Vampyr

Game Verbs - what do you actually do in Vampyr?

Bite enemies (and later, chosen victims) to gain blood, which is used to fuel your vampire powers – from healing to blood spears, claw attacks, invisibility and more. Though to be honest, the upgrade tree is a little disappointing, only offering more refined versions of the original thing. There are no mega-perks or skills to work towards.

Explore a kind of open-ish 1918 London. The Spanish Flu has rendered the streets largely empty, with most of the buildings boarded up. How terribly convenient, from a game design standpoint! Each district is either safe or dangerous and as the game progresses they can change in status, depending on how bloodthirsty you are when it comes to biting innocent necks.

Follow clues. Pressing L3 puts you into a kind of vampire-senses mode, where the world turns grey apart from blood trails and the red, beating hearts of citizens. If you’ve talked to them, their details will be listed, and you can also track social links in the game menu by pressing the touch pad. Some murder scenes offer several examination points and you dutifully click through these and listen to what your character has to say about an ongoing mission. It’s not exactly Sherlock Holmes, but everything feels interesting enough to keep you following mission strings.

Converse with citizens.  After the tutorial, the true nature of the game becomes apparent. It involves talking to everyone and pushing for gossip, which leads to further options with other characters. You can also eavesdrop on some characters. During conversations, you can offer them medicine if they’ve got a headache or are suffering from some other malady. This helps you to complete missions and gain XP, but it also fattens up the sheep, so to speak, with hale and satisfied blood-bags walking around with more XP in their veins, just ready for you to…

Feed on citizens. The game practically hands this “evil” option to you on a platter. The reward for feeding on someone who is the same mesmerise level as you or lower (so that you can force them to follow you to a dark place for feeding) is just too tempting. Each character shows the XP you will gain if you feed on them when you click L3 and look around with heightened senses. Sometimes, the amount will be reduced due to illness or low mood. That’s when you can give them some crafted medicine or talk to them to work out what’s wrong and possibly rectify the situation to get them back to full health and ready for market!

Sense the people around you and blood trails. Following these is a tried mission element in Vampyr, usually leading to a big fight against multiple opponents or one strong enemy.

Teleport. There’s no jump, so contextual prompts pop-up to press X to teleport up to balconies and high ledges, vamp style.

Upgrade and craft at safe houses. Each safe house has an upgrade bench and a bed to rest in (causing one day to pass). The benches are where you analyse clues you’ve found to possibly reveal new recipes, break down components, craft potions for both yourself and citizens, and upgrade your weapons. The required components are listed, but it’s really pot luck whether you’ve found them or not out in the world. It therefore pays to be on the lookout for the telltale game-glow of loot-giving environmental elements.

Struggle a bit with the combat and controls. There’s main hand, off hand and distance attacks to consider, and then dual-wielding some weapons negates your practiced flow. Not to mention thinking about locking onto enemies, stunning them and acting on the button prompt to feed from them. Everything feels very clunky for the first couple of hours. But then you start to upgrade your powers and play around a bit more and you begin to almost play with prey, flitting to them and hacking a couple of times before teleporting out of reach of their counterattacks. More stealth options to complete missions would have been nice, but most of the time you have no choice but to fight certain enemies to continue the story.

Choose between killing people or saving them. One of the four endings you can get is only possible if you don't kill anyone, which is actually the hardest path to take as you will find yourself with very little XP to level up. It's much easier (and I would argue more fun) to pick off a few nasty humans and enjoy the bounty their blood offers. Once you unlock a few more powers and upgrade your health and stamina, the combat becomes more enjoyable and the game as a whole flows more smoothly.

 

Timeline - how long to beat, any trophy/achievement issues, how much is left after passing?

There’s a decent main campaign here and plenty of side investigations to comfortably chew through a good 15-20 hours. I’m not so sure I’d want to play it again to see how things would go without consuming anyone. I’m not convinced the experience would change that much, apart from being more difficult/frustrating.

Saving Frustration - any issues with the save system for parents/players with regular interruptions?

The game uses auto-save. Gameplay pauses when the PS home button is pushed, including during story scenes. You can also skip most spoken dialogue and story scenes by pressing Square.

Patchwork - how is the game being supported with updates?

At time of launch, version 1.03 has been released on PS4 and there is an 11GB patch for PC. However, without developer notes, it's not clear what these patches actually fix.

Online - any online details and population trends

Nothing to see here.

Summary - an elevator pitch to sum up the experience

Vampyr offers moments of fully-voiced characterisation against a largely sterile city backdrop. You'll fight degenerate undead, vampire hunters and tougher creatures in a quest to work out just why you got turned into a vampire in the first place. Hapless citizens wander about this desolate environment and its up to you to try and care about their desultory lives.