is a 1999

survival horror Survival horror is a Video game genre, subgenre of horror games. Although combat can be part of the gameplay, the player is made to feel less in control than in typical action games through limited ammunition or weapons, health, speed, and visio ...

game developed by K.2.C. and published by

Bandai is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational toy manufacturer and distributor headquartered in Taitō, Taitō, Tokyo. Its international branches, Bandai Namco Toys & Collectables America and Bandai UK, are respectively headquartered ...

for the

PlayStation is a video gaming brand owned and produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), a division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. Its flagship products consists of a series of home video game consoles produced under the brand; it also consists ...

Gameplay

The gameplay is similar to the earlier games in the ''

Resident Evil ''Resident Evil'', known as in Japan, is a Japanese horror game series and media franchise created by Capcom. It consists of survival horror, third-person shooter and first-person shooter games, with players typically surviving in environments ...

'' series, to the extent of being labelled a " clone", although there are some additions like a

dart gun A dart gun is an air rifle that fires a dart. The dart is tipped with a hypodermic needle and filled with a sedative, vaccine or antibiotic. A dart gun containing a sedative is called a tranquillizer gun ( also spelled tranquilizer gun, tranquil ...

as a secondary weapon, used to sedate most enemies (mainly,

zombie A zombie (Haitian French: ; ; Kikongo: ''zumbi'') is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. In modern popular culture, zombies appear in horror genre works. The term comes from Haitian folkl ...

-like "

vampire A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the Vitalism, vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead, undead humanoid creatures that often visited loved ones and c ...

s") and then sprinkle "

white water Whitewater forms in the context of rapids, in particular, when a river's gradient changes enough to generate so much turbulence that air is trapped within the water. This forms an unstable current that froths, making the water appear opaque ...

" on them to restore their humanity, instead of simply killing all enemies that approach the player (which can also be done). This encourages the player to use a wide variety of fighting techniques if they want to "save" the enemies. As the game advances, more and more creatures appear (whose origins are not that well explained until late in the game), such as giant vampire bats,

werewolf In folklore, a werewolf (), or occasionally lycanthrope (from Ancient Greek ), is an individual who can shapeshifting, shapeshift into a wolf, or especially in modern film, a Shapeshifting, therianthropic Hybrid beasts in folklore, hybrid wol ...

-like creatures, giant humanoid

mantis Mantises are an order (Mantodea) of insects that contains over 2,400 species in about 460 genera in 33 families. The largest family is the Mantidae ("mantids"). Mantises are distributed worldwide in temperate a ...

-like insects, giant frog mutants (which are similar to the hunters from the first ''

''), and purple blobs. The dart gun does not work on these types of enemies. It is possible to reload all guns and to switch between the dart gun and a lethal weapon in real-time without having to use the menu screen. It is also possible to reload in real-time before emptying a firearm's bullet count. There is an "e-mail" system in the item storage boxes which is mainly used to further explain and expand the backstory. It is also notable that there are minigames available in the first part of the game (set in a casino), like

roulette Roulette (named after the French language, French word meaning "little wheel") is a casino game which was likely developed from the Italy, Italian game Biribi. In the game, a player may choose to place a bet on a single number, various grouping ...

and

slot machine A slot machine, fruit machine (British English), poker machine or pokie (Australian English and New Zealand English) is a gambling machine that creates a game of chance for its customers. A slot machine's standard layout features a screen disp ...

s; the money won in these games can be used to buy food and drinks, the in-game recovery items. If the game is cleared within eight hours, a special story mode is unlocked which shows an altered version of the original story and includes additional characters not present in the first playthrough. This also gives the option to gather the five "Lucky coins". A minigame called "Prince of Darkness" is unlocked by typing "Prince Darkness" in the New Game option of the second disc. In this minigame, the player controls a vampire version of Keith and has to slay humans within a 20 minutes time limit. Game characters appear as enemies, such as Mira, Sheck, and The Man in Black.

Plot

Sea Rim City Police Homicide Detective Keith J. Snyder had a problem which involved his previous partner, Wesley Simmons, so he was assigned, as a disciplinary measure, to be a bodyguard for several VIPs who were key to the inauguration of a new horror-themed casino, the ''Desert Moon''. The problems begin when a fire breaks out and a mysterious black liquid starts to pour out of the fire sprinklers, turning the vast majority of the people into vampires that proceed to devour the remaining survivors. Now Keith must find his way out of the casino and also try save as many people as he can.

Reception

The game received "unfavorable" reviews according to the

review aggregation A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...

website

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

. In Japan, ''

Famitsu , formerly , is a line of Japanese Video game journalism, video game magazines published by Kadokawa Game Linkage (previously known as Gzbrain), a subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, Kadokawa. ''Famitsu'' is published in both weekly and monthly f ...

'' gave it a score of 30 out of 40. ''

Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine ''Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine'' (often abbreviated to ''OPM'') was a monthly video game magazine published by Ziff Davis Media. It was a sister publication of ''Electronic Gaming Monthly''. The magazine focused exclusively on PlayStation ...

'' gave it a negative review months before the game was released Stateside.

Notes

References

External links

''Countdown Vampires''
entry at

Bandai Namco Entertainment is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game video game publisher, publisher, and the video game branch of the wider Bandai Namco Holdings group. Founded in 2006 as it is the successor to Namco's home and arcade video game ...

*{{moby game, id=/playstation/countdown-vampires 1990s horror video games 1999 video games Bandai games PlayStation (console) games PlayStation (console)-only games Single-player video games Video games about police officers Video games about vampires Video games developed in Japan Video games with pre-rendered 3D graphics