Video games don’t shy away from the living dead. Everywhere you look, you’ll see games inspired by zombies or supporting some kind of special zombie mode. Zombies are hot and it seems like they managed to maintain their popularity over the years. Great news for fans of those monsters but what about the vampires? When I grew up, vampires and werewolves were extremely popular (thanks to the Twilight franchise), but the vampires introduced in Vampyr are nothing like that. Don’t be mistaken, these undead creatures are the real deal.
Discover London
In Vampyr, you take control over Jonathan Reed, a doctor during the Great War who just returned to London after aiding the needed ones over at the front. Minutes after his return, Jonathan started to feel weak, his vision troubled, and there’s that strange urge to drink warm blood. It looks like the doctor brought a lot more back home than a posttraumatic stress disorder, somewhere along the way a vampire got a hold on him, forcing him to become one of those fierce creatures of the night.
This backstory is crucial for the gameplay since Jonathan Reed isn’t a bad person, he still wants to help those in need. When you discover London is currently suffering from the Spanish flu, you’ll have to decide how you’ll handle things. Will you give medicine to those who need it or will you feed on them instead? Keeping your health and that of the citizens high is the main challenge in the game and the way it’s created is simply unique.
Keep them safe or kill them all
This interesting symbiosis between hunter and hunted is the key feature of Vampyr and I must say I really like it. During your adventure, which will take over ten hours to complete, you’ll meet a lot of citizens. These citizens can help you out or can prove to be extremely valuable later on. The major dilemma here is that you still need to feed, without blood, you can’t gain XP to unlock those powerful attacks and without those, you don’t make a chance against the strong enemies. So who are you willing to sacrifice for the greater good? It’s something we haven’t seen before in any other game and the developers should be applauded for their innovations in a theme that was stuck in tradition for too long.
Of course, killing people can lead to bad things. For example, killing characters also means you’re missing out on their arc and potentially interesting story. Besides that, if you kill too many, the balance tips and you could lose an entire neighborhood, resulting in fewer shops and less access to the things you need to succeed in your goal. Planning your strategy ahead and finding out who’s most interesting to kill is crucial. You can complete the game without killing anyone but that’s a near to impossible task. As said before, blood is needed to survive in combat.
Face your demons
Right from the start, you’ll be confronted with other demonic creatures lurking in the dark alleys of London. Defeating them at the beginning is rather easy, but the more you advance in the story, the stronger they’ll get. Vampyr isn’t an easy game and you’ll have to take a lot into consideration if you want to come out a fight alive; bringing it closer to a Dark Souls-esque game than just another third-person combat game.
During combat, you’ll have a lot to worry about. Your health being your first priority but there’s more than just that. During combat, you’ll also have to keep a close eye on your stamina bar. The more you move and dodge, the more stamina you’ll consume. If you end up with an empty stamina bar just seconds before an attack, you’ll probably won’t live to tell the tale. This combination of health and stamina is a rather unique twist to the genre and it really lifts the overall level of difficulty. As if this wasn’t enough already, the amount of blood you’ve obtained is also crucial for combat. With blood, you can use certain special vampire abilities to take down your enemies faster, without those attacks you’re in for the fight of your life. It’s great to see that your choices really matter and affect the combat tremendously. Depending on your playstyle, you can become one of the most powerful vampires who sacrificed half of the city to become this strong or you can remain more humane and thus struggle with the monsters you have to defeat.
Nothing’s perfect
Although Vampyr really brings some original ideas to the table, half of them could have been worked out a lot better. The game struggles with technical issues at this moment, making it a lot harder to fully appreciate what the developers intended to deliver. The loading times are simply way too long and the game can’t seem to maintain a steady framerate. During my sessions with the game, the graphics kept showing flaws and the framerate dropped continuously. Needless to say, since the story is a crucial aspect of the game, these flaws do take you out of the overall experience, which is a shame. I truly hope some of the issues can be resolved with a patch in the future since I’m certain that Vampyr has the potential to be an amazing game instead of a mediocre one, which it sadly is at this moment.
Conclusion:
Vampyr offers an innovating take on the genre thanks to a great story and interesting gameplay ideas. It will suck you in from the start but the technical issues stand in its way to truly be amazing. It’s a fun and good game to kill some of your time but I can’t shake the feeling it could have been a lot better. If you’re looking for an innovating action-packed game, this is one you should definitely check out but you’ll have to forgive its flaws.
