Nosing around for a quick post this morning, and a QT3 thread reminds me that I meant to investigate this further. But I didn’t. I’ll mention it here, mainly as a reach out to the RPS readership to see if anyone has fell to the scarlet longing and have an opinion on Vampire Hunters. It’s a Vampire RPG – but it’s an odd hybrid, where you have the adventuring part, then skip to a jRPG-turn-based mode for the battles. Annoyingly, there’s no demo, though you’ll find some footage below. From what’s on the site, it seems to be a World-of-Darkness derived thingy with “nosfaratu clans” – but the plot element is the murder which is investigated at the start is of the world’s most skilled Vampire Hunter. So God knows.
The first thing I thought, was that his running animation makes it look like he’s filled his pants. Kind of made it hard for me to take him seriously as a bad ass vampire killer after that. A kind of cheap rate Matrix character with a bad incontinence problem.
Saw a vid of this on Eurogamer. Terrible animations and uninspiring art didn’t endear me to it.
9 years ago this could’ve had a chance. As for now, looks really bad.
Vampires are so 2008. Mummies are all the rage now.
Adventure games are about releasing rusted wheels.
RPG games are about fighting with health points and colourful particles effects.
It’s a pity they didn’t include FPS sections :p
From the game’s webpage:
It’s hard to take it seriously when it boasts “full 3D” as a feature. All the copy written to advertise the game seems to be written by someone who writes formal English very well, but doesn’t quite grasp how to pitch the game to its target audience. But maybe the sophisticated target audience I have in mind wouldn’t be interested in it anyway. Maybe this kind of marketing will reach a different sort of audience.
I guess this will be most successful with less experienced players, young boys, etc. This isn’t a bad thing at all. When I was a kid, I was infatuated with games because they simply existed. We’ve experience too much quality, but there is an audience out there for what I reluctantly call mediocrity.
Couldn’t help but feel there were shades of Anachronox in this, the way the main characters coat flaps out from behind him, the combat system, etc.
Heh that’s what I thought too. Reminds me of Odium as well.
I might have gotten this if it didn’t focus on showing unimpressive combat and adventuring aspects alone. I like adventure games, not a big fan of jRPG combat – but the reason I enjoyed Anachronox was due to the amazing story. Too bad though, they didn’t seem to show much on story.
Possible revised selling points:
Run Around!
Wharf!
Perform Routine Maintenance On Mechanical Equipment!
Seriously, switch it to daytime and remove the JRPG fights and you’d have yourself a cracking dockworker simulation on your hands.
Hitman and Vampire the Masquerade had a baby, which they then proceeded to beat with the “meh” stick. Not to say I hate it – I’d still pick this up if it turned up in a bargain bin somewhere, or if it sold for cheap.
Also, this quote from the website cracked me up:
“The overall impression is augmented by an original game soundtrack creating a slightly horror mood”
….because we wouldn’t want you to be TOO scared now.
Its $17 from their website, but the whole operation seems fly by night to me – who is this “Cmedia publishing”?. A google for their name turns up nothing but links to the Vampire Hunters website. A whois search seems even weirder.
I’m writing that slash fic.
No mention of developer,but seems to be by Mayhem studios(site if offline).
Previous games include Neverend,Shadow vault and Empire of magic… I have played both neverend and shadow vault and neither was truly bad,but not that great either.
http://games.ign.com/objects/481/481340.html
This games original name was Vampire story,but I guess since “A vampire story” was in the works,they had to change the name to Vampire hunters. :D
Only one here not a graphic whore by the looks of it. I want gameplay, good story and games that make me think, you know the type of games big publishers generally don’t make any more! Keep reporting on this please!
The overall impression is augmented by an original game soundtrack creating a slightly horror mood”
….because we wouldn’t want you to be TOO scared now
LMAO I might buy the game just because of these silly qoutes. A mysterious clan of vampires rages free, in old docks ? O.o What exactly is raging free? Is this a game about a bunch of vampires just raging around some docks at night doing nothing but being angry and walking across wooden planks? Also what is a “slightly horror mood” Is that music ala diablo where it is moody and dark but not right out scary?
Look down the list of today’s ‘headlines’ and try and find a non shooter type game. This is it. Says so much about today’s market!