The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile

The Short


Pros
- Takes every issue I had with The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai and fixes them.
- Two characters, each with unique weapon sets and playstyles
- Each character has their own story mode, and while they aren't particularly unique they are different enough
- Arcade mode is back and better than ever
- Co-op throughout, and it's less broken
- Wider scope of difficulties and improved continue system eliminates most frustration
- Weapons are much better balanced and have a better variety
- Graphics are smoother, effects look better, and the sound design is improved
- Easily one of the best action games on XBLA

Cons
- Finding all the secrets can be a huge pain
- Still sometimes has too much blood/effects on the screen to know what is going on
- Once you beat it 100%, there's little reason to go back. But that could be said for a lot of games (it hurts more with this one because I LOVE IT)
- Story is better and has some unique presentation elements, but is still inane gibberish at its core

Back to some good, bloody 2D action. 

The Long

I really liked The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, probably more than it deserved (maybe not; game was pretty solid). I actually bought it because my wife was going to be away for a week and I was bored, so I needed something to do. It took the whole week of just going to work and playing Dead Samurai before I finally beat it, and once it was over I wanted more. Since James Silva is the only dude working on these games, it took a while for the sequel to show up. But when it did, it was a day one purchase. If it had just been the first game with a new coat of paint, I still would have enjoyed it. But Silva instead took the original, very polished framework of Dead Samurai and ramped it all up to eleven. I kid you not when I say this might be my favorite action game of this generation. 

Even if I can't see what is going on. 

The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is pretty much the perfect sequel. It takes everything that was great about the first game - the smooth combat, the hard but fair difficulty, and the great risk/reward feeling of conquering a room - and makes it better. Combat is faster but you are given more tools at your disposal to deal with the new enemies (and the variety in this game is much better). Your movements feel much smoother and the controls feel tighter. This game's combat is polished to such a crazy shine I seriously think other game developers should look at it as an example. "See!" I want to shout. "If one dude can balance this insanely difficult, multi-weapon, multi-charactered 2D game, then why the crap do your games have such stupid, unbalanced difficulty?" 

Sorry. Got off track for a second there.

Anyway, the list of improvements is pretty big, so let's just do the first one: you now have two unique characters! Yay! You have Yuki, the Dishwasher's sister, who now has a chainsaw her arm. You can also play as original flavor Dishwasher if that piques your interest. Yuki plays similarly but is still different enough to make the decision hard: she tends to be faster and better with arial combos (from my experience, anyway), and is also a better dodger. The Dishwasher is a little slower but deals crazy damage, at the expense of losing some of his dodge. Both characters are balanced well enough that one isn't better than the other (I preferred Yuki because she's so fast, but that's just my playstyle). Each has their own story mode (they mirror each other, but there's a few minor changes) so you are encouraged to play through as both. They also share XP, which is nice, so you don't have to completely commit to one if you don't want to. 

Plus, a weapon is giant scissors. Getting a Clock Tower vibe. 

The new weapons are great, and each character's sets are unique. Highlights include a giant syringe needle and "Nimbus" sword (that looks like Cloud's sword from FFVII) for Yuki, and giant Scissors and the slow but deadly "Gore Hammer" for The Dishwasher. This game also does an incredibly good job balancing it's "faster but weaker" weapons with its "slower but higher damaging" ones. Usually in games I just ignore the slower, high damaging weapons because I am never willing to sacrifice agility to end a fight slightly faster; the risk is never worth it. Vampire Smile manages to somehow make even its most cumbersome weapon (the Gore Hammer, which prevents you from doing a vertical dodge) useful, if only because it's damage is totally nuts. It's a rarity that I'll ever switch from the starter weapons in a game (since I've grown accustomed to them by the time new ones show up), but I did so frequently in Vampire Smile. I still have my favorites, but I often cycle through anyway, which shows the balance was just right all around. 

There are loads more finishers this time around, some of which are stupidly over-the-top violent.  

There are lots of other little improvements. Continues are infinite and free, meaning if you fail a room you just restart it with no penalty (other than having to do it again). Upgrades are easier to get, and items tend to be cheaper (probably since I'm not spending money on continues). You can find "beads" throughout the world that will unlock certain abilities (like slowly restoring health when attacking, etc.) which can prove extremely helpful. You can also have multiple weapon "sets," meaning you can cycle through the four much more easily (though I really only used two). A wider range of difficulties allow even the suckiest player to start somewhere, and while the ultimate difficulty isn't nearly as hard as it was on Dead Samurai, it feels more like a challenge and less like pounding your face against a brick wall.

All these improvements are, of course, layered upon the already superb combat system, which again has a heavy focus on dodging at exactly the right moment and being able to single out individual enemies (preferably by getting them in the air, if you are playing on harder modes) and picking them off one by one. Your extreme mobility makes you feel empowered, which helps since these enemies are relentless bastards that only get harder as it goes along. 

Suffer not an agent beastie to live. 

Arcade mode is back, with support for two players (and the second player isn't permanently invincible anymore), and you can co-op the story as mode. Arcade is bigger and the challenges are...more challenging (while also adding new factors in). It's a blast to go around murdering dudes with a friend, with each scenario being both fun and (at times) frustrating. It's just another layer of content stacked alongside an already good-length story mode (which you beat twice, too), so content-wise you are certainly getting your cash value. 

I'm going to say it one more time: Playing Vampire Smile just feels really good. It's smoother than the first game, the combat is fast paced and visceral, you feel like you are in total control, and it still offers a very fair challenge. It is just an extremely solid game. 

Even robots bleed. 

Graphics have seen a massive improvement. First off, sprites are better animated and are a lot bigger, which helps since in the first game they kind of looked like tiny blurry figures. There's a wider range of enemies to look at, with the ones returning from the previous game redrawn to match the new style. But probably the best graphical improvement are the backgrounds. Now instead of being pre-rendered ugly things they fit the pencil-drawn style of its foreground characters, giving the whole thing a grim, uniform style. If you hate black and gray you'll probably not like the look of this game, but I honestly thought it looked fantastic, like sketches in a notebook come to life. With that dissonance between the foreground and background is gone, the whole game looks much better. 

Music and sounds are good, as usual, though none of the tunes were particularly memorable. Effects are slightly toned down (if you can call the screenshot above "toned down") but it still goes bananas at times, but having brighter, cleaner sprites means you don't get lost as frequently. It's still a bit much, but that's the style now so I guess I'll live with it.

Oh wait, I forgot to mention the "story."

There is a story. It is told from two viewpoints, depending on who you play as. The Dishwasher's is just a straight run through, but Yuki's adds some gameplay elements when she kind of goes insane and you have to direct her around. It's a cool concept wasted on a poorly written script, with the story essentially being the same as the first game: robot corporations are evil and messed you up, go kill them. I'm not saying this game needs deep drama or anything, but the fact it's almost exactly the same is kind of lame. Whatever, I'm not playing this game for the story. 

Another full game with no dishwashing gameplay mechanic. I feel cheated. 

As it stands, The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is a superb 2D action game. Every misstep, however slight, from the first game has been remedied here. It's fast, brutal, exciting, and gives you a genuine sense of accomplishment when you finally conquer that impossible room. If you have any fondness for these types of games, you are really doing yourself a disservice by ignoring Vampire Smile. I highly suggest picking it up, or at least getting the demo if you own an Xbox 360. Really, really quality stuff.

Now bring on Dishwasher 3!

Five out of five stars. 

Just...tone the effects down a little next time, ok?