Video Game / Vampire Rain

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It's been 800 years since I last met a vampire created by nature, not a bite...

Splinter Cell with vampires. And more gorn.

Vampire Rain is a Survival Horror-themed Third-Person Shooter stealth-action video game developed by Artoon for the Xbox 360 and released in 2006 in 2006 in Japan, and a year later worldwide.

In the near-future, vampires - called "Nightwalkers" - secretly roam the streets at dusk, stalking homeless people to bolster their ranks while operating discreetly after dark. With civilian disappearances rising each day, the American Information Bureau (AIB), a task force led by one Colonel Dixon, consisting of operatives trained to eliminate vampiric threats and armed with the best, undead-busting high-tech weaponry, is established, with the player-controlled hero John Lloyd and his teammates Hank Harrison and Clair Kelly tasked with monitoring the AIB's Los Angeles division.

Investigating a Nightwalker operation where the undead are planning to carry out an all-out war against the humans and further wipe out Los Angeles' entire population, John Lloyd and his crew are on the trail of the Nightwalker's elusive leader - one who calls himself the Prime Walker - before uncovering a much greater conspiracy within the AIB.

A further, Updated Re-release titled Vampire Rain: Altered Species was made for the PlayStation 3 in 2008.

The watchdog just grew a set of teeth... and its time to bite back!

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: One stage is set in the Los Angeles sewer system, that's large enough for the AIB to navigate around freely.
• Back Stab: Rather frequently in the game, whenever Lloyd or his crew sneaks behind an unsuspecting nightwalker they'll use this method to eliminate the undead instantly.
• Bloodier and Gorier: This is easily the goriest release from Artoon during it's decade-long lifespan, with plenty of bloody overkills, onscreen deaths, and assorted carnage, to the point that there's a Content Warning before the first stage starts. For reference, Artoon was previously known for cutesy platformers and RPGs like Blinx, Blue Dragon and Swords of Destiny.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: In the first stage, Dixon uncovers a sign for the Nightwalker rituals painted over a wall using blood. That according to Lloyd, has been mixed with hardening chemicals and couldn't be washed off by water, given it's raining at the time. The same symbol reappears several times throughout the game, all of them painted using blood.
• Demonic Head Shake: Humans who survived getting bitten by nightwalkers, only to be converted into one of them, will assume this pose as part of their transformation - with the camera zooming on their heads moving side-by-side at rapid speeds before they stagger back to their feet, now an undead.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: AIB operatives are armed with a special, custom-made dagger called the UV (UltraViolet) blade specially made for slaying vampires. A single cut and they dissolve into dust - but unfortunately it can be used only once.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The game seemingly takes place around the course of a single night.
• Four Is Death: While set in Los Angeles, this is still a game made in Japan, with four Prime Nightwalkers - Edward, James, Margaret and Charles - ruling over the lesser undead in Los Angeles which the AIB is tasked with eliminating to end their reign of blood.
• Gas Mask Mooks: The human-nightwalker hybrids developed by the AIB as part of their special army all wears face-concealing gears and bio-suits as part of their standard Special Unit attire.
• Improvised Zipline: Lloyd uses this method to travel across areas, with almost every odd stage having conveniently-placed lines that slope downwards.
• Kidnapped Scientist: Professor Ernst Foley was abducted by the Nightwalkers and kept around because they need his research, with a stage requiring the AIB to save him. He then reveals that he knew enough about the Nightwalker hierarchy occupying Los Angeles - that there's four Prime leaders ruling the city, and their respective locations.
• Les Collaborateurs: Kelly, one of Lloyd's two second-in-commands besides Harrison, is a informant for an extremist faction of the AIB and is the one who killed the AIB's radio operator, Hanson. But it turns out Lloyd had already suspected one of his crew is secretly a mole and had rigged both Harrison's and Kelly's sidearms - when Kelly pulls the trigger, the gun explodes and knockes her out.
• Made of Incendium: Due to their biology, the Nightwalker-human hybrid mooks bursts into flames instantly when shot at, with their death animations being Man on Fire unlike regular Nightwalkers who dissolves to dust.
• Mêlée à Trois: Late in the game when the AIB's conspiracy is revealed the game begins sending nightwalker-human hybrid personnel specially developed to eliminate humans and nightwalkers, leading to stages where the hybrids and nightwalkers spend as much time attacking each other as they battle Lloyd.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: Despite the title, the game's vampire enemies are all referred to as "Nightwalkers".
• Our Vampires Are Different: Our Nightwalkers Are Different. In that they're created by converting humans, immune to water (most of the game is raining like what the name states) and their existence are dependent on the Prime Nightwalkers that creates them - killing all four Nightwalkers will purge their bloodlines entirely.
• The Precarious Ledge: There's a lot of outdoor stages that requires Lloyd to balance himself on ledges outside of buildings, to scale areas without being noticed by nightwalkers or sneak into higher floors.
• Reduced to Dust: Slain nightwalkers simply dissolves into glowing dust before dispersing.
• Shoot Out the Lock: Lloyd in more than one cutscene will simply shoot the locks of doors to allow an entrance.
• Sniping Mission: More than one stage, where Lloyd finds a ledge serving as a checkpoint with a conveniently-placed Sniper Rifle (packed with Nightwalker-killing bullets) and snipe away at patrolling Nightwalkers. He needs to eliminate the required amount of enemies before the game allows him to proceed.
• So Much for Stealth: The quarry stage where the trio needs to infiltrate a Nightwalker hideout silently begins with a cutscene of Kelly attempting to enter first, only to slip and fall all the way to the bottom, alerting every Nightwalker mook of the team's presence.
• True Final Boss: Defeating Charles Randle, the last of the four Prime Nightwalker and their main planner, doesn't end the game - there's still Monique who needs to be dealt with in another boss fight.
• Two Guys and a Girl: The main AIB trio consists of the hero John Lloyd, his trusty black partner Harrison and Kelly, the sole woman operative of the team who turns out to be an informant working for an extremist faction of the AIB that want total genocide against the nightwalkers rather than a cold war.
• Undead Child: In the flashback scenes depicting Monique's past, she's a vampire child when meeting Charles for the first time. Who frees her when she's about to be executed by sunlight.
• Unwilling Suspension: On the trail of an earlier AIB squad that went missing, Lloyd, Harrison and Kelly eventually found their leader - skinned and hanging by his legs, blood forming a puddle below and barely alive. Then they find the rest of the squad...
• What Happened to the Mouse?: After Claire Kelly was outed as a mole, she tried firing at Lloyd and Harrison only for her sidearm to explode, due to being booby-trapped by Lloyd earlier. She's knocked unconscious and Lloyd notes she'll later wake up with a headache, but she's never seen arrested onscreen and what happened to her afterwards is unexplained.
• Zombie Infectee: After killing Charles, the last Prime Nightwalker, Lloyd notices his last surviving ally, Harrison, catching up... and about to transform into one of the undead, after suffering a stray bite while escorting Dr. Foley earlier. He then begs Lloyd to do him in.
  Harrison: I was afraid I would live the rest of my life as a Nightwalker... do me a favour, tell my family I died as a man...

Next Sundown: 12 hours and 14 mins...