

Sometimes you'll come across a room that seemingly has no way through, but exploration wins the day and you'll find genuinely clever for figuring it out. Level design is glorious at times, with some fantastic wall-to-wall and air acrobatics and hidden areas to find. These battles are also rather difficult, again emphasising that each is a break from the norm. These huge lumbering titans with incredibly silly names still usually have the same weak spots (get behind, slash, repeat), but the enormity of the situation gives them an added edge. The regular boss battles attempt to quell this tide of repetition, and to an extent do a good job. Sure, the character models may change, but there are barely any tactics involved - it's always simply a case of running at an enemy and hammering X until it's time to hit B and finish them. After a couple of hours of button-bashing baddies to death, you're still bashing the very same buttons to kill the very same enemies. Yet as great as it all initially feels, Vampire Smile falls into the same pit that Shank did. The mental asylum flashes pop up occasionally to quell the repetitive combat That's what Vampire Smile is really all about - making you feel insanely powerful, cutting down enemies in all directions and spilling their blood in the most inane ways. But it looks fantastic, and really gives the game a huge amount of style. It's all for show, and it's kinda comic-book style with gritty hand-drawn visuals and loads of completely over the top effects and moves.


There's a serious amount of blood involved. Once an enemy has been beaten to within an inch of his life, you can then perform a zoom-in blood-splattering move to finish them off. The bad guys can even hurt each other, which is great fun to experiment with.
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The enemy don't just come lumbering up to you and take a beating, and you'll need to zip around each room taking the strongest ones down before dealing with the weaklings. It's also rather difficult - but in a good way. The fighting is intense, especially later on when bad guys are all around. Essentially you've got the X button to smash enemies in the face with, B for grabbing and launching them at the ground, and Y for driving a chainsaw through their faces (again, Shank anyone?). If you played last year's downloadable title Shank, combat will feel familiar, if a little more bloody. There isn't exactly much of a story to follow in all honesty, and it can be incredibly confusing when you do try to take it in - but it's easy to appreciate the dark and mysterious settings, and the cutscenes and flashes do a great job of cutting the main action up. Something in the mental world is chasing you, however, and the story builds from there, flashing back and forth whenever it's time to get a little bit crazy. You are a prison in some sort of space jail - or are you a patient in a mental asylum? Flashes back and forth between these two worlds appear to jar each other at first, building a gorgeously tense atmosphere, but it quickly becomes apparently that the lead character can switch between these worlds to pass through solid objects. The Dishwasher: Vampire Style begins with the crazy, and never really lets go. The content levels definitely help to neutralise the balance of fun, but we're still left wondering what this game could have been.īoss battles are freaky as hell.
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The problem, however, is that the game never seems to reach its full potential, instead serving up the same enemies, the same combat, the same crazy all the way through. There's hectic combat to be found, some fantastic level design, and a story that never like to sit in a single spot for too long. Not that Vampire Smile is terrible - far from it. In amongst the grim setting and heavy guitar riffs, there's a button-basher that always feels like it longs for just that little bit more. For a game that features waves of blood, a mental asylum patient and a sort of dark and morbid collection of hand-drawn environments, The Dishwasher: Vampire Style is surprisingly inoffensive.
