Looking at a sequel always gives players an expectation about a game. With The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile the sequel is so much a sequel to the original game there isn’t much to compare - well, unless you count co-op. That’s what we did, scrutinize the co-op. What did we have to say about it? Well...
The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai was a Dream, Build, Play contest winner by Ska Studios in 2009 making the indie title a full fledged Xbox Live Arcade game. The game featured incredibly fast-paced combat in a beat ‘em up style, visually original game. Dishwasher was the artistic vision of one man featuring a Dead Samurai named Dishwasher - and Vampire Smile continues that vision.
The new face you’ll see in The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is a seemingly innocent woman named Yuki - only, she’s a vampire (and the Dishwasher’s half sister) with some pretty vicious weapons, as well as a quest for revenge. You see, she’s in a bit of a predicament in which she has to slash her way through 13 campaign levels to safety with three (mini-boss) executive targets in mind, and those executives have a dragon. You can play as either Dishwasher or Yuki in the campaign, or both in co-op. What’s interesting is the game changes up the levels and cut scenes a bit depending on whether or not you are in co-op, making sure to reference both characters - a definite nice touch.
The other difference between the characters are the weapons available to each. This time the weapons are even more brutal and over the top. Dishwasher has something called “The Violence Hammer” which is just brutal and works wonders on bosses, while Yuki’s giant syringe weapon has an extremely satisfying finishing blow. Both of these sort of embody the game in that while they are serious weapons, they are also light hearted. There are several moments throughout the game with references and small jokes that are sure to make you chuckle. In such a dark and twisted sci-fi world, the comedic relief is a nice break from that doom and gloom.
Vampire Smile takes the fast pace of the first game, rushing through levels full of zombies, cyborgs and psycho bosses, and gives it a whole new depth. The controls have been tightened to the point that any action comes at the push of a button so the combat rarely stops. You can even activate the magic by holding the left trigger and pressing either X, Y, or B. The only problem is - you don’t really know what magic button does what.
As you progress through the game you unlock different types of magic which get a clever name and brief description. But, it doesn’t tell you which magic is mapped to which button. In the heat of battle it didn’t really matter since you were basically mashing buttons as fast as possible for the best combo anyway, but it would have been nice information to know.
Other things you unlock as you progress through levels are a few new weapons unique to Yuki or Dishwasher, and some beads. The beads were a really cool edition to Vampire Smile, as each bead can be worn in one of four slots in your inventory, and each bead has an ability. Abilities range from added damage when your health is low, slowly regenerating health, or resistance to certain weapon damage.
Additionally you can upgrade each of your character’s stats, weapons, and buy health items to assist you through some pretty hectic battles. I’d like to have mapped those items to a hotkey on the controller, but having them (again each item with a clever name) was appreciated all the same. Seriously, who doesn’t love a good Squid Chip snack?
Stopping the game to heal was only really a problem in the co-op, as it interrupted both players flow. Co-op was otherwise a real smooth ride. Latency was never an issue through the campaign, even with a screen full of enemies and a lot of speedy button mashing, weapon swinging going on. One other minor issue we had with the co-op was a lack of a revive mechanic, instead, it was a timed based revival. So if one player went down, the other needed to make sure they stayed alive for a certain amount of time before the downed player would come back.
When starting up the co-op campaign you’re put in a lobby that can switch which mode (arcade or campaign) you wish to participate in. The campaign and arcade sessions you participate in are saved, regardless of which person initiated the play session, so you can change characters mid-way through the game if you wish to get a taste for Yuki or Dishwasher and their individual weapons.
One thing we saw in our PAX East 2011 Preview of the game was the addition of a BYOB mode in which another player can take control of Yuki or Dishwasher’s little pets; a cat and a raven. This twin stick shooter form of gameplay is just an assist, but it’s a nice addition to get a casual player involved in your game, best of all, it works both locally and online. Basically each pair of local players can control the pair of characters: Yuki/cat or Dishwasher/raven. That brings this two player co-op experience up to four.
Overall The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is one of the tightest original co-op beat em up experiences on consoles to date. If it wasn’t for a few minor bugs and annoyances this would be a near perfect experience. Graphically the game looks stellar with several new effects and animations, the new weapons are a blast to use, and the co-op mode is exactly what we were wanting in the first game. On top of all that content there’s an arcade mode (playable in co-op) for challenge style rooms, a scoring based challenge arena, speed runs and more.
Simply put, The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is one not to be missed and should definitely be part of your co-op library when it releases on April 6th.