Salve, et grata ToriJ Video ludos.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I used to watch this all the time as a
kid. It's one of my all time favorite shows, so when I heard there
was a game coming out I was ecstatic. Just one problem, I didn't
have an Xbox! None of my friends did. It was either PS2 or GameCube.
Maybe a couple of people at church had an Xbox, but they certainly
wasn't playing Buffy. Only Xbox game I ever heard anyone talk about
was Halo. For years this game has eluded me, but not anymore. I'm
popping this bad girl in and playing some Buffy!
The ghost of
Giles is here to collect on your overdue library books.
We start
off with Giles explaining the origins of the Slayer. Thoughtful, but
unnecessary. Did they really think anyone who wasn't a fan of the
show would play this? Oh, well. They make up for it by having the
intro play over a series of clips taken from the actual game. If that
doesn't get you pumped up for some Slayer dusting action then
nothing will.
The first
stage of the game is a tutorial level to get you use to the controls
and the combat. The combat isn't the worst experience I ever had in
a video game, but it could have been loads better. You have an
attack button for punching and kicking that you can mix up to perform
combos. There's a meter for health, and a meter for your Slayer
power. Your Slayer power helps charges up your attacks so you can
inflict more damage. When a vampire's health is down to zero you can
stake them through the heart to finish them. A stake isn't your only
weapon, you can also get things like the crossbow, a gun that shoots
holy water or hellfire, and an awesome Reaper Blade that Giles hands
to you later in the game.
Everyone
and their mother can block in this game except for you. The best
thing you can hope for is to be able to dash out of the way, but
it's nearly impossible to get out of the way in time before you're
hit. If an enemy is either punched, or moves out of the way mid-combo
Buffy is just going to be standing there like a jackass hitting air.
This allows the computer to get a punch in, and they only need one
or two hits to knock you on your ass. Some vampires can even perform
magic to stun you. Others will just throw bottles of hellfire at you.
I enjoy watching it blow up in their faces when it leads to their
death. Unfortunately, you can't throw any bottles of hellfire
yourself. You can only combine it with your arrows or gun like you
can with holy water. Just once I would like to play a game where the
computer doesn't have a cheap advantage over you to make it
challenging.
I hope you
enjoy hearing the same lines over and over again, because this game
is notorious for some of the laziest voice recordings I've ever
heard. Buffy and vampires alike will repeat the same lines with
little variation in-between. Do you know how many times I heard “You
can't win, Slayer. There's only one of you and an endless supply of
us?” Too many times! In one cut-scene the vampire doesn't even
get his own lines, he just recites one of the gameplay dialogs. How
lazy is that? Way to cut corners, guys. Even the game got sick of
hearing it because I lost the sound a quarter of the way through.
Because who wants a working game? I had to reboot the Xbox to get it
working again.
One thing
they didn't cut corners on was getting the actors from the show. All
of the cast members minus Sarah Michelle Gellar and the original
actor that played The Master reprise their roles. Buffy is voiced by
Giselle Loren who does a pretty impressive impersonation of
S.M.G. The Master is voiced by D.C. Douglas, who is probably best
known for his work as Albert Wesker in Resident Evil 5. He doesn't
try to emulate Mark Metcalf, and I think his performance is all the
better for it. While we're on the subject of The Master:
Guess who's
back? Back again? Master back. Tell a friend.
The Master
is being resurrected from the spirit world and it's up to Buffy and
the Scooby Gang to put a stop to it. Bringing back The Master was
probably the obvious choice because of his relationship with Buffy.
I don't think any of the other villains in the show, sans Angelus,
has ever come close to getting under Buffy's skin. Just seeing her
reaction to him being back says it all. Nothing in the game
contradicts anything from the show, so I think it can be considered
c anon at this point. The Master's death rate is the same as Buffy's.
You can beat
up on Spike. Poor Spike. He never did have much luck with blondes.
Enemies you
can encounter in the game include vampires (duh), skeletons (don't
remember those in the show), zombies, and of course, demons. In
addition to Spike you can also face a possessed Angel, and The
Master himself. Two boss fights involve vamps who can shapeshift
into animals; a serpent and a lion. Easily the hardest of the two is
the serpent, and that's only because you have to open up parts of
Angel's house to let the sun in to kill the bitch. You can't just
stake her. The easiest boss fight is with the first Dreamer you face.
The game builds them up as these big bads that can manipulates
reality itself, and then you kill one of them in just a few punches.
Talk about overrated.
My favorite
part of the game is when you're in the library talking to the main
cast. We have Willow, Xander, Giles, and Cordelia. Eventually, even
Angel and Spike gets some time in the library. Oz is mentioned as
absent. I'm guessing they couldn't get Seth Green, and while Dru
does appear in the game she has no lines, so I'm guessing they
couldn't get her actress either. A minor setback when you have so
many of the main cast in the game at a time where both Buffy and
Angel were still on the air. Willow sends you on the path to find
power crystals to strengthen you, Xander gives you the squirt gun to
help kill vamps (I forget what it's called, but for all intent and
purposes, it's a squirt gun), and Giles gives you new combos you can
use in battle. You can even talk to each characters several times
until they start to wonder what you're still doing there. Gotta love
it.
Because it
wasn't enough for her to drown the first time.
You know
what's bullshit? Being able to die in water! That's right, all Buffy
has to do is fall in any body of water and you get a game over. If
an enemy even so much as knocks you into it, you're dead. You're
telling me that Buffy doesn't know how to swim? She never thought
that might be a handy skill? “I'm Buffy, Vampire Slayer. I ain't
getting on no boat!”
The camera
in this game jumps all over the place. You'll be trying to perform a
simple task like pushing a switch while fighting a boss, and you can
hardly see where it is because the camera is fixed on the boss. Then
the developers decided that platforming needed to be added to the
game, so you're wrestling with the camera just to line up your jump.
This was not a game made for platforming. You have a hard enough
time just lining Buffy up to grab onto a pipe.
Mopping the
floor with you!
There are a
couple of weapons you can pick up like the mop in the above picture.
Other weapons include a shovel, a spike, and a sledgehammer. The
sledgehammer is without a doubt the best weapon in the whole game.
You can just slam it into the enemy repeatedly and smash a vampire's
head in. A lot of the weapons have their own health meter, and when
the meter runs out the weapon breaks.
Another
thing I like about this game is that it changes Buffy's clothes
through levels. How many times does a video game character changes
clothes? Almost never. Even Xander is wearing something different
depending on the day. Not Willow, though. Willow doesn't have to
change anything. She's Willow.
Whoever
designed this is an asshole.
In closing,
would I play it again? No. No I wouldn't. In fact, I wished I never
played this piece of shit to begin with! I like the story. I like
that most of the actors from the show reprise their roles, and it
feels like an episode, but that where the good things end. The
gameplay mechanics are horrible. No matter how good you get at the
combat you're just going to be punching air every time. Enemies will
glitch into the ground keeping you from killing them. This isn't a
video game, it's a Slayer life simulator. This game was created to
show you how much being the Vampire Slayer fucking sucks! If you're
a Buffy fan and you never played this game before, do yourself a
favor and YouTube it! You're more likely to have a much more
enjoyable experience watching someone else suffer through this game
than playing it yourself.
Skip it
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