"Must be Ash Wednesday!" These are the words Xander Harris speaks after dusting a bad guy in Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds, and they make me deliriously happy. I clock Nicholas Brendon's dry, sarcastic drawl almost instantly. If anything is going to sell me on a Buffy game, I think to myself as Xander kicks another vamp in the crotch, it'd be hearing the original cast reprising their roles.
With the exception of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan, the mostly full bingo card of actors kicks things off to a brilliant start. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is perhaps my favorite show of all-time, so in a way, I was destined to adore Chaos Bleeds no matter what. But I didn't expect the gameplay to still feel fun and satisfying some 21 years on from launch. I'm loving it so much that instead of playing it for an hour of novelty, as I usually might for one of these PS2 throwbacks, I've decided to play Chaos Bleeds in full and live out the Buffy beat-'em-up fantasy I didn't know I'd been craving.
