Vampyr

I've come to a realization about the whole "modern vs. old school gaming" debate and I actually came to said realization via one of my other hobbies.

You see, I am a big fan of professional wrestling and have been for a long time. I've also had a lot of late nights recently, thanks to my new addition to the family, and I can't always game during those nights. Fortunately, WWE has had the courtesy to put several full matches of past Royal Rumbles on their YouTube, from the federation years to the Attitude Era to the modern matches. It was when I watched the 1995 and 2018 versions back to back that I came to the aforementioned realization. Shawn Michaels and the British Bulldog started the match in 1995 and frankly, no one in the 2018 could match the star power or uniqueness of either man. However, the 1995 version of the match also featured competitors like Mantaur, and no one in the 2018 match could match his level of awfulness. In short, the older match's highs were higher, but it's lows were also way lower. The 2018 match had far less innovation, but it also had less variance and outright bad-ness. I've determined that video games have that dichotomy as well. 

Vampyr, released for the PS4, XBONE and PC in 2018, isn't a bad game, not even close. It's a third person action game set in 1910's London with RPG and open world elements. You play as Doctor Jonathan Reid, tasked with finding the person who turned you into a vampire, all while maintaining your cover as a doctor at Pembroke hospital. You build relationships with citizens and patients under your care, and you can use them to access critical information and sidequests. You can also use them to feed, restoring your strength and helping you level up. The game attempts to make you balance the moral dilemma of feeding on citizens with the need to progress more easily, which it does a decent job of. But at the end of the day, I couldn't help but feel that this was the same as the game that was the same as the game that they came out with before.

Controls are relatively standard for a game like this, you have a variety of strikes and can equip both ranged and melee weapons. You also learn a series of abilities, all of which are activated with your blood meter. Stunning enemies in battle allows you to drain their blood to refill this meter, which leads to a unique and interesting dynamic. You can also refill your blood counter by eating rats, which is gross. It's standard, everyday 3rd person action combat, every game like this plays this way. I found the controls to be a bit unresponsive and the camera to be loose and floaty, but it wasn't unbearable.

Probably the most interesting thing about Vampyr is it's setting. There aren't too many games set in the early 1900's, though it taking place during the Spanish Flu pandemic was a little on the nose. Vampyr was a free PS Plus game last month and given the current state of the world, it felt very intentional. The game is very dark and heavy on grays and browns, but its supposed to be and its relatively period accurate (aside from the whole vampire thing, of course). As dark as the game is, the developers did a good job of making it easy to see where you are going and what is attacking you, which isn't always the case in games with atmosphere like this. The story is fairly well told, though I saw much of what was coming a mile away. I still won't give spoilers, but let's just say the Spanish Flu isn't the only pandemic impacting this version of London.

My biggest issue though is with the dialogue. There are so many NPC characters with such deep dialogue trees that it really bogs down the pace of the game if you want to talk to all of these people. I normally don't mind that, but the problem here is that you can't really advance the game through all of this dialogue. Sure, you can gain experience, unlock sidequests and groom potential victims to feed on. But you will spend so much time talking that you will waste hours just, well, talking without making any real progress. It's not uncommon to have big dialogue trees in modern games, but usually you are able to fast forward through dialogue and you can't here. Games like Fallout, Elder Scrolls and Deus Ex have tons of dialogue, but you can actually talk your way through those games. You can beat those games almost entirely by talking. It feels like they a part of the whole, whereas with Vampyr the hub building and citizen conversations almost feel like a separate game from the action and main plot.

Again, it just feels like I've played this game before. Back in the day, developers weren't really sure what gamers wanted or what formulas would be successful. This led to some truly great, unique and innovative stuff. But it also led to a lot of awful, awful games. Vampyr is crafted in the mold of a tried and true 3rd person open world game, something that has been done countless times before and which usually brings success. Developers have figured out what the majority of gamers want and they are going to keep churning out games like that. Vampyr at least offers a unique setting and some interesting mechanics. But after playing it for a few hours it will start to run together with the millions of games out there that are similar. Not bad by any means, but entirely skippable.

7/10