The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile Review

The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is the sequel to the The Dishwasher: Undead Samurai (winner of the 2007 Dream-Build-Play competition). The Dishwasher: Undead Samurai was a pretty good game – basically a 2D indier version of Devil May Cry. The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, on the other hand, is an excellent game that builds and improves on its predecessor in every way. It looks better, it sounds better, and it plays better. Oh and there’s even a new 3D mode for all the owners of fancy 3D TVs out there.

The first thing that struck me about Vampire Smile is just how easy it is to be incredibly awesome. You really get the feeling that the developer wants the player to succeed. Sure, there are a ton of special moves and weapons to master if you want to rack up the high scores or finish the game on the harder difficulties (which can be extremely difficult), but while you’re busy learning the ropes, you can have a lot of fun just mashing buttons. Between infinite teleportation, brutal finishing moves, a wide variety of ridiculous over-the-top weapons (4 of which can be equipped and switched between on the fly), and a dynamic camera, it’s hard to avoid looking totally awesome while you’re playing this game. And that’s just the regular fights – the boss fights are even cooler.

Another thing that struck me when playing the game was how much better balanced it felt than the first one. In the first game, it felt like every enemy had a ton of health and was a deadly threat, whereas in this one, it feels like there’s a greater mix of enemy types. There are still plenty of deadly and hard to kill enemies, but there are more cannon fodder enemies as well, which makes combat feel faster paced and more varied. The game also scales up the challenge more gradually now, so less experienced players should be able to get further into the game before running into trouble.

There’s a lot of content to keep players coming back for more. Many different difficulty levels, a campaign (which can be played as the new charater, Yuki, or the original Dishwasher, each with their own selection of unique weapons), a Time Trial mode, an Arcade mode with 50 one room challenges (some of which have twists on the regular gameplay), various leaderboards, offline and online multiplayer and more, the game has more content than some retail games and all for the mere price of 800 MS points ($10 USD).

If the thought of teleporting behind an enemy, launching them into the air, shooting them a bit, then slamming them down to the ground with your chainsaw arm before finishing them off with a gory finisher fills you with glee, then I highly recommend buying The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile when it comes out April 6th on XBox Live Arcade.