Amazon.com: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds: Xbox: Video Games

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3.5 out of 5 stars (59 customer reviews)

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining for Buffy fans, but frustrating at times to play, November 14, 2005

By	E A Glaser (Delft, The Netherlands) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars

After many months of on-and-off playing, I've finally just finished "Buffy: Chaos Bleeds". It's a melee-oriented game of about 15 levels set in the "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" universe, and throughout the game you are placed in the role of different characters from the show -- primarily Buffy herself, but also Spike, Willow, Xander, Faith, and Sid. Almost all of the fighting is of the hand-to-hand variety, except for Willow's spellcasting (which is fun) and a few ranged attacks: crossbows (which are rare but good) and "holy water" and "hell fire" potions which you can throw at advancing enemies.

My girlfriend (the Buffy fan in the family) bought the game originally, but some of the game's quirks drove her away from playing it (so I had to play it while she watched). First, the floating third-person camera is controllable with the right analog stick, but in confined spaces it will not fully rotate around your character, or will offer too cramped a view to be useful. Second, vampires have a way of spawning right behind your character in a previously empty area and attacking you from behind -- this is quite startling until you get used to it.

Third, combat is the essence of the game, but has an unpolished feel to it. It's quite easy to get out of position so that you're punching air while a vampire attacks you from behind. I guess that's part of the challenge, but it happens often enough to be annoying (and I'm no newbie to fighting games). And I would usually just jam the kick button, which sometimes would do little damage, and other times would result in a spinning roundhouse kick which would knock the enemy to the ground -- it was never clear to me why I'd get one result or the other. There is a "Slayer Handbook" page which shows you the available combos for the active character, but aside from using Willow's spells, I would just use the FBM technique (Frantic Button Mashing) because trying to perform specific combos seemed to get my butt kicked. Throws (which are executed by pressing the A and X keys simultaneously) are effective and well-implemented though -- you're pretty much guaranteed a victory over an enemy once you've thrown them to the ground, but you need to be at the right distance from a not-blocking enemy to pull it off, and you're vulnerable to a counter if you miss.

Another annoying thing as that you can't save freely within a level. In each level you have to fight your way to certain areas where a "Continue Point" is activated. If you die, you can either restart from the beginning of the level or from your last Continue Point. However, unlike in Halo you cannot save the Continue Points and turn the machine off -- you have to keep playing the level until you finish it, or else lose your progress in that level. Now I might be excessively slow and methodical, but some of the levels took me a couple of hours to finish and I didn't enjoy knowing that my xbox would be tied up for such a long time. That's why it took me so long to complete the game -- knowing that I'd have to allocate most of an evening to finishing a level was a deterrent to playing.

I shamefully admit that I had to use a walkthrough to get through a couple of the trickier levels. Usually this was because I just didn't recognize things that I was able to do; e.g. you should note that you can sometimes punch the locks on gates to break through. Other tips for when you're stuck: you should try jumping and holding on to any available ledges, and while pick-up-able objects are highlighted with a shimmery glow, some actionable objects in the environment are not so easy to recognize. Walk around hitting the Y button in front of everything to make sure you're not missing any keyholes or levers.

As you progress through the game, finding secret areas and completing the levels unlocks some of the hidden content. There are short interviews with Joss Whedon and some of the cast members, as well as footage of some of the voice recordings, which is amusing to watch after playing the game. There are also some multiplayer minigames that let you play as different characters and fight against your friends; as you progress through the single-player game you unlock more playable multiplayer characters, including Joss Whedon himself at the very end.

My girlfriend did enjoy the Buffy-ness of the story, and the voice work was good and Buffy-fied in both execution and sense of humor. I did like that the game spanned many different environments, including the Magic Box, a mall, a zoo, and a medieval castle. I had a lot of fun playing Willow and using her different spells -- it would have been nice if the other characters had more specialization to add variety to the combat. And while the boss at the end of each level was often frustrating to beat, once I discovered the necessary pattern, it was a pleasing relief to finally defeat each one, complete the level, and be able to save the game. If you're just looking for a fighty-type game, I'd recommend "Ninja Gaiden" for sweet combat, or "Jade Empire" for cool graphics and an epic storyline, but if you've got a passion for Buffy then this game will help slake your vampire-lust.

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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Chaos Bleeds - good plot, bad execution, September 5, 2003

By	amy (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

I'm a huge fan of all things Buffy, and a casual Xbox gamer. I own the first game and have really enjoyed playing and beating it.

I bought Chaos Bleeds about a week ago, and I'm about halfway through it. I am a little surprised that most of the game review websites gave this game such high marks, and I can only think that the reviewers either didn't play it for very long, or didn't play the first game.

Here's what's good about Chaos Bleeds:

* Graphics are pretty, and the frame rate is improved.
* I like that you can play as different characters.
* The weapons are kinda fun.
* There are interviews and extras and such that you can unlock by finding secrets, and these are cool (but probably only if you're a Buffy fan anyway).

Now, here's what blows:

* The camera is the biggest frustration of all. You can't look all the way around anymore! If you're in a corner, tight space, or small room you often can't look around at all. Attempting to do so usually makes for big camera jitter - something that was nearly nonexistent in the first game.

* The inventory screen from the first game is gone! You have to do all your switching of supplies and weapons on the fly using the directional pad. And it is extremely poorly implemented. When you're in the middle of battle, using the directional pad while actively doing battle is nearly impossible. This means that even if you have a Medi-Pack (the Chaos Bleeds equivalent of Elixir), you often can't get to it when you need it.

* Fighting multiple enemies at once is an exercise in frustration, Lots of enemies don't disintegrate instantly once you've offed them. And if you beat one in a bunch, the interface doesn't let you switch your focus quickly enough to the next baddy. If you played the first game, this will drive you nuts in comparison.

* The "puzzles" where you have to find multiple objects and combine them are often nonsensical - you pick up objects without a lot of context for how you're supposed to use them, and often have to run through the same parts of a level over and over again to solve it. If I wasn't getting help from Vivendi's game forums at buffygame.com (which I strongly recommend anyone who has this game visit), I'd still be in the first level. I usually really enjoy puzzles and don't have problems figuring out what I need to do, but this game puts me at a loss constantly, and not in a "I was entertained and challenged" kind of way.

* Stuff you're supposed to pick up doesn't "glow" as much as in the first game. It's *really* easy to overlook something laying in the middle of a room, especially if the room is brightly lit.

* In the first game, when an enemy was approaching you almost always had its life meter pop up in the upper right corner of the screen before it was on you. In Chaos Bleeds, the meter often doesn't pop up until the bad guy is right on top of you. Combine this with the camera limitations, and you get snuck up on *a lot*.

* I was annoyed with the lack of save points in the first game - this game has exacerbated this issue further! While they give you an equivalent number of continue points, if you quit the game and come back, you have to completely restart the level. This results in my Xbox having to be left on overnight a lot, and I hate doing that.

* Voiceovers for Willow and Anya are thoroughly unsatisfactory and annoying.

* You get a "Slayer Rating" for each level and overall, but none of the documentation explains what the ratings are for and what they mean.

Okay, I know I'm hating on the game a lot, but these are serious design flaws. If you're a fan of Buffy, buy the game anyway, you'll enjoy hanging with the characters. God knows the plot is more coherent than anything we got from Mutant Enemy in Buffy's last season on TV. If you're not a big Buffy fan, I recommend the first game for a better overall gaming experience with better fighting and camera angles.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars okay if you're a Buffy fan, otherwise buy the first game, February 6, 2005

By	Matthew Schenk (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars

The camera angles are bad. It's not like in the first game where you had complete control over the camera. No, you can only rotate it 180 degrees this time, and sometimes not even that! Sometimes the camera sticks for no reason!

The controls are bad. Even if you're an experienced gamer, you may have some trouble controlling the character. Sometimes when you're getting attacked, you can't always get she/he to face the proper direction. The inventory sucks. Unlike the first game where you could pause the game to equip a different weapon or heal, you have to fumble through your inventory while being attacked!

While the first "Buffy" game had beautiful graphics, this one looks like a first generation Playstation One game.

Some of the voice acting is terrible, especially Anya and Willow, who were not voiced by Emma Caulfield and Allyson Hannigan.

This game's biggest drawback, though, is the inability to save your progress except at the end of the level. There are continue points throughout each level, so if you die you don't have to start all over; but if you reach a continue point, turn off your Xbox or PS2, then you do have to start the level all over the next time you play the game. Most of the levels are pretty huge -- 45 minutes to 90 minutes in length -- so this gets to be a serious problem, especially in the later levels where the boss fights are A LOT tougher, and you have to keep playing until you beat them, or lose 90 minutes of progress.

But if you're a diehard "Buffy" fan like I am, you'll find the patience to play all the way through this game anyway. Bad camera angles, controls, graphics, and voice acting aside, it's still a video game based on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". After you beat each level, you unlock a video interview with one of the "Buffy" cast members.

If nothing else, the story is better than the first game: Ethan Rayne has escaped from custody, and he has a new ally... The First Evil. Ethan has an arrangement set up with The First where if he can choose six warriors to represent him, and they pass all the tests, then The First will imbue Ethan with godly power. So Ethan forces the Scoobies to be his six warriors, by trapping them in an alternate version of Sunnydale. The only way Buffy and her friends can now get back to their own dimension is to pass all the tests...