Retro Review - Countdown Vampires

I have already mentioned it before, with the arrival and the success that Resident Evil had, many videogame developers wanted to imitate what the zombie saga imposed in the industry, some videogames enjoyed a certain fame since they added modalities that despite the great similarity they had with Resident Evil, due to those particular differences made videogames with their own personality, however, there are others that didn't get to much and got stuck even though they wanted to implement some novelties in their argument. The game I'm going to tell you about is a regular title, it's not very good, but it's not extremely bad, let's say, it's ok, but it has the peculiarity that, instead of its plot focusing on the famous zombies, this game focuses on other of the most famous monsters in the film industry, vampires.

In Countdown Vampires we are Keith J. Snyder, he is a policeman who is working in the facilities of a club, club which in turn is a hotel and casino. During our protagonist's working day everything was fine, music was loud, people playing in the casino, spending a lot of money and losing it, of course, women dancing and people getting drunk, the normal thing we can find if we go somewhere like this. Nevertheless everything would change at the moment that in the casino begins a fire, immediately the people that were in these facilities are alarmed and the chaos arises, but the worst is yet to come, at the same time, the alarms against fires are activated and from the ceiling begins to fall water wetting thus to all that were in that range, but something strange is happening with that "water", Since for unknown reasons people begin to become vampires, begins a massacre against those who had not been converted, the doors were blocked in such a way that our protagonist like some characters who did not manage to convert, are completely enclosed and in imminent danger of death.

This is when Keith J. Snyder, our main character, comes into action, as he is going to solve what happened and find the person responsible for this and to fight against the vampires and some other creatures that will appear on stage, Keith J. Snyder is going to roam around all the stages of the game without shirt and showing the huge and horrible tattoo he has on part of his body, something that is totally useful for combat, I guess. That's very rare.

It's impossible not to make a comparison between this game and Resident Evil because of its great similarities, I mentioned it before with other games that tried to emulate what the famous zombie saga did. In the case of Countdown Vampires, graphically it is below in quality to what Resident Evil showed in his time, like this one, the scenarios are pre-rendered, but at a lower level, although not much, because in spite of this, the details on screen are recognizable and distinguishable, in some cases, of course.

It could be said that in the graphic aspect, the modeling of the characters and above all, the modeling of our protagonist is "best" worked of this game, our main character has a very well detailed modeling and that, although it is nothing spectacular, if it is good enough, in fact, if we place the protagonist of Countdown Vampires in the Resident Evil saga would easily go unnoticed, although as he's all the time without a shirt I doubt it a little.

The enemies themselves are not very varied, especially the vampires, their designs do not change much and are repeated for much of the duration of the video game, but in addition to vampires, we also find other types of creatures such as werewolves, insect men, some of the designs of these creatures are very good, but others are grotesque, but in a bad way.

The soundtrack is normal, it has its typical melodies for each situation, accompanying moments of action, suspense or "terror", but in general, the musical and sound level of Countdown Vampires doesn't stand out at all, in fact, I don't remember any memorable melody, as they are all too generic (for every text I write in this review, I'm realizing that this game is a bit mediocre). Although there is one detail to highlight regarding the sound aspect is that at least the voice dubbing of the characters are pretty good.

There's really not much to say about the gameplay of Countdown Vampires, as it's almost exactly the same as Resident Evil, but down to the smallest detail, it's the same as the zombie saga. We will have in classic, obsolete and annoying "tank control", a game mode that in its time had its successes, but now is a mode that more than obsolete, is annoying and uncomfortable, because it limits too much the movements of our character.

As Resident Evil we must go to each scenario that the game has available and get information of some characters or information that is simply there for the player to find it, as well as keys that will allow us to open certain places, but above all we will find several puzzles, that really some of them lack meaning and that in turn, many of them we are going to solve by mere luck.

If there is one point where this game stands out (out of the few points) in terms of its gameplay is the way to eliminate vampires, since, it is known, from how we have been shown in movies and series, is that vampires have a certain degree of immortality and are immune to firearms or knives, but it is also known that vampires are weak in the face of holy water, Therefore our protagonist carries a weapon of sedatives and holy water to "eliminate" the vampires once and for all, because if we use firearms against them, we will only immobilize them for a few moments and when I say "eliminate" I mean to turn them back into humans, because it is very important not to eliminate the vampires to unlock the "good end" of the game.

To achieve this, we must complete the game in a certain amount of hours and without eliminating any human, this will give us the "real end" of the game or rather, to complete the game meeting the requirements mentioned above, will unlock new game modes and one of those modes will show us the "full game", because in itself, the game is incomplete and we must pass it a first time, fulfilling the necessary requirements to complete the "good end", to be able to unlock a game mode, which by playing it will give us full access to the "full game", in this "full game" mode there are scenes and conversations that in the normal version are not included, this way give coherence to certain moments and situations that occur in the game when we are playing for the first time. I really don't understand why the developers of Countdown Vampires made their game this way, because to be honest, it's a bit stupid.

Countdown Vampires is a bad game, maybe it's a little entertaining, but it has too many things for it to be a bad and mediocre game, personally when I discovered it a few years ago, I was really interested because it was the "Resident Evil with vampires", but is far from being a good game..