Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Sacrifice

Review from Matt - Tuesday, 08 September 2009 @ 12:41pm

Let's just say I'm a Buffy fan and leave it at that.

Actually, no. Let's be more specific. I've watched the entire series beginning to end four times, with random episodes a dozen or more, and others somewhere in between. I own all of the DVDs, seven seasons of Buffy and five of of Angel. I have read (and in most cases own) the comic book series. I bought the Xbox game (not Chaos Bleeds, the one before) and enjoyed it. I know all of the words to every song in the musical episode. I have a Buffy the Vampire Slayer backpack when I travel.

Now let's say I'm a fan. Just wanted to give you perspective.

I was enthusiastic about the possibilities of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game. I have to say, the DS is not my platform of choice. It would be fun to have an updated beat-em-up ala Batman: Arkham Asylum on the big dog consoles, but sadly that's not the case. Buffy is an aging franchise these days. Granted Batman is older but – he's Batman. So the DS it is and the DS it shall be!

I felt that if there was anything the Buffy universe could provide and could bring to the DS it was good writing and story. The story behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Sacrifice is written by one of the writers of the show, and is intended to slot in between canonical events of season 7 and the comic 8. Unfortunately in doing so it kind of treads on the toes of the canon a bit. And then pisses on the Angel story.

Yay, a stick. Now you cannot punch.

Unfortunately it doesn't read like one of the writers of the show. It reads like unusually bad fan fiction. In one level I had to crossbow Spike after killing some Bringers, then talked to the Master in the Mayor's crypt. I mean honestly. It's like someone put every concept and name from the Buffyverse in a shoebox and then did a poo into the shoebox. Whatever stuck to the turd became part of the game. As for the poo itself...

Buffy's gameplay. The game is almost entirely played from fixed camera angles. Run through the corridor and you'll be in the next bit of corridor, etc. The problem is that just because you ran through the corridor from left to right doesn't mean you'll come in at the left again. You may now be at the bottom. And go right, which takes out back out and then you go left which turns you right. Confused? Me too. That style of camera placement goes well with games that have long sweeping turns, but is utterly unplayable in a game like Buffy, which has too many tight corners and maze type areas. Particularly unforgivable is a section in Buffy's house, where you really can't tell where you're going at any given time.

Even in combat the camera screws you over repeatedly, with any manoeuvring leading to you walking out of that screen and resetting the encounter. Sometimes. Sometimes they reset and sometimes they follow you. There doesn't seem to be any reason why.

Control is more effective in the other mode, an FPS style system that sees you playing Metroid style with a crossbow. Naturally they found a way to foul this up too. There's no rhyme nor reason for the switch to FPS, and no warning at all. The rest of the game can't be played with the stylus, and the FPS sections can't be played with it. This means if one comes in you have to literally pause, take out the stylus, and then unpause the game. More often I died first and had to start at the previous checkpoints. Boss fights all use this method, while most combat stays in the fixed camera view.

Modern Warfare 2: Shithouse Edition

Combat is actually the game's strong point. Once you start to build up a few combos they string together reasonably well, and are quite fun against some of the weaker enemies especially. Standard vampires will go down with a good combo, and sometimes they'll trigger a little quicktime event for an animated kill.

But the basic competence of the combat only serves to highlight the bizarre choices that were made in implementing it. For example, while Buffy has a series of combat moves and combos that can be strung together, every single one of them is for unarmed combat. Give her a weapon and she's limited to essentially “smash” and “kick”. Even her kick combos are no longer accessible and her punch is reduced to a spastic flail. The weapons in general do more damage when they connect, but being unable to string in the combos means they do massively less damage all in all. I can pretty much sum this issue up with this statement – it's significantly harder to kill a vampire with a stake than without one.

Nuff said.

Actually it's not. While on the subject, there's a block button. But block doesn't let you move. Block doesn't let you cast spells, or even change weapon. The only thing you can do from block is continue blocking or stop blocking. This means that while block does stop you getting hit it also isn't in any way strategic. You can sit there blocking and nothing can hit you, even if there are three of them and they're behind you. Or you can actually try to hit things back and be bizarrely vulnerable. Later enemies (especially Bringers) take an absolute pounding and will mess you up as you vainly attempt to fight back.

I did mention that you can cast spells, and indeed you can. Specifically Willow casts them through you. Spells are reasonably well implemented, using the sort of gestural system that the DS is well suited to. Of course, the vast majority of the game is unplayable with the stylus, and the spells can't be cast without the stylus... so yay. You can get away with a fingernail most of the time. There are a variety of spells, offensive and defensive, but not really many you'll use much except healing and the simple fireball. Being able to cast a spell while blocking would have been game-changing and for the better.

Look at the detail on those models

I haven't even gotten around to talking about the graphics. They're crap. There's not that much more to say about them that wouldn't just be of the “how bad are they” variety but even for a DS action game things are looking pretty dire.

The characters are obviously good, what with them being the characters from Buffy, and character voice is well handled. If you're a sad loser like me you can hear the correct accents and emphasis and that speaks well of it. There's very little that's out of character. The exception would probably be Willow, who seems to have reverted back to here more diffident and innocent earlier season self. But the presentation of the characters is strange. Dialogue is presented as slightly iffy comic versions on the bottom screen sometimes, or using rather stilted publicity photos in the top screen. While either works reasonably well there (as usual) seems to be no reason why both are used or why one and not the other at any given point.

In conclusion, don't play Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Sacrifice for any reason whatsoever, no matter how big a fan you are. If you're a Buffy fan (even not to my sad and lonely degree) you will be bothered by the weird name dropping and blatant breaks with canon. If you're not then why are you even looking at this game?

Pros

Combat is ok sometimes, I guess. Characters and dialogue not too bad.

Cons

Did you even read the review? Seriously. Pretty much everything.