Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is the sequel to the XBLA hit 'The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai'. Featuring a full campaign with online and offline coop, 40 arcade challenges, a ton of new weapons and a wide variety of combos. Despite the success of the first in the series, Vampire Smile has still been primarily developed by just one man, something which is a pretty impressive feat considering the quality of the game.
Dishwasher Vampire Smile offers a vast amount of content for an arcade title, with 4 single player modes in total; Story, Arcade, Dish Challenge & Practice. Practice is pretty straight forward allowing you to hone your hack and slash skills in any environment with any weapons of your choosing. This mode really does help you in the other 3 modes as it can get quite tricky at times, and you'll certainly need to know your enemies weaknesses or you'll be prone to dying.
Story mode puts you in the shoes of either The Dishwasher or a prisoner named Yuki. Both story modes are the same levels and the same stories but simply different characters, which each have an individual 'feel' to their fighting style. It will not effect your experience too much which one you pick. There is an incentive to play through both however, as it offers a different perspective to the drama which is about to unfold in front of you. Offering two worthwhile story playthroughs is fantastic for this 2D side-scrolling game, you'll never want it to end . Taking on a wide variety of enemies provides you with consistently interesting combat scenarios. You're guaranteed to love the visceral combat whilst you sit there and soak up all the brutal blood and gore whilst killing helpless robots and zombies in a stylish fashion. Despite the games difficulty being quite hard on higher settings, it also offers an easy mode for newer players. It's certainly advisable for players new to the series to run through the game on the easier setting first so you can get the hang of things, but doing that isn't much of a chore thanks to the easy to use but tough to master free flowing controls which make the experience all that much better.
As stated above as you progress through the story you will encounter many different enemies, some of which are mini bosses which will take a while to kill, to zombies which die in one hit. All of them have something in common in that once you damage them enough you can perform gore-driven finisher moves which will literally dismember an enemy with no remorse. You can press X Y or B to perform one of these finishers, all of which do something different respectively. Also every enemy type you use this on will deliver something different, ensuring there is never a dull moment in Vampire Smile.
Throughout the game you'll collect different weapons. Each weapon offers a different style of play, but not much damage difference. For example large weapons are for slower paced heavy damage dealing players whereas small daggers offer a faster pace yet less damage. The game offers 12 weapons which can be placed into a loadout; both your loadout and weapons can be switched on the fly during the middle of a combo allowing you to string together some pretty interesting moves. This also opens up your options - if you want to shoot someone from long range but then require close combat you can quickly draw out your blade and slash them. This is just another example of the smooth flowing gameplay.
Animations in the game are so very fluid and easy on the eye, it's brilliant! The simple fact that your character actually does what you press straight away is a given, but the combat itself is extremely satisfying, and using the teleport dodge system for example makes the game so much more enjoyable. Coming out of a teleport and being able to go straight into a grab with no delay or lag makes for an awesome sight, along with great combat all round.
Arcade mode is another area which will eat up a considerable amount of your time with the game. This mode offers you 50 levels in a wave defence fashion where you'll face a certain number of enemies which you must defeat all whilst trying to survive. These waves progressively get harder and longer as you go through and soon enough tons of enemies will be filling your screen. That is not a problem though as the framerate continues to be smooth even in local multiplayer!
Dish Challenge is the final mode which is fairly similar to Arcade mode, but it simply puts you in a situation where you gain no health back and you have to survive as long as you can in each map. This mode also seems to put you against tougher enemies from the start but also gives you the ability to choose your equipment, so it should balance out. You'll be able to select which weapons you want from the start from a choice of: Shift blade(sword), Meat Cleavers, Violence Hammer, The Guillotine and the Dekentozter (gun) - which isn't a vast amount of weapons, but it still offers you diversity and allows you to play how you want to.
The multiplayer in Vampire Smile works brilliantly; allowing you to play cooperatively in both the main story and the arcade mode, with one player playing as The Dishwasher and the other as Yuki. Although the screen can often get hectic with the amount of carnage occuring, the ability to play with a buddy is just downright fun.
Overall, I feel The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is an extremely solid game that does what it sets out to do with little flaws. Its framerate never drops and the smooth gameplay makes for a great gaming experience. The fact that there are many hours of gameplay and you're still left wanting more shows how well made this game really is! Even though the gameplay can get repetitive at times this barely detracts from what is truly a brilliant Xbox Live Arcade game. Any gamer who enjoys the hack and slash genre should snap this up as soon as they can!
The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile Gets An Official Game-Pad: 9.0/10
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