Pros: Most voice overs, sound, fighting the enemies, Willow's spells, pretty nice graphics
Cons: Annoying enemy, jaggies aren't well covered, annoying Willow and Anya voiceover
The bottom line: A definite try for any gamer. Loads of fun! Lots of vamp staking action!
Introduction:

Buffy Summers, just your average girl...NOT! A girl who once lived in LA, now turned Slayer. A Slayer is a girl who fights demons, in order to save the world. Buffy has lots of friends, namely Willow, Xander, Giles, Spike, Tara, and (somewhat) Anya. Together, they save the world over, and over again! In this game, and old enemy arises, and he brings them against the ultimate enemy, The First! Sounds scary doesn’t it? It seems like a rather weak storyline to me, but whatever works I guess, as this game is loads of fun to play!

Graphics:

They are ok. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing bad, just ok. The backgrounds are done fairly well, with nice textures and backgrounds, and good lightning effects. The character models, on the other hand, well, look like they need a few more polygons in their faces. It looks rather distorted. Imagine a face, and then punched in a little. That’s what you get in this game. The characters do somewhat look like the cast on the show, a little. The shadows look rather jaggie too. If you stand still, you see the shadow has lots of bumps, and it just doesn’t look good. The shadow placement is good though, so that helps a bit. Backgrounds look good, with nice textures, and lighting effects on them. Still, looks rather 2D though, on some parts (like door handles).

Sound:

Pretty good, but could have been better. Let’s start with the voice-overs, shall we? The real cast lends their voice to Xander, Tara, Giles, Faith and Spike. Anya, Willow, and Buffy get stuck with imitators. Buffy’s actually sounds pretty good, and sounds like Sarah Michelle Gellar. Willow’s imitator sounds like she is trying to hard to sound like the real Willow. It doesn’t sound natural at all. It does sort of sound like her, but not nearly as good as Buffy’s. Anya’s is just disgusting. Doesn’t at ALL sound like the real one. She says her lines very fast, so it sort of masks the fact that she just sucks. It’s horrible. Eww. Now that I am done with the throwing up, lets get on to music, and background sounds. The music is ok during regular gameplay (depends on the level), but when enemies appear, things change. The music gets repetitive in a flash. Over and over is the same 4 bars, over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over. Get my point? It only changes during boss battles, which usually last about 5 min at most. The music tries to put you into suspense (so like creepy music), but fails miserably when enemies appear. Sorry guys!

Controls:

Very easy. Move the big stick to run/walk, and the yellow one to move the camera around. A button punches, B button kicks. Y button uses the item you have (like a stake) and X to jump. The control pad goes through your inventory. There are lots of combos you can do. Try mastering them all!

Gameplay:

Pretty basic here. The main thing you will be doing in this game is fighting enemies, so let’s get that out of the way first. When you look at your screen, will notice two main things. One, at the top right of your screen, you will see 2 bars, one purple and one blue. The purple represents your health. Out of it? Next move will kill you. The blue is your “boost”. It allows you to do extra damage to enemies, when doing a combo attack (or when you are using Willow, it allows you to do magic). On the bottom left, you will see varying things. This is your inventory. It allows you to cycle through what you have collected throughout the level, and also shows you the amount of “health” a certain item has left. A stake, for instance, once it’s health is gone, it’s gone. Items have different health maxes, so be watch your meter! When you face an enemy, a another bar appears at the top of the screen (this time the to right). It shows you your enemies’ health. Depending on the enemy, when the health bar is gone, it will either die, or it will need a finishing move to kill it. A finishing move is basically using a stake to kill it, for good. For some reason, if a vampire doesn’t have not much health left, the stake won’t kill it. Odd no? Anyways, some items can hurt these demons, and increase your attack power. You will not only be finding enemies, but also some basic puzzle solving, and backtracking (actually a lot of it). You find an item, head back 2 minutes, find another go forward gain, find another, and head back again. Lot’s of backtracking in here. The characters in this game do help out, and has lot’s of tutorial info built in, so it’s easy to learn. There are about 12 different levels you can explore, each having some show resemblance. Each takes about 30 minutes to play, some more, some less. Each has it’s own secrets. Depending on your level of ranking, you can unlock these secrets (like interview, more characters). Ahh, so fun, staking vampires. I could do it all night long!

Characters:

You don’t play with the same character all the way through, because now that wouldn’t be fun now would it? Playable characters include Buffy (obviously), Spike, Xander, Willow, Sid the Dummy, and Faith (another Slayer). Buffy, Spike, and Faith, all play similarly, with high strength, and speed. Willow can cast spells, which are usually quite powerful, so the levels are usually easier with her. Xander and Sid are the worst characters. Xander is slow, and not very powerful. So what if he has high health? The demons will kill him before he kills them! Sid, luckily, you only play a few times with. He is very fast, but has very low strength, but can dodge attacks easily. So I guess he’s ok. Each character has his/her own one liners/jokes. They do seem to repeat it a lot, but they are funny, so it makes up for it. It keeps you laughing, even when your about to be killed!






Multi player:

It’s only average. They are 4 different levels you can play in, and 4 different modes. Each has a unique objective. It is like a free-for-all fight. No co-op, which is sad. There are a lot of different characters you can choose, but a lot are then same with different makeup (like 2 different female vamps. Come on!). My favourite is Willow, who can kill almost anything instantly. Fun for a little while, but gets stale quick! You and 3 friends can join in on the butt-whooping action, until you get bored, that is.


Conclusion:

This game is an above average game, due to some witty lines, and fun gameplay elements, (who doesn’t love staking a vamp?) make this an enjoyable experience for all. If you are a Buffy fan, chances are you already have this game. Anyone who doesn’t know if they will like this game, should try it. It’s like, only $20 now. So give it a shot. It will be worth it (for $20 anyways!:))