Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wrath of the Darkhul King

by THQ

Product Features

• Rated T-Teen/into each generation a slayer is born....help
• Buffy vanquish fierce vampires and customize slayer
• weaponry/For Gameboy Advance only/Super fast ship

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00008VU6X
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: June 10, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #32,842 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Buffy is on patrol in the cemeteries and in the woods to check on the demons and vampires... simple routine for the vampire slayer! However this time she catches sight of two of the Gentlemen's henchmen. Not only has she to deal with Adam, but she now has to look for some clue on what the Gentlemen are organizing. But nothing's impossible for the slayer...

Features:

• The whole universe from the TV program.
• 16 levels of vampires, demons, and monsters!
• Weapon combo system: modify weapons picked up during the game.
• Puzzle-solving elements in order to free captives who are to be used for sacrifices for the demon hordes.
• Buffy's friends Giles, Willow, Zander, and Riley help her in her quest.
• Receive new articles of Buffy's clothing from her friends during gameplay.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too short and simplistic, but fun for Buffy fans., July 24, 2003

By 

D. Mok (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wrath of the Darkhul King (Video Game)

I finished this game in about two hours playing time total. With 16 relatively short levels, this game is not strong in breadth at all. Level designs are fairly limited, and the sound is quite unimpressive. This game also has a very dumb system with lives and continues -- every time you fall off the edge or your life runs out in battle, you get blasted right to the beginning of the level. Perhaps this was the programmers' way to try to make the game and the too-short levels more difficult, but I figured out a way to get around this almost immediately (to simply quit and reload the saved game is exactly the same as using up a life or a continue), so the lives system didn't increase the challenge much, only the level annoyance.

Good points: The controls are not nearly as stiff as, say, Super Ghouls N' Ghosts, and Buffy fans will enjoy watching the characters in the show interact -- even if their backgrounds are always the same and the "cut scenes" are all in stills. A Gameboy Advance cartridge probably doesn't have the storage for captured scenes, so I think the effort to try to get the stars of the show into the cut scenes (which would have cost much more money) is admirable. Sarah Michelle Gellar is of course a given (who would buy a Buffy game without her face?), but having Anthony Stewart Head, Alyson Hannigan, Nicolas Brendon and Emma Caulfield reprise their characters at least adds an element of authenticity, underwhelming as that presence is.

To be fair, I've played franchise games (such as Evil Dead: Hail to the King) that have shirked design and mechanics far more than this game, and the quirky Buffy environments are fun to navigate through. You pretty much have to be a fan of the show already to play this game, but if you are, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Only for collectors, July 6, 2003

By 

J. Nichols "Bibo" (Grand Rapids, MI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wrath of the Darkhul King (Video Game)

1st off this is a review from someone that actually has played and owns this game. Unless you are a huge fan of the show and just want the game to add to your Buffy collectables I say do not buy this game! It has some of the worse controls and it get frustrating very quickly when you hit the jump button and do not jump. If you played the Buffy game for the Game Boy Color this is pretty much the same thing demon and vampire killing, cut scene lather rinse repeat. The levels are too short (or maybe too long in some cases), the A.I. is not very bright and the bosses are too easy to kill. The game can be beaten in an hour or so depending on the difficulty level and your frustration level. They don't even use the theme song from the show, just generic low quality stuff. This game is probably one they just change the characters around in and market as different games. Save you money on this one, I wish I had. I am looking forward to the new Buffy game coming out for the Game Cube, this looks much more promising from the previews I've seen at gaming sites. I'm a Buffy fan but this is the 2nd Game Boy game based on Buffy that is not worthy of the Buffy name.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of hours of fun here, November 6, 2003

By 

Debra Hamel (North Haven, CT) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wrath of the Darkhul King (Video Game)

Briefly put, Buffy explores various environs in sixteen levels of the game, fighting vamps and building up to a big standoff with some Darkhull king guy. In the process she picks up various weapons--the most common, of course, the good old wooden stake--some of which are more effective than others at fighting the bad guys.

I am not a big-time game player, so maybe I have lower standards than some of the people who panned this Buffy game, but my daughter and I have both gotten *many* of hours of enjoyment out of this one. It's fun roaming around the various levels, which were difficult enough to engage us for quite some time. (We've finished both the easy and normal levels,but I have yet to defeat the game on the hard level.) And I appreciate, as with other GameBoy games that we've played, that it takes some ingenuity to figure out what needs to be done. In other words I think that, counter-intuitively perhaps, GameBoy games can be educational for kids because they require thought.

There were a few annoying things about the game: being returned to the start of a level when you die becomes maddening, as does the (thankfully brief) introductory stage when the action of the game pauses to provide information to the user about button functions. It would be nice if that feature could be turned off. Otherwise, I recommend it.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece