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Let me start out by saying that this game has absolutely nothing to do with the tv show Dark Angel. The two do share one similarity, though…neither are very good!
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The story to Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse sounds surprisingly interesting! 1000 years ago the evil Shadow Lord, who ruled the land of Gothos, was defeated. After his defeat, he took his armies back to the underworld where he immediately began a plan to regain his throne. Years passed, and with the Shadow Lord no longer tyrannizing mankind, great progress was made. The other inhabitants of Gothos began to fear human beings, and the Shadow Lord called out to them in their time of fear and doubt. Creatures began to rise up to fight against the humans, and the Shadow Lord prepared to return. You play as Anna, a mysterious young woman who is leading the fight against the underworld. Your mission as Anna is to rally the people of Gothos and protect them until they are ready to fight. So far, so good, right? Well, that storyline information is from the booklet that comes with the game. It’s multiple times the amount of storyline you’ll get from actually playing! The game starts out and you’re immediately in combat with a handful of monsters that are attacking a village. There’s no intro at all whatsoever and if you didn’t read the booklet you’d have no clue what the game was even about. The story really serves no purpose at all in this game other than to make sense of the monster slaughtering Anna will do for the remainder of the game. Making things even worse for the game is that all that’s known of Anna is that she’s a “mysterious girl” whose village was destroyed and now leads for humans against darkness. To say that the story and characters in this game are underdeveloped would be a pretty huge understatement. I just explained more about the game's story that you’ll ever get from playing.
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The game plays very much like Diablo and you’ll run through various towns and dungeons hacking and slashing away at large armies of grotesque beasts. In the villages you travel through you’ll come across various quests that you are to complete, such as rescuing some citizens, or killing some great monster. There isn’t a lot involved in playing this game…just push X a lot and swing your weapon around until everything dies, then move on to the next group of monsters. Anna is equipped with a large arsenal of weapons, ranging from pistols to axes. The weapons and equipment are easily the game's strongest feature, and there are an immense variety to choose from. Each weapon class is strong against specific types of monsters, for example sabers are strong against vampires and ghouls. Many of the weapons also have special abilities, such as the vampire swords ability to drain HP from its victim. To top it all off, each piece of equipment has an individual level of strength, so one broad sword may be stronger than another. Equipment and items can be bought in villages, or can be picked up from dead monsters. Monsters constantly drop good stuff, so, if for some reason you decide to play this game, you’ll be able to take full advantage of them. In combat you can perform a basic attack with your melee weapon, perform a special attack (assuming the weapon you wield has an ability), jump, block, use items and fire a pistol. Powering up Anna is nothing special, and the more you hack and slash the more experience Anna gets. Eventually she’ll level up, and along with her array of weapons and armor, she can go toe to toe with hordes of monsters.
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The whole thing is pretty basic, but it’s fun for a little while. It doesn’t take long to figure out that it isn’t going anywhere, though, and continuing to play for very long is pointless. The game's length is a big problem, and the developers promise 400 hours of gameplay! You’d think length would be a good thing because you’re getting more for your money, but that’s not true in this case. Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse is a game that’s long just for the sake of being long. With the complete lack of story and repetitive hack and slash combat, the game could (and should) have been reduced to 10 hours or less. If the game featured some story and was overall more developed, it could easily have been an interesting game worthy of 20 hours or so, but that’s not the case. It’s certainly not worthy of 400 hours of anyone’s life! I can’t say I finished the game…it’s just not worth it. But then again, I can’t imagine there are a whole lot of people in the world that actually did finish it. If anyone knows someone who did, let me know! I’m curious!
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The graphics are passable, but nothing great. Anna moves pretty fluidly in combat, which is important because you'll spend so much time fighting. The camera is pretty far off from combat so it’s pretty hard to tell exactly what’s going on sometimes, and the backgrounds are pretty dull, but it’s usually too dark to tell what the surroundings look like anyway. There are some nice lighting effects in the game, like when Anna shots her pistol, but overall the graphics aren’t anything special at all.
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The game has some decent background noises, but it’s nothing that will awe you. There’s also a decent soundtrack, but the few tunes fade out constantly and you’re left with absolutely no music. And when there is actually music it’s the same few songs over and over. Those few songs may be decent, but nothing you want to hear over and over for a few hours, let alone 400 hours!
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Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse is just too long of a game to really deserve attention from most people. Making matters worse is that it’s not that good of a game anyway. At first glance this may ALMOST seem like a tempting buy, because it can constantly be found in the cheap bin at stores, and because it’s called Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse…come on, that’s a cool title! But, I would steer clear of this game. Even at a marked down price, you won’t likely get your money's worth out of it. Although, if you’re one of those people who gets obsessive about games and wants to do absolutely everything there is to do, then this may be just the game for you. It’s really frickin’ long, so it’ll keep you busy, and there’s plenty of weapons that can be searched out, so even if you don’t progress into the game you’ll have something to do. Still, I’d recommend just sticking to Diablo.
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