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Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds for Xbox | 
 enlarge | From: Vivendi Universal Games
Category: Video Games
List Price: $17.99
Buy Used: $10.74
You Save: $7.25 (40%)
New (8) Used (14) from $10.74
Avg. Customer Rating:  75 reviews
Sales Rank: 3775
Platform: Xbox
ESRB: Teen
Media: Video Game
Number Of Items: 1
Batteries Included: No
Operating System: Xbox
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: Unknown
UPC: 020626721066
EAN: 0020626721066
ASIN: B000095ZGW
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Platform: Xbox | | • | Genre: Action/Adventure | | • | ESRB Rating: Teen |
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Product Description
This third-person fighting game delivers intense action; based on the popular characters and humor of the television show. A must-have for all Buffy fans!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 70 more reviews...
 A little late but whatev. February 1, 2008
Okay, so I've been playing Chaos Bleeds for a year and a half (not because I'm stuck but because my friend owned the game so I had to wait until it was available and I had time to play). I admit it was the first of the two Buffy games I played, mostly due to the fact that my friend couldn't find the first buried in her Taj Mahal sized closet. Anyway, it was a little frustrating in the beginning, as any game you're new to, when it came to figuring out the controls, but once I did, I quite enjoyed it. And the puzzles weren't that hard (for the most part) and neither were the bosses, though it did take me forever and a day to beat Kakistos, but I insist there were too many of those stupid orb things.
Anyway, my only real issue with the game was the fact that yes sometimes you end up punching air, but hey, you get used to it and figure out how to recover.
I didn't play the first Buffy game until after I'd gotten 8 levels into Chaos Bleeds and I have to say, from the start of that game I was disappointed, never even bothered to complete the first level in fact. I was just so bored and the inventory is completely different, in my opinion, worse.
Good things about Chaos Bleeds, while there is a limit on five items (on certain items) you still had a variety and after getting used to the inventory you could change your weapons very quickly. And nothing was shmexier than being able to use a shovel or a spike every now and then, by far my favorite weapons, next to the axe. Over all, Chaos Bleeds is one of the few games that ever kept me interested in playing, and I would often re-start the game to get a higher rating in speed and kills. Now that I've moved away from my friend that owns the game I decided to crack down and buy my own version, and let's just say I can't wait. I have a feeling my days off from work are going to be filled with me calling "Just a minute mom, I'm dusting vamps in here," followed by her reply, "Kill 'em good honey!"
 Fun But Frustrating November 30, 2007
As a "Buffy" fan, I had to buy this game for two reasons: One, the first game was awesome; two, it's really hard to go wrong when investing in anything having to do with Buffy or Joss Whedon. Well, except the novels. The expanded universe Buffy novels have a trend to suck majorly. But I digress...
It's a rare occasion that I simply give a list of positives and negatives when reviewing something, whether it be a book, a movie, a CD, or--as in this case--a game. However, I feel this game can be divided as such.
POSITIVES
+ The story is way more ambitious
+ Willow's voice actress (see below) eventually (after a long, long time) grows on you
+ You get to play as a LOT more characters
+ Staking vamps and fighting as one of the characters you love is always really, really cool
+ Awesome extras; nostalgia at hearing the voices of many of the original "Buffy" actors.
NEGATIVES
+ The game-play, while it grows on you, leaves a lot to be desired. It is neither as smooth nor as "easy" as the original game. The controls will often leave you facing the wrong direction during a fight.
+ There aren't any "saves" in this game. The only way to save is if you beat the level. If you die, you generally go all the way--yes all the way--back to the beginning of the level. Some levels have checkpoints and some don't, but if life calls you to leave the game in the middle of a level, all your work is gone due to the "no-saves" thing going on here. No matter HOW many checkpoints you passed by in that level, quitting the game erases them all. And the levels are far to long for this to be acceptable.
+ The Boss Battles are often so difficult that they become ludicrous. I have never gotten to the end of the game because of the Boss Battle at the "Sunnydale Zoo" level. My father, who is essentially a pro-gamer, found himself unable to beat an earlier boss. This problem also goes along with the saving problem because sometimes, it gets so frustrating that it makes you want to turn the game off. If you do, you'll be back at the level you started at, not back at the Boss Battle. Due to that insanely hard battle, I will never see the end of a game that I was--despite it's drawbacks--enjoying.
6/10
 buffy the vampire slayers November 10, 2006
0 out of 6 found this review helpful
will not work on xbox 360 even though we upgraded the fix and it says that it will work on the xbox 360
 Why do people say the first game was better? This one is way better! April 23, 2006
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Personally, I feel the first game was hands down one of the worst video games ever made. Yes, it had a good story that fit in with the series, and decent graphics, but the gameplay of it was horrible. The original had many gripes that eventually made me scream so much that I was hoarse for a week, and left me with a broken XBOX controller. Elixers barely existed in any levels, and defeated enemies rarely dropped health for you to slightly heal. Enemies always blocked your attacks. Stakes could get easily knocked out of your hand, which left your enemies ready to throw cheap combos at you as you tried to pick it back up, and if you knocked them down to pick the stake up, they'd always immediately get back up as you did. It also had a poor hit detection system--- one time I staked a face down vamp about six times, AND HE STILL DIDN'T DIE. I returned the game about a day later after buying it.
The second game thankfully fixes many of these problems. Health packs are now slightly easier to find, and when you kill enemies, they will regenerate health more often. Enemies also block far less, stakes don't get knocked out of your hand, and there's a nice button that lets you quickly pull out a stake to kill a vamp or demon, unlike the original where you had to take the time to equip it, which meant that an enemy would get a chance to recover before you could even kill them. When you stake a face down vamp, it actually kills them. Also, about the inventory. People complain that you can only hold 5 healing items, while in the original you could hold up to 9. I think that they're forgetting that if you did, this meant you could not have any support weapons--- in other words, no hellfire or holy water. In this, you can max out your medpaks while still carrying plenty of hellfire and holy water(for a total of 15). Also nice is the ability to use multiple melee combat weapons, since in the original, you could only use one at a time.
Character wise, Buffy and Faith have their usual Slayer skills. Willow uses magic. Xander, although you will also have him in combat, relies mainly on weapons. Spike's main aspect is his strength, and Sid's small size makes him hard to hit. One cool thing is that sometimes another character may fight with you--- for example, in the first level Buffy and Willow team up to battle a group of vampires, or in the second features Buffy and Spike fighting it out with zombies. Bosses also feature some actual puzzles to get to their weak spots this time around, which thankfully aren't incredibly frustrating and easy to figure, as opposed to the first game's bosses which were just more fighting, which mostly had each one of them relying on this incredibly cheap tackle attack that always knocked you down.
Yes, there's still a cheap camera, and you do have to search through inventory midgame, but overall, Vivendi Universal has created a much better Buffy game than EA did(now here's hoping that there will be an Angel game with Angel, Spike, Illyria, Gunn, and Wesley). I suggest if you have a choice between Buffy 1 and Buffy 2, get Chaos Bleeds and pretend the shoddy original never existed.
Entertaining for Buffy fans, but frustrating at times to play November 14, 2005
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
After many months of on-and-off playing, I've finally just finished "Buffy: Chaos Bleeds". It's a melee-oriented game of about 15 levels set in the "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" universe, and throughout the game you are placed in the role of different characters from the show -- primarily Buffy herself, but also Spike, Willow, Xander, Faith, and Sid. Almost all of the fighting is of the hand-to-hand variety, except for Willow's spellcasting (which is fun) and a few ranged attacks: crossbows (which are rare but good) and "holy water" and "hell fire" potions which you can throw at advancing enemies.
My girlfriend (the Buffy fan in the family) bought the game originally, but some of the game's quirks drove her away from playing it (so I had to play it while she watched). First, the floating third-person camera is controllable with the right analog stick, but in confined spaces it will not fully rotate around your character, or will offer too cramped a view to be useful. Second, vampires have a way of spawning right behind your character in a previously empty area and attacking you from behind -- this is quite startling until you get used to it.
Third, combat is the essence of the game, but has an unpolished feel to it. It's quite easy to get out of position so that you're punching air while a vampire attacks you from behind. I guess that's part of the challenge, but it happens often enough to be annoying (and I'm no newbie to fighting games). And I would usually just jam the kick button, which sometimes would do little damage, and other times would result in a spinning roundhouse kick which would knock the enemy to the ground -- it was never clear to me why I'd get one result or the other. There is a "Slayer Handbook" page which shows you the available combos for the active character, but aside from using Willow's spells, I would just use the FBM technique (Frantic Button Mashing) because trying to perform specific combos seemed to get my butt kicked. Throws (which are executed by pressing the A and X keys simultaneously) are effective and well-implemented though -- you're pretty much guaranteed a victory over an enemy once you've thrown them to the ground, but you need to be at the right distance from a not-blocking enemy to pull it off, and you're vulnerable to a counter if you miss.
Another annoying thing as that you can't save freely within a level. In each level you have to fight your way to certain areas where a "Continue Point" is activated. If you die, you can either restart from the beginning of the level or from your last Continue Point. However, unlike in Halo you cannot save the Continue Points and turn the machine off -- you have to keep playing the level until you finish it, or else lose your progress in that level. Now I might be excessively slow and methodical, but some of the levels took me a couple of hours to finish and I didn't enjoy knowing that my xbox would be tied up for such a long time. That's why it took me so long to complete the game -- knowing that I'd have to allocate most of an evening to finishing a level was a deterrent to playing.
I shamefully admit that I had to use a walkthrough to get through a couple of the trickier levels. Usually this was because I just didn't recognize things that I was able to do; e.g. you should note that you can sometimes punch the locks on gates to break through. Other tips for when you're stuck: you should try jumping and holding on to any available ledges, and while pick-up-able objects are highlighted with a shimmery glow, some actionable objects in the environment are not so easy to recognize. Walk around hitting the Y button in front of everything to make sure you're not missing any keyholes or levers.
As you progress through the game, finding secret areas and completing the levels unlocks some of the hidden content. There are short interviews with Joss Whedon and some of the cast members, as well as footage of some of the voice recordings, which is amusing to watch after playing the game. There are also some multiplayer minigames that let you play as different characters and fight against your friends; as you progress through the single-player game you unlock more playable multiplayer characters, including Joss Whedon himself at the very end.
My girlfriend did enjoy the Buffy-ness of the story, and the voice work was good and Buffy-fied in both execution and sense of humor. I did like that the game spanned many different environments, including the Magic Box, a mall, a zoo, and a medieval castle. I had a lot of fun playing Willow and using her different spells -- it would have been nice if the other characters had more specialization to add variety to the combat. And while the boss at the end of each level was often frustrating to beat, once I discovered the necessary pattern, it was a pleasing relief to finally defeat each one, complete the level, and be able to save the game. If you're just looking for a fighty-type game, I'd recommend "Ninja Gaiden" for sweet combat, or "Jade Empire" for cool graphics and an epic storyline, but if you've got a passion for Buffy then this game will help slake your vampire-lust.
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