Anyone who’s known me for, oh, five minutes? They know I like vampires. A lot. Since I was a child watching The Little Vampire on TV in the 80s. I will consume vampire media like it’s chocolate, so I was especially excited for Vampyr when I heard about it. After months and months of waiting, it finally landed in my grubby paws on Tuesday the 5th, release day. I finished it on the 7th, and I enjoyed it very much, it was a fun game, I loved the vampires, much of the story and lore and the world building. I also did a lot of nomming of bad guys. It was pretty satisfying. So I feel the need to waffle about it and write a review. Advance warning, I’ll be putting actual spoilery content after the bug list, as it’s a pretty obvious place for you to jump off if you want to avoid any important plot points. Anything before that is right at the beginning of the game so is basically on the box and doesn’t count, or discussion about mechanics and how the game works.
The basic gist of this game is that it’s 1918, and England is dealing with both the fallout of the war, and a Spanish Flu epidemic. You play Dr Jonathan Reid, blood specialist, just back from the war, who finds himself waking up in a mass grave of flu victims and an insatiable thirst for blood. Your goal is to find out what you are and who turned you and why, along with helping the citizens of London with their ills and trying to find a cure for the flu epidemic that isn’t quite what it seems.
The big theme of Vampyr is choices and consequences. Given they use the word ‘vampire’ consistently in the game itself (unless referring to different types, such as Ekons and Skals), I can’t help thinking that the title is spelled ‘vampyr’ as a stylistic excuse to tie in the Y as the choices tree. It’s a tree you’re going to be seeing quite a lot of, because there’s a lot of dialogue as you hunt around for hints and clues along your way, and some of your responses and decisions aren’t going to be for the best, and you will see consequences. Making a wrong choice can result in the deaths of characters, or even cause an entire district to fall to ruin, killing off all citizens and leaving it a hostile zone full of monsters and vampire hunters prowling the streets.
The kicker is, if you make a wrong decision, that’s it, you’re stuck with it and have to suffer the consequences. There is no manual save in Vampyr, only the game’s autosave feature so you don’t lose your progress. There are no previous save states to load to undo a mistake. This makes things a little more stressful and, unless you’re just going to give in and go the route of evil vampire and slaughter everyone, you’ll find yourself spending more time staring at the decision tree and pondering your choices carefully.
I wouldn’t call it a challenging game per se. Having screamed in rage at Bloodborne earlier in the year, my benchmark for challenging has gone up, so it’s probably an assessment biased more to think Vampyr is easier than it may actually be for others, especially those who may not play combat games that often and prefer RPGs. There aren’t any difficulty settings, so if you want more of a challenge, you do so yourself with weapon choices and in-gain mechanics. XP in this game comes from drinking blood (from enemies or citizens), and using the points to ‘evolve’. You gain endurance, health and funky vampire powers, which makes combat a lot easier. You can make combat more difficult choosing not to level up, and things will get more challenging as you progress through different districts.
Lack of combat difficulty isn’t a big deal unless you’re coming into this purely wanting a combat challenge like Bloodborne – in which case, be prepared to forget about combat and enjoy Vampyr for what it is, or forget it and go and buy the Dark Souls remaster. With this game you’re rewarded in other ways rather than the satisfaction of defeating humongous big bosses, because it’s not a plain action game. It’s an action RPG, so you’re also in it for the story. And it’s a good and engaging story for the most part. The main storyline is interesting and throws in a few surprises, and some delicious choices to make. The side missions also give you good look into the lives of the citizens, their personal stories, and how they connect as a community. They’re NPCs with surprising layers, and what you initially think of them may well change when you’ve unravelled their whole stories. There are saints, sinners and people just trying to survive, and working it all out is very satisfying.
The world and character costume designs are also outstanding. You only play at night, because vampire, duh. This adds an eerie cast to an already ravaged London. Evidence of the war and the bombings are all over the place, from the small things like recruitment posters to the destroyed buildings you navigate through, entering through the gaps left from walls missing in their entirety. It actually took me a while to come to a rather grim realisation: these vampires seem to need to be invited in, which means that all the buildings I’d been able to enter with their belongings intact were uninhabited, their owners either forced to leave due to damage, or because they’d died from bombs or the flu epidemic. The buildings, the parks and the cemeteries were designed well, and you got a sense of realness despite the lack of vivid colours.
Obviously, the game does have flaws, and some of these may be a bit much for regular gamers who aren’t going to overlook them because they’re not obsessed enough with vampires for that to make up for them, but after reflecting on them for a few days I can only advise giving it a go anyway, because it’s an interesting game that’s an enjoyable ride.
The combat itself is kind of clunky. Not breakingly so, but it can get a bit clumsy and isn’t as responsive as I’d like it to be. Having come to it right from playing Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag probably made it a bit more glaring for me, but Black Flag’s combat isn’t even the most fluid going, so Vampyr’s could do with refinement. Administering health items also seems to have a frustrating lag, which is annoying in more major combat because the delay can mean death. Spamming the button can result in using more items than planned.
Vampyr is shorter than I expected it to be – I was hoping it to give me about a week to play it through and do all the side missions. It ended up being even shorter for me when you factor in that I was thinking it was the 8th all day when it was the 7th that I actually finished it. So what I had assumed was an afternoon and three evenings was in fact and afternoon and two evenings. In all I spent roughly 16 hours playing it. That’s not dreadful, but definitely on the shorter side. It does have replay value, what with different decisions to make and different ways to play, so it balances out a bit. Some DLC would also help extend the experience, but I don’t know if it will perform well enough to get DLC or a sequel. I hope so, but this may end up being one of those cult classic games.
Loading screens are slow. I’ve known slower, but these ones rank up there, and I’m playing on a PS4 Pro, so I’m afraid of what they’re like on a standard PS4 and Xbox One, and lower-end PCs. Because of this, a bit more entertainment value would be good. Assassin’s Creed did it as an animus loading screen with interesting facts and the ability to run around and admire your character’s outfit. Skyrim did it with world facts and artwork that you could rotate and admire. The Sims 3 had interactive mini games. Something to engage with on loading screens is always a plus in my book.
The map could do with being a bit more detailed. There’s not enough zoom for identifying locations and finding your way around. I got horribly lost quite frequently, as I’m sure many other navigationally-challenged people will as well. I think I was expecting more as it’s not the hugest playing area (and no fast travel makes it a bit frustrating when you get lost all the time), because Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate had a much bigger area of London to play in and I didn’t get particularly lost when playing it, even before fast travel locations were unlocked. Also, map layers for sewers and possibly some buildings would be nice (unless I missed something and they are there). I don’t particularly enjoy twisty turny corridors that are all alike, and the sewers were just that.
Given this is release week, it’s obviously going to be a little buggy, though it’s not game-breakingly so – if anything, it’s not as buggy as other games on release, so mega points in its favour. I imagine these will get mopped up in a few weeks and patched with an update anyway. In the meantime, though, some that I’ve noticed that are irritating:
- Developed a side-mission waypoint bug on the HUD compass. Sometimes the head would display when no mission was being tracked (became more persistent in the last couple of chapters), or would display a non-existent waypoint that conflicted with one you actually did have active (not counting the missions that had multiple waypoints, which did work), making navigation a tad frustrating.
- Custom waypoints would randomly appear on the map in odd places. More WTF than anything else.
- Second half of the game had this strange and persistent ‘squelch’ sound around the pub in the docks and in the hideout. Drove me utterly insane (I’m hypersensitive to annoying sounds) so I muted in the end. Might have been related to some firearms target practice that was going on in the area that doesn’t quit when it’s supposed to.
- May not be a bug and just me being insane, but I swear the serums got swapped on the d-pad buttons several times from what I set them to.
- Watering the plant achievement never registered.
- Crashes and freezes – 2 crashes that I reported, and quite a few freezes that worked themselves out after a few seconds, notably later in the game. Nothing dire, though, and honestly I’ve had older games that have had plenty of bug fixes crash more often, so pretty good really.
The spoilery and more personal thinky bits – stop here if you want to discover the story with innocent eyes…
Above I said the story was mostly good. The ‘origin’ of vampires and the big bad made me raise a brow a bit and I think it was dealt with clumsily. It’s a mix of Arthurian and Celtic stuff that’s only really revealed towards the end. Reid’s maker turns out to be an entity of blood, by the name of Myrddin. Given the Arthurian link, I think it’s on the money he’s meant to be Merlin, as that’s one of the names associated with him. Turns out he turned Arthur into a vampire to be the champion to defeat the Big Bad during his reign. I mean, fair enough, I haven’t seen that take on the Arthurian myth before, so you do you, game. Then it turns out the ‘mother’ of vampires is… The Morrigan. Okay. Different set of mythologies there for a start, folks, and different parts of the British Isles. Arthurian mythology tends to be around the areas of Wales and Cornwall, the Morrigan is Irish. But I guess you can mix them?
The problem isn’t really what the origins are, it’s just it all seemed out of place in the time period of the game. With the industrial revolution, the scientific advances and the big war that probably disillusioned people about god and religion, never mind letting them continue believing in fairy tales… well, 1918 is too late to drop that in without a hell of a lot more lore and backstory to be found in the game without it sticking out like a sore thumb. There are a few references to Arthurian legend in the game, but they’re in a museum-like factual form, and a brief hint it’s something more when McCullum drinks a performance-enhancing drink he says contains the bloody of Arthur. But none of it is enough to really tie it together in a satisfactory manner. Instead, at the end we get a tacked on, “Hi, I’m Merlin, Arthur is one of my children, and our mother is the Morrigan. Now go and defeat her so she can go back to sleep under Stonehenge.” Yeah, she’s napping under Stonehenge for some reason. Plenty of mystical places in Ireland, but she’s taken a fancy to Stonehenge. Well, I’m not going to be the one to deny the goddess of war, fate and death her nap spot, but huh.
It genuinely irritates me because it could have been integrated better and been awesome. I’m absolutely charmed by the Morrigan being the mother of vampires, it’s an interesting take that I personally haven’t seen before, and it does actually work for me. I also love Arthurian stuff (aside from the Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot mess), and I’m more than fine with the vampire take. I love vampires. I actively seek fanfic of my favourite things with added vampires. Throwing vampires into Arthurian legend is totally my jam. So it vexes me that this backstory with so much potential is thrown in at the blue right at the end, so it feels out of place an inadequately explained.
Moving on, I didn’t like the ‘romance’. It seemed strange that for a game all about choices and consequences, that was one thing I had no choice in (unless my choices led to it without me working out that was the case). Don’t get me wrong, I liked Lady Ashbury just fine, she’s great, I enjoyed her character, her dialogue, her snarky comments on sexist mens clubs (centuries old vampires are the worst for ingrained sexist beliefs). But out of nowhere, she and Reid are in love. They’d not had that much interaction for me to feel it at all by then. I mean, I knew it was going to happen, because it always does with these things, but I did a double-take when it happened because it wasn’t time. I was expecting it towards the end or at the end. Also, I didn’t want it. It was unnecessary, and I’m bored of shoe-horned romances. Just because a male and female protagonist exist in the same space doesn’t mean they’re contractually obliged to get together.
Sort of related to the romance, get your slash goggles ready for McCullum. He’s the leader of the vampire hunters, the Priwen Guard. Tall, handsome, chip on his shoulder and a sexy Irish accent. He’s not a sanctimonious prick, he just hates vampires because they were responsible for the death of his parents (yeah, cliche, but we’ll forgive it). He’s a devious bastard, and I really liked him. After a couple of encounters, I could happily ‘ship him with Reid, because chemistry. Then… my god, then you battle with him and upon defeating him you have three choices. Kill him, spare him… or turn him (that option may relate to how much you know about him and your mesmerise level). Sensibly, I chose to kill him oh, who am I kidding, you all bloody know I turned the bastard. It was glorious. There was more sexual tension in that scene than there ever was between Reid and Lady Ashbury. The result is that later on you need to get a McGuffin from him. You find him in the graveyard as gruff and snarky as ever, fighting off Skal and basically owning his situation, deciding being a vampire means he can be the ultimate vampire hunter. Choices and consequences in this game can produce unexpected results, and Reid’s vengeful motive backfired on him. If the fanfic writers take a shine to this game, the Reid/McCullum enemies-to-lovers and hate sex fics are going to be epic.
Also worth a mention as a positive is the voice acting. Reid is voiced by Anthony Howell, who I know mainly as Paul Milner in Foyle’s War. He’s got one of those voices that could read the phonebook and make it interesting, so it was a genuine pleasure to listen to the dialogue in the game. The rest of the cast was great, too, though you hear less of them as there are a lot of characters to interact with, but not necessarily in detail. Not a criticism, it just means that people don’t stand out as much as Reid, but they all did a great job. Long gone are the days of the dodgy, hilarious voice acting of the original Resident Evil game. The only dialogue criticism I have is that a little more variety in the stock responses would have been nice – particularly as you’re going to encounter a lot of locked things, so the couple of lines Reid has to tell us this does get a little stale. I swear towards the end he was getting more sarcastic about it, but that may just have been my internal sarcasm kicking in and throwing shade on it.
So, those are my thoughts on the game. I’ll certainly be playing it again, there’s still more I can do, but I think I need a break from it and to wait for some bug fixes. I would also like a sequel of some kind, because there’s still more potential in this game to be explored and improved upon, along with the combat and better maps. They can learn a lot from this game. DLC would also be acceptable. I would love some of McCullum smiting the undead while hiding his being a vampire from the Priwen Guard. Though a non-vampire McCullum adventure would also be acceptable.
In conclusion, it gets 4 out of 5 stars from me, even with its flaws. Well worth playing, especially if you’re a fan of vampires, because I think we get more out of it than gamers who care not for the undead.