Chaos Bleeds features a story written by the same authors responsible for comic book adaptions of the franchise, which is definitely a good thing. Set in what seems to be the middle of the fifth season, Ethan Rayne has challenged The First (also known as the spirit of all evil) to a bet - if his five champions overcome whatever The First throws at them in it's own dimension, The First will reward Ethan with the power of a demonic god. If he fails, The First has a new bitch. For his five champions, Ethan chooses Buffy Summers, slayer extraordinaire, Willow Rosenberg, role model for gay witches everywhere, Xander Harris, the comic relief guy, Spike, everybody's second favourite vampire, and Faith, the good slayer turned rebel slayer turned good slayer again. Naturally, the five don't really have much choice, and are whisked away to The First's dimension, with the aim of destroying The First and preventing Ethan from gaining any power.
Roll Call
The game retains the basic premise of the Xbox original: kill vampires and other miscellaneous baddies, whilst picking up a certain item and using it at a certain spot. However, instead of playing as just Buffy this time around, the story switches between six characters at various times. Playable are Buffy, Faith, Spike, Willow, Xander, and oddly enough, Sid the ventriloquist puppet, thought to be liberated in the first season. Buffy, Faith and Spike all essentially play the same, relying on strength and fancy moves to get through. Xander isn't quite as strong as slayers or vampire, but he too relies on punching and kicking his way out of trouble. Willow, on the other hand, uses nothing but spells, most including the use of fire. Sid is just a puppet that's low on power, but high on speed. The use of multiple characters is an excellent idea. If you go from Buffy to Willow, you really have to fight differently than you would as a slayer - trying to punch someone out as Willow will not work. Whilst there are only really two and a half types of fighter (you rarely use play as Sid during the game), the change of character model helps keep the game feeling fresh.
Unfortunately, you are forced to use the said characters when the game wants you to, and all are apart of the main story. Individual stories involving each character would have been a nice addition, but it wasn't to be. Understandable, as it would probably have required multiple scripts. Perhaps you could manually change back and forth between characters when you were stuck. Regardless, the fact the game does it all for you makes it seem a little bit too easy.
Sunnydale - it's a picturesque place
The visuals in Chaos Bleeds are more than adequate. The character models, whilst not all fantastic and a bit too repetitious at times, are generally well done, allowing you to easily distinguish who is who easily enough. The environments themselves are decent - but many seem to be a little bit too empty, lacking in texture variety, or just sport a rather bland colour scheme. The animation is generally quite good, with convincing punches, kicks, and walking. In fact, the only bad animation, which should come as no surprise, is the climbing of a ladder. It just doesn't look right, but it's a minor problem. Slowdown, to a standstill, happens on the odd occasional, but it happens infrequently and doesn't last much more than a moment or two before it ends, so it?s hardly game destroying. Also worth noting are the rather nice visual effects that accompany Willow's spells, or some of the more powerful moves used by the other characters. Nothing like seeing the screen erupt in fire orange.
The game's camera is somewhat of a mixed bag. For the most part, it's fairly good - but tends to get stuck in small spaces, which can be a hassle. Unfortunately, the biggest problem is that there's no first person viewing mode - you can only stop and survey the surrounding area if you're carrying a crossbow, and, even then, vision is rather limited. Whilst you never actually miss anything significant because of not being able to see it above your head, it would have been a nice, and sensible, thing to have.
Straight from the horse's mouth
Chaos Bleeds features samples from the actual actors who play their various characters in Buffy, from Nicholas Brendon as Xander, through to Amber Benson as Tara. Unfortunately, Sarah Michelle Geller and Alyson Hannigan, who play Buffy and Willow respectively, are notably absent. The stand in Buffy from the Xbox original is still around though, providing quite the resemblance to Geller. Unfortunately, Willow's replacement doesn?t have the same gift. Whilst the lines she has are typically Willow, her voice just sounds wrong and everything comes out sounding rather disturbing. For the rest of the cast, the lines they provide are right in tune with the Buffy world, and sound like they've been ripped out of the show. Their various comments which pop up every now and then, such as trying to open a door or picking up an item, are quite good, and break up the background music well. Some are even quite funny, such as Buffy attempting to open a locked door: "My mum always said my natural charisma would open doors - Just not this one." Or, when picking up a stake: "Just what every girl needs - a nice long shaft. Oh wait, that came out wrong." However, there simply aren't enough of them, and they tend to repeat, which can grate on you.
The effects are quite decent, with the crunches and thuds of the fight scenes coming off quite well. The Buffy theme is retained during the opening menus, which is a nice touch. As we've come to expect over the last generation of games, the score fades in and out, reflecting the action taking place on screen. It's just as effective here as it is in other games, providing a healthy level of tension. One minor problem here is that one effect is repeated over, over and over again during cut scenes. You might recognize it as the holy sounding effect in the movie End Of Days.
Slayin' those demons
Chaos Bleeds is a very fun experience. The fighting has more depth than just punch and kick, with a huge amount of special moves and combos available, particularly for the slayers. However, despite having depth, the whole thing feels a little bit clunky and unresponsive at times. As enemies often tend to jump out of nowhere, button bashing results rather than a thought out combo. This leads to a long series of punches and kicks which may entirely miss whilst an enemy circles around behind you, leaving you vulnerable to attack as the combo you just started sends you on a rampage against the wall. Enemies also like coming from multiple sides - and the fighting controls don't take kindly to this. It's extremely difficult to mount a precise and effective offensive whilst switching directions all the time.
There are a variety of weapons in the game, ranging from your basic wooden stakes, to pitchforks, to baseball bats, and even to super soakers filled up with holy water. Whilst fun to play with, weapons also often become a liability rather than an advantage - their attacks take far too much time to charge up in tight spaces, and you quick promptly get the crap kicked out of you. Selecting weapons and other various items is also a hassle, simply because you can't do it in the menu screen, forcing you to flick through the items with the directional pad, whilst running away from your enemies. However, these problems generally fail to stop the game from being good fun to play.
The puzzles start off as mostly find this item and place it here affairs, but escalate into rather good puzzles as the game wears on. The biggest problem here is that the characters tend to say a bit too much rather than letting you figure them out for yourself - but this is probably a concession to allow everybody to progress in the game.
The "hugely interactive environments" that were promised in the game aren't really present. Sure, you can break the occasional chair and window, but not a whole lot else. The ability to break off a tree branch and shove it through a vampires heart would have been a nice addition - you often see plenty of items that would make excellent weapons, but you just can't use them.
Will this last forever?
The biggest falling point of Chaos Bleeds is that the game is simply too short. There are twelve levels in the game to explore, the vast majority of them being fairly large. One hassle here is that you cannot save your progress at the various continue points through the level. But, when the overall game size is taken into account, it's more than understandable. Going through a level the second time isn't particularly hard anyway, as it is the puzzles that take up the majority of your time. But even with this taken into account, the main game will take around ten hours to complete for the average gamer. Buffy fans will probably want to play through multiple times, but second and third attempts shouldn't take much more than a few hours. Non-Buffy fans might not want to touch it ever again. As you progress you also unlock bonus videos of the voice over cast giving interviews about the franchise, various out takes, and so on. They are only a few minutes in length, but are a nice reward for completing a level.
Thankfully, coming to the rescue of game's lifespan is the more than adequate multiplayer mode. It's no Counter-Strike, but it's cute enough in its own little way. There are four modes for you to sink your teeth in to, including Bunny Catch, (catch, amazingly enough, rabbits), Survival (last person left standing after fending off many evil things), Slayer Challenge (the other players control evil things which gang up on one player who is the slayer) and Domination (basically capture the flag). It's definitely an important big addition to the game, adding many hours to the Chaos Bleeds experience.
Buy it or slay it?
Chaos Bleeds could have used several more levels and perhaps a little bit more polishing. As it stands though, this game is one of the best action games you'll find out there. If you're a fan Buffy, then you should most definitely purchase this game. It captures the best aspects of the television show, and backs it up with a thoroughly entertaining gaming experience that you'll play through several times. For everyone else, Chaos Bleeds is best severed as a rental.
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