Reviews

Vampyr PS4 Review

Posted on: 2018-06-17

Dripping with atmosphere with its dark and oppressive setting coupled with engaging and sometimes challenging combat. It does have its issues but this is what we like to call a diamond in the rough.

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Vampyr PS4 Review

Like the western and pirate genre, vampires are a neglected concept with video games as there are not many games about them. The last time we got a game based on vampires was the 2013 release of Dark, which was an abysmal stealth game with laughable voice acting and questionable stealth mechanics which made you feel as tough as wet cardboard. Vampyr on the other hand is good, with an interesting setting of the early 20th century London during the Spanish Flu epidemic, it has a few rough edges but it is nonetheless good. It’s a great premise and we finally get a good Vampire game.

You play as Dr Johnathan Reid, who finds himself among the corpses who had their lives syphoned from them, Reid was not fortunate enough to die as he finds that he is now a vampire. He gets into a scrape with the authorities because his thirsted for blood ends up killing his sister by accident. He then goes on a revenge crusade to find the vampire that inflicted him with this curse. I like the set up in this game’s story because the vampire theme slides well into place with the Spanish Flu outbreak during the Great War, as not everyone will die as there is a chance they could become a vampire.

Gameplay is a mixture of stealth and one on one combat, but it is not purely stealth because if you get spotted you are more than capable of handling yourself. You can get the jump on enemies by draining some of their blood, which will then initiate the combat. The combat is very similar to From Software’s Dark Souls but it doesn’t have as many hit detection problems that game has. How it works you have two weapons, you have your main melee weapon where you can do your standard light attack and heavy attack and you also have a secondary hand for stun attacks. If you stun your enemies enough you can suck some blood out of them, which fills up a special meter which gives you the ability to perform special moves and it can cause devastating damage.

The gameplay is not all fighting you do have to investigate crime scenes, think of it as Sherlock Holmes but you have enhanced senses and you analyse blood by tasting it. You talk to people and they will become nervous depending on how you talk to them, it’s not anything we haven’t seen before as the dialogue system will be very familiar if you have played Mass Effect or any Bioware game.

Presentation is good for the most part; they have really captured the atmosphere of London in the early 20th century, as this was during the Spanish Flu outbreak the streets of London town are covered with corpses with blood flowing down the gutter. It’s dark and oppressive which is thematically appropriate for the subject matter and the gothic nature of vampires. Character detail looks great, well for the main characters look good, however the background characters look washed out and look like something from an early Xbox 360 title. Facial detail on Reid looks good; he really looks like as if he has been to hell and back as he slogs through the forever dark world he has to inhabit due to his condition. An issue I had with his game is that the framerate would struggle in some areas especially when there was heavy use of water and fog events, but these were far and between and didn’t hinder my experience completely.

Vampyr is overall a vampire game that we deserve after the few that were not very good. It is dripping with atmosphere with its dark and oppressive setting coupled with engaging and sometimes challenging combat. It does have its issues but this is what we like to call a diamond in the rough.

4/5   

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