From the studio that brought us the time-bending slice of life teen drama that was “Life is Strange”, DONTNOD Entertainment has returned with the bleak and dreary “Vampyr”.
Taking players all the way back to 1918 London, “Vampyr” tells the story of Dr. Jonathan Reid. Reid, a famous doctor, and veteran return to his city only to awake in a mass of bodies a vampire. Stumbling from the mass grave Reid submits to his newfound hunger and kills his sister Mary. After the death of his sister, Reid is confronted by the Guard of Priwen, an order with the sole goal of protecting society by eradicating all vampires. Reid finds refuge at the Pembroke Hospital. This is where players are given their first moral choice of the game. Upon arriving at the hospital, Reid comes across a ruffian who had just killed another man. Reid discovers his ability to manipulate the human mind as well as rediscovering his need to feed. Players hold the life of this man, along with the rest of the city, in his hands. Reid can either drain the man in an act of primal hedonism or spare the man. London is a breathing city in “Vampyr”. Actions have consequences is the term so often used in the industry. As Jonathan Reid, players can explore DONTNOD’s version of the London meeting and help/eating its citizens. Every citizen is marked on an interface within the game. From here players can track the person’s health, see the information that Reid has gathered on them and most importantly their blood quality. Speaking to others is how players increase the character’s blood quality. The higher the blood quality, the more experienced players receive after “embracing” the character. Players can level up whenever they take a rest in the game. Before Reid lies down for a nap, players can allocate experience points to pick up skills or increases to Reid’s stats. “Vampyr” does not feature the widest variety of skills, but there is plenty of variety for players to establish their own playstyle. When combined with different weapons players can focus on attacking quickly and conserve stamina, attack like a wild beast and slash through enemies, stand back and eliminate enemies from a distance with the different blood powers (spears, claws, etc.) or even combine all these aspects for a well-rounded approach to deal with any opposition. Picking the proper skills is an extra layer that appears in no-kill playthroughs of the game. When avoiding embracing the citizens of London, players will find themselves under leveled for many engagements. Intelligent distribution of experience can be the difference between victory and defeat. Embracing the citizens of London is the easiest way to level up Reid and make him a formidable vampire, but things are never that easy. Players who walk the streets and indiscriminately embrace the citizens will get stronger, but in doing so it kills the character. Meaning that players not only miss out on the chance to get to know the character but also miss out on any mission that the character would have provided further on in the game. This gives each NPC character weight and is easily the most interesting addition to this game. The health of the citizens is something else to take into consideration. Not only does it affect blood quality, each of the game’s four districts has an overall health that needs to be maintained. This is simple enough to do. All players need to do is craft medicine for the specified illness plaguing the citizens. It becomes extremely tedious, however, when it comes to administering the medicine. Players need to navigate the spaces between safe zones that are littered with enemies to then run through a few lines of dialogue with the characters to administer the medicine. The map while not labyrinthine is narrow and clogged with enemies that are easier to fight than avoid, and when mixed the time spent speaking with the citizens, the process of dolling out mediation takes more time than some would be willing to give. Combat is a feature of “Vampyr” that has been of some dispute. Many found the combat segments clunky, and they are not completely wrong. “Vampyr” features an action combat system that has similarities to the “Dark Souls” franchise. Players need to manage a stamina, health, and blood (mana used for vampire abilities) bar while in combat. As mentioned combat can be clunky, but there is a rhythm to it. When players get into the flow of combat, like in boss fights, for instance, combat can actually stand out as one of the better parts of the game despite its quirks. “Vampyr” fails significantly in two key areas: Its lore and presentation. Vampire lore has a deep history that the game borrows from while adding its own bits and pieces too. The problem is that “Vampyr” gets lost within its lore and creates contradictions within the wider narrative. Things end up half-explained and make no sense in the end or are never clearly laid out leaving the player with questions and little answers. This confusion will leave a funny after taste when the game is done. The game’s narrative structure does not do much to relieve these problems. “Vampyr” concludes its main conflict in two to two and a half acts, leaving everything else to be concluded in its excessively drawn out epilogue. The game fails to keep its place all the way through and can be rather jarring at times. “Vampyr” is also plagued with technical problems. Stiff characters models, massive textural pop and extremely low draw distance. This all compounds with bugs and other general glitches. “Vampyr” has plenty of solid ideas that it executes on with varying levels of success. Sadly, this inconsistency and the sad state of the game’s overall narrative structure drags down what would otherwise be a game. Score: 6/10 “Vampyr” has plenty of potentials that it fails to live up to. It seems to have big budget ideas that were constrained by a small budget.
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AuthorI am A.J. Goelz. I'm a gamer first and a writer second. I hope you enjoy the content on this page and check out the rest of my content on YouTube. Archives
April 2019
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