions, possibly with a good ranking, as there is an extra spot in the menu for it.

Visually, the game is decent. It's not Gears of War, but then again, nothing really is. I'd say it's graphical quality is around the level seen in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. All outdoor locations feature a constant, never-ending stream of rain and lightning, giving the game a very wet appearance. The rain effect is done pretty nicely, with beads of water dripping down the playable characters; but, overall, the graphics are kind of unremarkable. The game has sort of a budget "Sega Arcade Game" feel to it, like House of the Dead or Afterburner. Voice acting is very stilted and extremely poor, but in a charming, B Movie kind of way - sort of like Resident Evil. Sound is decent, but only adds to the budget "Sega Arcade Game" feel, with extremely generic sound effects populating the game. Musically, the game is decent, though there isn't really much music in the demo to speak of. What is there seems to be dull orchestrated music - nothing too interesting. The game itself controls well enough so far, but the animations when performing certain actions seem kind of stiff.

The game can, also, get kind of repetitive. After awhile, the city you're playing this in really starts to feel kind of samey. Most indoor locations don't appear to be spectacularly different, either. In the first mission, "Stealth is Key", I started to get bored toward the end because it was starting to get very repetitive. The game would give me an objective and the arrow on the minimap would point me where to go - but you never can just run straight to the objective, as they usually place the most vampires along that pathway. You always have to find an alternate route, which generally takes ten times as long to get through. It's not terrible, but I could see getting bored of it. A little change of scenery would be nice.

That said, I'm not so sure what to think of this. When I first heard of the game, I wondered what to make of it - and this continues that tradition. It certainly seems like a fairly decent take on the Splinter Cell series, but with a serious "japanese anime" sort of twist to it. Assuming the retail game has some more interesting environments in it (I doubt it), it may be pretty enjoyable to play. But if all it ever is, is this one city, well, that would probably get old really fast.

Hmm.