| The second shooter in the Australian PAL
territory comes out blazing in the form of the fantastic Vampire Night! The launch of this title must have come as a relief for the light gun enthusiasts out there, with nothing being available since the wonderful Time Crisis 2 on Playstation 2. After some delays in production Vampire Night is sure to tease and tantalise more than one of you into some late, late nights. Naturally, as the title suggests you have to take out members of the unholy and undead with your trusty G-Con lightblaster. Reminiscent of the brilliant arcade shooter House of the Dead, Vampire Night is a thrills and spills ride that you can make as both single player or an excellent two player game. After playing the game through in both modes, it is my opinion that this game is actually better when played with a friend. The level of interaction achieved is much better and frankly you'll have a bit more time to appreciate the awesome graphics that have been made available to you. Though complaints have been made with regard to "flickering" in the NTSC version, I must confess that either I was having waaaaay too much fun to notice or it was not there for the PAL version. Everything was crisp and clear and quite a delight to shoot at actually. As you can quite clearly see from the screenshots provided, Vampire Night looks fabulous and some of the end boss designs are absolutely inspired to say the least. Soundwise there is very little to rave about, with "standard" weapons sounds and even some of the monster noises not really taking you by surprise. Music for the main title and cutscenes is fantastic and truly plays to the mood set by the game. Unfortunately you won't be able to hear it much of the sounds of your guns blazing and enemies dying! Interactive items add to the playability of the title so be sure to blast away anything in front and to the sides of you. Barrels, pots and the like will explode to reveal secrets and treasure which can then be used to buy items. Be sure to play in Special mode as well as regular due to the fact that it will open up missions for you to complete and generally give a feeling of urgency to the game (as though it wasn't there already!). The training missions provided can also act as a subset of missions that can provide distraction for you to beat best times etc. Whilst this game has been a collaboration between two of the best gun game companies (Sega and Namco), Vampire Night does not offer anything new to the genre, other than a satisfying blast em up and in fact was mainly produced by Wow who are the mob behind the House of the Dead series, and if that isn't a great pedigree, then I don't know what is. It is possible to blast through the game in a little over an hour if you are attempting to break records, however I don't believe you will be getting out of the title everything that it has to offer. | 
