Vampire Rain: Altered Species for PlayStation 3 Reviews by Gamers

You've been warned: VR is a monstrosity, no pun intended. If you hoped for a decent stopgap title while waiting in line for Mercenaries (or looking ahead to A Far Cry 2, COD5, and Brothers in Arms), you'd have more fun watching Canadian Parliament on CNN like Kramer.

This is one of those games whose flaws become apparent very early and in quick succession. While it's true that VR improves marginally as the game progresses, I thought the point of playing a PS3 title in 2008 is that you shouldn't be forced to "wait" for a game to improve as it goes along.

Once you become accustomed to skipping the constant cut scenes, you notice that the graphics lack any richness or vibrancy, from the bland, wooden character models to the paste-up, untextured exteriors. Watching yourself and a teammate move throughout this game reminds me of a Scooby Doo episode - they share the same loping gait and stiff gestures as cartoon figures. Audio is a mishmash of some decent "in the distance" sound effects and the cheeseball dialogue of your teammates. AI is ludicrously incompetent.There's a distinct nod to Splinter Cell with things like night vision and the ability to navigate open spaces via sliding down wires or crossing hand-over-hand along ledges, but people like me who were disappointed by SC's last title won't be thrilled to see these features in VR.

Everyone's also been rambling on about the importance of using stealth tactics in the early missions and the fact that you die so easily without inflicting much harm until later - yeah, that's true, but it doesn't mean that the "team-based" work makes the game any more fun.

I'm telling you, put in F.E.A.R. again for something truly creepy and effective - don't expect anything from VR except disappointment. It's not worth the time to download the updates for your system or to "transfer data" to your hard drive that should never be installed in the first place.