Review: Vampyr is one of the most original games of the generation

Disclaimer: Review copy provided by publisher

Platforms: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC

Publishers: Dontnod Entertainment

Developers: Focus Home Interactive

MSRP: $59.99

Introduction:

We’re all familiar with the legends of vampires. They come at night to suck your blood, they live forever, they’re strong, are weakened by wooden stakes, crosses, and so on. They’re part of tales as old as time but we’ve never really seen them done justice in gaming. With Vampyr, Dontnod Entertainment set out to change that.

Vampyr is easily one of the most unique and original games of this generation. Sure, it borrows elements from other popular games such as dialogue choices, branching paths, an open-world, and an RPG-like skill tree but the way everything is presented is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

You play as Dr. Jonathan Reid, a man who wakes up on the streets of London to find him cursed with the powers of a vampire. As he learns to cope with ways to control his thirst for blood, he’s also tasked with managing a hospital ripe with potential victims who are plagued by diseases.

Vampyr’s backdrop is set during the peak of the Spanish Flu at the end of World War I, soldiers such as Reid himself are returning home to a world that is equally as bad as the one on the battlefield. The choice is yours to try and return the world to order or keep it in a state of misery and chaos filled with bloodsuckers.

A unique and innovative take on the genre of branching paths:

This third-person RPG is all about choice, particularly moral choices that show just how selfish you may be. With your dark secret, the only way for you to level up and grow stronger is to kill and more specifically, seduce people and suck all of their succulent blood out of their neck.

There’s something incredibly enticing about every element of this story. You’re part doctor, trying to cure people of their diseases so you can either: A. See them prosper or B. Make sure their blood isn’t all gross and infected so you can get a nice snack for yourself. You can run all of these districts into utter chaos depending on how good or evil you decide to go and it’s all done in a very unique way. In some games, these good/evil paths feel too obvious.

You can see the bad option a mile away and you don’t want to be bad, so you simply won’t do it. Rarely is there extreme benefits to being either good or bad outside of the moral effect it has on the story. In Vampyr, it challenges your morals for the sake of benefiting gameplay through difficulty and power.

You can play the game without ever having to chow down on someone but the game will be borderline impossible, it’s possible, but just barely. Enemies get harder as you play and it becomes essential for you to be able to be powerful in order to make things easier on yourself but the more people you kill, the more consequences you will face. It’s up to you to decide how much is enough.

DontNod manages to convey that thirst for blood through gameplay, it makes you crave more strength, those cool powers, and more. It’s a very difficult thing to do and it’s subtle but brilliantly done, it adequately communicates the feelings the character has to the player.

All NPCs are unique but suffer from stiff, awkward performances:

More importantly, these aren’t just throwaway NPCs, no names, no identity. These are all characters who have stories to tell, names, unique looks, and more. Outside of the canon fodder enemies that get tossed your way in combat, every person you encounter is unique and feels like a developed character. The more you talk to them, do quests for them, or talk to people who they have relationships with, the more you learn and it will make the XP you get from feasting on them increase dramatically. It’s a fascinating dynamic and makes the world all the more interesting to explore.

What’s a bit of a bummer is that conversations are very straightforward, most conversations felt like they weren’t branching. It’s just “Here are all of the pre-written conversations and you get to choose what’s said in what order but ultimately, you’ll listen to all of it.” There are no dialogue choices that affect relationships or ones that give different paths, it’s all just presented at the same time and kind of defeats the purpose of having a dialogue tree.

The conversations themselves are very similar to that of a Bethesda RPG, blank faces with semi-emotive voices that makes interactions come off as stiff and wooden. It’s not unbearable but combining that with the redundancy of the dialogue tree made me wish they had just gone for scripted cutscenes and the choices that you make during gameplay effect what you see in those cutscenes.

Janky combat is serviceable but not the most enjoyable:

While growing stronger is great because you’re getting all of these cool powers and abilities, using them can be a bit disheartening. Combat is a bit too “loose”, at times it felt like I was just flinging my arms around to hit people and when using ranged attacks such as guns or using a vampire power, I couldn’t aim with a dedicated button. You just rotate the camera in a general direction and start firing away and hope you hit your target.

The combat isn’t particularly bad, it’s just a bit janky. While something like the Batman Arkham games feels tight, making the player feel in control of every move and able to quickly react to anything at any time, Vampyr feels more like you just have to get close and press the buttons as quickly as possible to hit your enemy as they try to dodge your attacks.

When you’re fighting other vampires, they have the ability to teleport/dash forward really quickly and it’s incredibly tedious to slash them, watch them dash away, and then move to the other side of the room to rinse and repeat. When combat flows properly, it’s fun but those moments are few and far between. It’s good enough that it won’t make you put the game down completely but you won’t be desiring more combat sections than your given.

The Verdict:

Vampyr feels like a game we haven’t seen this generation. It’s not triple-A but it’s not indie, it falls somewhere in the middle. It has that charming amount of jank, really ambitious and original ideas, and it’s a game many will sleep on because it’s not as well known but those who play it likely won’t regret picking it up. It may not be a perfect game but it knows how to execute on its unique premise and gameplay concepts well enough that it’s one I can’t help but recommend.