Vampyr – Review

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Vampyr is a 3rd person role-playing game brought to us by Dontnod and Focus Home and was released on the 5th June on PS4, Xbox One & Windows PC. Vampyr takes place in London during 1918 with Spanish flu running rife, the developer researched the setting by travelling to London and consulting history books and documentaries. The visuals were made with fictional and factual reference points in mind. London serves as a fictionalised semi-open world composed of four districts, which can all be destroyed based on the player’s actions.

Upon starting Vampyr the game plays really well, you’re in full control of what you do, your skill tree, your actions which have major consequences throughout the game. You decide, my only issue with Vampyr is the combat which can make the game quite tough. Vampyr’s combat system is very sluggish and a small mistake of a flick of the RS on a console and you switch to another enemy, the Vampire powers are slightly over the top and also not delivered very well, but this may be just the way I play the game.

Visually the game is dark and eerie, it has to be you’re a vampire for god’s sake. London in these times was a dark place with diseases, war and poverty a huge issue. The game takes place during the Spanish Flu epidemic which is claiming the lives of many people, you control the game’s protagonist Jonathan E. Reid, a doctor who was made into a vampire, and whose thirst for blood compels him to kill innocent people. To do this successfully, he must gather information about his targets—study and change their habits, collect clues, and maintain certain relationships by communicating with the sixty inhabitants of London. The idea of learning about your targets gives it a real RPG feel and opens the game up lots more. With the added dialogue you have hours of game time but after a while, the dialogue is something you may just find yourself skipping.

You can kill any of the sixty-odd people that inhabit London through the story but you need to learn about them first by doing missions for them and also learning about their story or what they plan to do. Once you do this you can mesmerise them (if you are a high enough level) and lead them in a dark alley and kill them. This is good and bad, the bad part in killing them is it can affect other characters and block part of the story for you. Here is the good, if you kill someone whom you have unlocked all their dialogue options for, you gain a fat amount of exp from their blood quality. Blood quality isn’t classed on actual blood types now, it is due to the level of dialogue options you open up for that said character once you kill them you earn that exp, this can help open the game up more and also makes combat easy as you have stronger attacks. But do this at your own risk. You can however kill someone without finding out about the, but this is pointless as you lose more than you gain.

If I was going to compare this to any game that is currently out there it would be The Witcher 3. The vast freedom that London offers and side missions you can take on gives the game real depth, also the skill trees give it a familiar feel. One thing I feel they dropped the ball on for was authenticity but what I am slightly thankful for is the lack of thirst you as a vampire needs, I’ve always had the idea that as a vampire you need to feed as often as possible and if you don’t you risk dying…if that is possible. But in Vampyr this isn’t the case, now you can bite people during combat but apart from that you just use health syringes to heal or part of the blood you take from enemies in combat which is one of the powers you gain from the start.

The game’s enemies are spread out from other Vampires (Ekons), Werewolves (Vulkod), Skals and Vampire hunters (Priwen Guard) The Priwen guards and Skals have numerous strengths and weapons that they use against you. You can sneak up to them to get an advantage…well I say sneak you casually walk towards them, there isn’t a stealth aspect in Vampyr which is a shame as the game is set in a dark era and the option of stealth would be so fitting.

What I did enjoy is uncovering the cure to the different ailments that affect the community of London which you can craft into medicines to give out to the population of London to uncover new dialogue options and also gain the trust of the key story characters. I literally felt like Florence Nightingale pottering around London’s east end.

I’d like to give a massive thank you to Microsoft for allowing us to review this eerie title.

Vampyr was reviewed on the Xbox One but is also available on PS4 and Windows PC, if you want to sink your fangs into this game. check out the links at the top and below.

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