To start with, let me say that the concept of Vampire Rain is great. Take a Splinter Cell-like government funded special operations team, and equip them to fight the greatest threat known to mankind: Vampires. The concept has huge potential, from cool spy equipment, to infiltrating Vampire lairs, to rescuing hostages. Imagine scores of vampire and agent multiplayer matches online. All it needed was halfway decent gameplay and a good story. Instead, we are treated to some of the worst design in a videogame since Driv3r.

The main character is John Lloyd, a man who witnessed the brutal slaying of his family by Vampire predators and lived to tell the tale. John spent his time perfect his skills to become the ultimate vampire killer. Sounds cool, right? No. John is a poor man's Sam Fischer, without the sly wit, cool voice, or badass attitude. Lloyd looks practically undead himself, he can barely sneak past a deaf person looking the wrong way. Long story short, Lloyd is not fit to be the main character of a Denny’s restaurant. The voice actor assigned to portray Lloyd seems to recognize this, and tried give Lloyd a cheesy also B-Movie quality voice, but in the end it doesn't work.

The game is designed to force the player into a purely stealth style gameplay. To that end, Lloyd and all non-vampire characters have very little health. How little? A basic enemy can kill any character, even the hero, in two hits. One stuns you, the other kills you. That’s right; all the government training in the world allows our hero to survive two hits. What’s really bad is that death is inescapable. In other words, if you are spotted once, you are dead. Even the original Thief: The Dark Project didn't have this kind of limited survivability.

But surely all that government funding gives the heroes awesome gadgets and weapons, right? Well, the American government must have been slacking off somewhat, or they can't read a book or watch a James Bond movie. Your primary weapons are guns with silver bullets. Forgetting, for a moment, that silver bullets do nothing to Vampires in Japanese or American lore, your guns are virtually useless. They simply don't do enough damage to a vampire to make a gun a viable option. You can stand at one end of a huge open room and unload a full clip into a vampire at the opposite end in this game. It will, with cool, inhuman speed, gleefully charge up to you and kill you before you even run out of your first round. The sole exception to this is the shotgun, which does massive, acceptable damage at close range.

In later stages, Lloyd does have access to a ultra-violet knife. This handy item can be used for an insta-kill on any vampire Lloyd is fortunate enough to sneak up on. It’s a great weapon, and its Lloyd's best defense against the vampire menace. It has two restrictions: It can't be used unless an enemy is unaware of you, and you only give five stabs per stage before the battery runs out. Yes, his hand to hand combat weapon has an ammo meter. It is downright illogical to have an ammo meter on a knife.

This type of odd design thinking extends to Lloyd's other equipment. Lloyd has a nice set of Nightvision goggles. These are useful for extended stays in darkened areas. However, that’s precisely what Lloyd CAN'T do because his goggles seem to run on an infinitely recharging battery that wears out after about five seconds. He also has a special vision scope which allows him to discern vampires from humans. It too manages to suffer from the same super weak but infinitely recharging battery as his NVG's.