Kombo's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game's About
This PSP Mini is about a young vampire trying to take control of an empire of monsters (vampire + empire = vempire) by defeating various monster bosses with a match-4 puzzle scheme, a la Puzzle Quest. However, don't think this is another Bejeweled copycat. Instead of merely swapping out one block at a time to make a match, you match the blocks in a row by rotating a 4 x 4 square of the said blocks. You have to make a specific number of matches in the set time to advance to the next level, and occasionally during the matching process a boss will appear and do its best to thwart any and all matching efforts for a short time. The clock continues to tick, so the bosses effectively increase the challenge and, at times, the level of panic.

What's Hot
In a world with a ton of block matching/elimination games, it's refreshing to find one that has a slightly unique control scheme and game mechanics. You rotate the selected grid of blocks using the L and R buttons, and the blocks rotate in the selected direction. At first this seems arbitrary, but as the levels get more difficult in terms of variety of blocks and the time limit, it becomes important quickly to pay attention to which way you are turning the blocks.

To spice things up a bit further as well as help you in your quest, you can purchase monsters to summon or spells to cast, which generally will either wipe out a row of blocks or trade one type of blocks for another. You can also unlock artefacts (yes, that is spelled correctly) that can provide different bonuses, such as ensuring a type of block appears to aid in spell casting.



What's Not
While Vempire does a lot of things well, it also has a lot of problems, particularly when it comes to presentation. For example, as previously stated, each level has a time limit, but there is no real way of knowing how much time you really have. An analog clock ticks off the countdown, and it starts to tick loudly when only five seconds are left, which is really not that helpful. On top of that, there are two meters that let you know when a boss will make his grand appearance and when a level is almost complete. Neither meter has a number designation, so it's rather difficult to tell how many more matches are needed to complete the level or how many more matches will trigger the boss to show up. As a result, you can't really gauge when to prepare for a boss or how close you are to finishing the level. But you do know that when you hear the clock ticking, you've basically failed.

In addition, if you purchase a monster or spell before attempting a level and then consequently fail to complete it, any and all purchases will return to the store. The game offers no warning that this will happen, so it's unfortunately easy to play level after level wondering where your purchases are.

Final Word
Overall, Vempire really does try to stick out from the block elimination crowd, and it succeeds in that matter, but its gameplay problems will most likely keep you from getting hooked. With everything original it has going for it, it's unfortunate that the game could not find a way to stand out from the Bejeweled copycats and present smooth gameplay.