Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds (2003) (VG)

Writers:

Christopher Golden (writer)
Tom Sniegoski (writer)

Release Date:

27 August 2003 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Action | Fantasy

Tagline:

The Gates of HELL Have Opened...

Plot:

Buffy and the gang set out to stop Ethan Rayne and the First Evil from creating a dimensional bleed that will consume humanity forever. |

Plot Keywords:

Vampire Slayer | Vampire | Based On TV Series

Cast

Giselle Loren	...	Buffy Summers / Anya (voice)
Nicholas Brendon	...	Xander Harris (voice)
Kari Wahlgren	...	Willow Rosenberg (voice)
Anthony Head	...	Rupert Giles (voice) (as Anthony Stewart Head)
Amber Benson	...	Tara Maclay (voice)
James Marsters	...	Spike (voice)
Eliza Dushku	...	Faith (voice)
Jeremy Roberts	...	Kakistos (voice)
Robin Sachs	...	Ethan Rayne / The First (voice)
Tom Wyner	...	Sid the Dummy (voice)
Tom Bourdon	...	(voice)
Karen Strassman	...	Cassandra Rayne (voice) (as Mia Bradly)
Kathryn Cressida	...	(voice) (as Kat Cressida)
Jenna Macari	...	(voice)
Dave Marrujo	...	(voice)

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:T

Company:

Eurocom Entertainment Software

Trivia:

This game is set between "Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Forever (#5.17)" (2001) and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Intervention (#5.18)" (2001).

Quotes:

[first lines]
Buffy: A surprise party? Whose idea was this? I'll kill ya. Not that I appreciate the thought, but who invited the vampires?
Xander Harris: Don't look at me. I wanted Anya to jump out of the cake. Wait, that was for *my* birthday.
Buffy: And much as we'd like to hear *that* story.

Movie Connections:

References Mallrats (1995)

Good, But Flawed

By way of personal background, I am a huge fan of the TV series on which this game is based (as well as the "Angel" TV series), and I've completed this game as well as 2002's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" game for the X-Box. "Chaos Bleeds" looks very similar to the earlier game, has a good storyline, and is a good game, but the earlier game (by a different game developer) is significantly better, for the following reasons.

First, the camera movement in "Chaos Bleeds" is problematic. The camera (unseen) seems to be positioned within whatever room your character is in, and the camera has a habit of running into walls. Because of this, 360 degree rotation of the camera around your character doesn't work if your character is too close to a wall. The earlier game didn't have this problem.

Second, the hand-to-hand combat is somewhat clunky in "Chaos Bleeds", as compared to the earlier game. Punches and kicks are far more likely to miss their mark in "Chaos Bleeds", as compared to the earlier game. Also, in the earlier game, your character (always Buffy) could simultaneously fight multiple enemies positioned at angles up to 180 degrees apart with fluidity of player control, but not so in "Chaos Bleeds".

Third, in "Chaos Bleeds", Buffy isn't hampered much by the law of gravity, unlike the earlier game. In "Chaos Bleeds", despite the presence of a ladder at the edge of a 25 foot high platform, your character can walk off that platform and fall safely to the ground, landing uninjured on his or her feet, as if the character had just stepped of a sidewalk curb onto the street. In the earlier game, Buffy would have landed face-down and been slightly injured.

Fourth, whereas in the earlier game, Buffy couldn't fatally stake a vampire or demon until its life force was almost entirely depleted by kicks, punches, etc., in "Chaos Bleeds", all a character has to do to fatally stake said vampire or demon is get it on its back (easiest done by a simple throw) and stake it once, no matter where the enemy's life force bar is. And throwing enemies in "Chaos Bleeds" is child's play. A note regarding staking enemies lying on their backs: whereas in the earlier game, Buffy always staked enemies in their hearts, in "Chaos Bleeds", your character will stake an enemy in its leg, lower torso, etc., and the vampire/demon will still be dusted.

Fifth, although it's great that "Chaos Bleeds" allows players to play as Faith, Spike, Willow, Xander, and Sid the Dummy (as well as Buffy), the game-play flaws earlier described take away the necessity of using each character's unique fighting style to defeat enemies, and characters who should be relatively poor hand-to-hand combatants (Willow and Xander) are able to vanquish enemies with the efficiency of a slayer or a vampire (using the "throw and stake" technique).

Those are what I feel are the game's significant flaws. A minor flaw is that Allyson Hannigan, who played Willow in the TV show, doesn't provide the voice of Willow in "Chaos Bleeds" (unlike in the earlier game), and the voice performance of Willow suffers greatly by comparison.

The strong points of the game are the graphics, storyline, level designs, music, and sound effects. Whereas the earlier game was set during the early part of season three of the TV show, "Chaos Bleeds" is set during the late part of season five of the TV show, and the characters and character relationships are somewhat different between the two games. Show fans will probably enjoy the game despite its flaws.