Vampire Night

From acclaimed arcade game developer Wow Entertainment comes Vampire Night—a rail shooter with a lot of ammo, reloading, and plenty of vampires to disintegrate. Perhaps most famous for designing House of the Dead, a zombie rail-shooter that showed up in arcades all over the world—Wow decided to make another series about another undead creature: vampires. While rail-shooters have always been some of the most exciting games to play in an arcade setting, with a toy gun at your disposal, transporting them to consoles for a point and click gallery never quite lives up to the magic.

On the Hunt

The story of Vampire Night doesn’t bother being overly-complicated, as the medium really necessitates getting right in to the action. That being said, the story follows a duo of vampire hunters, Albert and Michel (always prepared for co-op gameplay), as they are the light meant to fight the darkness—the darkness being a ton of monstrous vampires.

In an opening level where the heroes save villagers and a young girl named Caroline, the story progresses with a few exciting twists including the revelation of the heroes being half-vampires before the climactic pyrrhic victory in the finale.

Point, Click, Repeat

Vampire Night follows a pretty consistent rinse and repeat pattern as all rail-shooters need to. While they are consistently tense, as more vampires block the screen and life-hits are limited—it’s always about how quick your reflexes are and how quick you can reload. Some flying enemies offer variants, and timing is key—but the game might be easier played with a mouse than a motion-tracking gun. That being said, don’t play the game with a controller—it’s like scrolling the Destiny menus with the cursor on console—not terribly fun. However, Vampire Night excels at offering tons of enemies, great scenery variety, and a lot of challenge (It’s made to eat arcade-tokens!).

The Modern Rail-Shooter

The biggest issue with a rail shooter comes from its limitations. As they are some of the most exciting games available in an arcade, Jurassic Park Arcade and Time Crisis come to mind, they don’t typically port well for one very important reason: no toy guns. However, if you happen to have access to any variety of motion-tracking gun—rail shooters have no end of excitement. That being said, the Wii excelled in that regard, and offered a new medium for the ports; even creating their own like Dead Space: Extraction and Killer 7. With all that in mind, the newest form of rail-shooters and a possible home for Vampire Night ports lies in VR—as games like Super Hot have excelled in that regard.

To Slay, or not to Slay

What Vampire Night lacks in visual quality it makes up for in fun. If you have a motion-tracking gun, it’s well worth a try if only for the consistently tension-building combat encounters.

Pros:

• Exciting rail-combat and variety
• Made for motion-track guns
• Fun enemy design, and lots of them!

Cons:

• Pretty awful voice acting
• Washed-out, aged graphics
• Limited gameplay variety if only using mouse