Buffy: The Vampire Slayer Preview

I ask you, is there anything more exhilarating than a cute blond chick bashing evil monsters and zombies around? The fearless young cheerleader is going to find a home on the Xbox console in the new upcoming action game Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, presently in development by The Collective (located in Southern California). Beside Buffy, many popular characters from the series will appear in the game, such as Spike, Xander, Cordelia, Giles, Drusilia and Angel. The same actors as those from the show have donated their voices to the development team.

Feel Buffy's wrath!

Swing that right jab baby!

As far as the game's storyline goes, it has been worked on with great scrutiny, which means the plot won't merely be taken from the TV episodes. Essentially, it is going to be brand new. Buffy Summers, the cheerful teenager from Sunnydale (California), was given the task of confronting the threatening forces of hell - hordes of blood-thirsty vampires and zombies. Apparently, many, many years ago, ancient demons ruthlessly ruled Earth and had all the power under their control. Centuries have passed and now humans are running things. I don't know how it happened, but mankind has managed to uphold against these forces and Earth was a safe and cool place to live in (BUAHAHAHA - ed). Interestingly enough, there's one evil vampire dude (or nosferatu if you will), who somehow created a portal, thanks to which many of the evil demons and gruesome monsters have returned to reclaim Earth as their own. Cute little Buffy is the only one who's daring enough to resist this new evil (hello, moron plot alert - ed).

Judging from the screens and the info we have for the game so far, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer is a third-person action adventure that carries a slight resemblance to games like Resident Evil. The only thing is, Buffy focuses more on kick&punch combinations, contrary to the shotgun and Uzi carnage we've seen in Resident Evil. Engaging in fighting duels with the vampire monstrosities, Buffy will have a solid range of combat moves, which include low and high punches and kicks, as well as a cool mix of effective combo hits. These moves can be performed with the use of various combinations of attack buttons on your Xbox controller. Now for the cool part: aside from various combat moves Buffy can pick up spiky objects in the environment using them as attack and defense weapons, various thingies like rakes, shovels, and so on. One of the most lethal items she'll get to use is the stake, which can be stuck straight into the opponent's decrepit body after you've given him a couple of swift kicks in the butt. The game allows you to combine several items, thus developing nifty weapons, which are going to make vampire extermination more efficient. A good example for this is the always useful crossbow, which can be quite lethal when you mix arrows with holy water. There's also the possibility of arcane spellcasting, which apart from its usefulness has a unique visual charm.

Besides all that, your main task throughout the game is to track down vampires and evil demons and send them back to hell. But, that's not all. Buffy's sometimes required to rescue some of her friends (popular characters from the show), who were incarcerated by the demons.

Foes like zombies and various demons are going to be extremely dangerous and sometimes just slicing of a few of their limbs won't be enough to keep them away. Also, some enemies from the show will be making an appearance; like the infamous hellhounds. Some of these vicious enemies are quite intelligent and will possess such a combat system that allows them to retaliate by learning from character's fighting techniques.

Apart from having highly-detailed graphics, this game features many innovative and novel animation effects. For instance, after killing a vampire or a zombie their poor bodies will start to melt and burn in a most peculiar way, eventually vanishing into thin air. Generally, we can say that the game has significantly improved after its E3 demonstration, showing a rather promising array of visual effects - some nice real-time lighting effects have been unveiled such as neat fire animations (gleaming candle fire and so on) and eldritch explosions. The character's appearance and on-screen movement is all motion-captured; this makes Buffy look and act extremely lifelike, plus she looks very much like the actress Sarah Michelle Gellar, who portrays the roles in the series (incidentally, all of the motion-captured movements were performed by Gellar's stunt double). In addition, you'll have the delightful opportunity of choosing Buffy's outfits. Nice!

For now it is known that Buffy: The Vampire Slayer has a total of 12 missions (and submissions), all of which will be going on in famous places from the TV Show - the cemetery, The Bronze nightclub, Sunnydale High School, and the library, which represents the portal located on top of the Hellmouth. Anyways, after the TV show went through its sixth season in broadcasting, it was obvious that the next adventure for the courageous 17-year-old vampire ass-kicker, would be represented in an computer game. Without a doubt, Buffy is currently one of the most anticipated Xbox titles. Next to games like Breed, Duality, Strident, Brute Force, and others, it promises to exhibit the true potentials of Microsoft's technology

According to EA, the game's expected to arrive on May the 10th this year. I'd say that's the perfect time, since the Xbox European launch is scheduled for March the 14th. And that leaves just enough time for the developers to polish it visually and broaden some of its gameplay features. We're truly looking forward to this one.