Vampire Origins is the first chapter in what Chillingo hopes will be a successful series of games to be released under the Vampire Nomenclature. Each title will present you with a continuation of the story and in Origins we get to learn how the story begins. You play the role of Vincent who was killed by the evil vampire leader Valafar after Vincent tried to avenge the death of his wife. Now Vincent is brought back to the mortal world and tasked with stopping Valafar’s regime and saving the world from destruction once and for all and avenge his wife’s death in the process.
Upon Vincents return to the mortal world he was blessed with the ability to reveal hidden potions and pages of the storyline hidden throughout the game by holding your finger down on screen for a few seconds. However potions will not be enough to stem the tide of this battle. For that Vincent will need to rely on his rifle, pistol, and various other weapons picked up along the way.
The game consists of many different types of vampires to contend with. Bats and other vampire zombie like creatures will try to attack you from every direction imaginable. To defend yourself you need to qickly tap on your enemies or press the action button on the screen to shoot and kill them before they kill you.
Vampire Origins contains plenty of action packed blood and gore battles
The controls are rather simple. You move Vincent around with the virtual control stick in the bottom left of the screen and use the action button to shoot or interact with objects such as levers. You are guided from scene to scene with a GPS like guide on the control stick and occasionally you must solve some puzzles in order to progress to the next scene.
Once you have completed a set of tasks you will encounter a boss battle. These boss battles consists of high action scenes with little to no user control. You simple slide your finger in a given direction and if you do it fast and correct you will do perfect damage to your opponent. While the fight scenes are spectacular looking it left me with the feeling of wanting more.
After you defeat your opponent you are then greeted with beautiful hand drawn cut scenes which tell you more of the storyline. These are really stunning visuals which really helps the game stand out from every other action title.. The game plays out is in full 3D environment which are really well done. The music is also spot on and gives you that eerie feeling that you want when playing a game like this.
Be ready at all times as enemies will attack from every direction without discretion.
Once you complete the game you will unlock a survival mode that will keep you entertained while waiting for the next chapter in the series to be released. It also features the Crystal gaming network where you can earn achievements for an extra added bonus to help extend the replay value of the title.
Overall the game is very solid. Excellent graphics, good controls, and a perfect ambiance for the genre. However the game does have one major flaw currently and that’s the original asking price of $6.99 at the time of this review is to high for a game I completed in under 3 hours. We just don’t feel consumers are getting a proper value for the cost.
While some might think that’s a pretty decent amount of time for a single chapter in an ongoing series I feel the titles current asking price for the limited gameplay really hurts this title, and will possibly prevent many users from playing an otherwise fantastic game. Something more like $2.99 would be a perfect price point for a game of this length and substantially broaden the games install base for sure.
We highly recommend this game to fans of the genre or who are not concerned about the price immediately but If your on a budget we recommend you put this on your must have once the price drops to an acceptable level.
Wow, looks really amazing! Will have this marked to buy later!