You're Buffy. You patrol the streets and take out baddies with your hand-to-hand fighting skills, along with an array of slaying weapons, half of which you probably won't even use. It's your typical side-scrolling beat 'em up, only there's no fun to be had. Now, I'm sure there was a story in there somewhere as well, something about resurrecting the Darkhul King (hence the clever title,) but when the credits rolled, the only thing I could think of was what I would trade in this game for.

So what makes Buffy so terrible? For one, it looks like a low end Sega Genesis game, with one of the blandest colour pallets ever seen. The backgrounds are completely flat and lifeless, while the characters lack any type of distinct features. The animation on Buffy herself borders on being decent, but there's really not much to write home about here. The GBA is capable of much more than this, and gamers certainly deserve better value for their money.

Gameplay wise, Buffy can punch, kick, run, and do a double-jump. There are also a variety of weapons for you to use, such as a stake, throwing axe, laser rifle, and torch, but most of the time you'll be using the standard punch-punch-kick or kick-kick-punch combos in order to take out your foes, while saving your projectile weapons for the 3 pathetic bosses found in the game. There's really no incentive to play the game on a higher difficulty level once you finish it either, simply because the gameplay itself is totally coma-inducing.

What really got me about Buffy though, was the horrible level design. Let's say you're making your way through a cave and there are absolutely no enemies around. So, for no real reason whatsoever, the geniuses behind the game decided to put up a random wall for you to punch down. It doesn't really serve a purpose, because the wall can't hurt you, you don't get anything from knocking it down, and there's no one else around as it is. Can we say pointless level features? I certainly think we can. Thankfully, most gamers will be smart enough to turn the game off after the first 3 levels, and won't have to suffer through the other 13.

In the sound department, aside from the somewhat interesting title screen theme, all the music in the game is completely forgetable, and the effects all sound extremely cheap and low end. It's a bad game in nearly every single department, including the presentation, which doesn't really do a good job of portraying the show. Sure, you have snippets of a storyline between stages, with still frames of all your favourite Buffy characters as they spout off text dialogue, but once again, the rest of the game is so bad that by the end of a level you won't really care whether or not the world is doomed or not.

I can't think of a single positive thing to say about Buffy. It's boring, unoriginal, ugly, takes only an hour or so to finish, and falls far short of the mark. Even if you're a hardcore Buffy fan, I wouldn't recommend this sorry excuse for a game to you. Save your money and buy something worthwhile instead. If you absolutely need a vampire game, check out Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, which is infinitely superior. Just remember, whatever you do, stay away from Buffy. If you see it on store shelves and are even remotely tempted to buy it at the budget price...don't. Trust me, it's THAT bad.