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Vampyr - vampire action-RPG from Life Is Strange devs

SkiNNyBane

Liturgist
Patron
Joined
Dec 13, 2017
Messages
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NY
Grab the Codex by the pussy
I like how you can ask almost everyone if they're in need of medical treatment.
thug: don't mess wit' me an' my boys ya dimwit i'll cut yo dick
Jonathan: can I assist you with medicine?
thug: yessir im feeling a bit cold maybe a dose would help


May I suggest a generous dose of cyanide for that case?
 

Latelistener

Arcane
Joined
May 25, 2016
Messages
2,594
Destined to be a cult classic
fa30bdf9bbb8a1f78d19d51c869437ab.gif
 

Ivory Samoan

Liturgist
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Apr 14, 2011
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214
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Aotearoa
This is the best haircut I've seen on a Vampire.

10/10.

3 hours in and inspired to visit my barbershop tomorrow to emulate.

Yup,ACG is really shit at reviewing games. You can watch its whole review and still don't know what the game is about.

Surely you freaking jest, Karak is bloody stupendous at reviews: Easy Allies, SkillUp + ACG are go-to for me.
 
Last edited:

frajaq

Erudite
Joined
Oct 5, 2017
Messages
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Location
Brazil
wYQvpFQ.jpg


I hope this system is as good as it looks

Also that high amount of XP from a healthy doctor reminds me of that tutorial Jack gives you in Bloodlines about blood quality, where he reminisces about drinking PhD blood once and how delicious it was, so that's pretty nice
 

Barbarian

Arcane
Joined
Jun 7, 2015
Messages
7,348
I'm about 4 hours in. The game is suprisingly good and enjoyable so far. I can't make a complete review obviously, but I would reccomend it based it on these first hours alone. My impressions at the moment:

- Atmosphere, music and writing so far are top notch(writing has a few "hit and miss" moments, but mostly hits). Voice acting is the best I heard in a long time. Very competent presentation and the kind of game you feel like playing for hours straight.
- Setting and lore so far are quite alright. I specially like the fact that vampires are repulsed by the the cross and other symbols of Christianity(a trope all but abandoned in the last few decades for obvious reasons). Certainly not something I expected what you guys have been calling "hipster millenial devs" to do. Obviously I need more exposition to make a definitive judgement, but the factions and characters presented so far are interesting enough. The only vampire subspecies presented so far also kind of displays that it is not a WoD ripoff(Skals are monstrous ghouls who feed on dead flesh and the product of a failed attempt at turning vampires, nothing like "thinbloods").
- Gameplay is alright and fun so far. I hope it doesn't get repetitive. And yes, enemies respawn after you rest, use the workbench, or leave and reenter areas. Hasn't been a problem so far but it has the potential of being annoying if there are too many trash mobs later on. Most fights don't give XP, so if it does get annoying there is no grind to reward you.


The difficulty: I have died only a couple of times and mostly due to me sucking at console vidyia gaymes and not being careful. So far the fact that I have lagged behind in levels due to not feeding on citizens has been of little consequence, although I must confess I have been kind of "compensating" by crafting(improving my weapons and crafting serums). I have managed to kill groups of vampire hunters 6 to 8 levels above my own. The game does make it obvious that everything would be much easier if I killed citizens. In fact the character menu displays the XP bonus given by npcs I have talked to and some of them give away as much XP as I have gathered by doing several quests for hours!

If I don't feed on citizens as I progress, I expect the level difference between me and the enemies to increase exponentially. How much that will increase difficulty remains to be seen.
 

Barbarian

Arcane
Joined
Jun 7, 2015
Messages
7,348
wYQvpFQ.jpg


I hope this system is as good as it looks

Also that high amount of XP from a healthy doctor reminds me of that tutorial Jack gives you in Bloodlines about blood quality, where he reminisces about drinking PhD blood once and how delicious it was, so that's pretty nice

Yes, I found it quite cool. Not only getting to know the characters, doing their sidequests and providing medical care for them improves the XP they grant by feeding, if you plan not to feed it is the only way to get XP outside of progressing the story(and the bonus given by quests is much smaller than the one given by feeding).

It does involve a lot of talking and going back and forth between characters. Hasn't been a problem so far because I'm finding the characters genuinely well-written. Well, compared to most games anyway. Like I said the writing does give away a "hit and miss" feel many times. The black guy next to a lady you see in the picture, for instance: They are the hospital ambulance driver and the youngest nurse. They are secretly having an affair(you find that out while investigating the blackmailing of a hospital benefactor who is in fact a vampire like yourself). While it is cool that they do clearly display that back then interracial couples were shunned by society, I found the idea of the only attractive and young nurse in the hospital going after an illiterate negro who smuggles firearms on the side and is almost universally disliked by his coworkers... unexplainable. I'm still seriously tempted to feed on them both.

The only major flaw I can point out is that many of these quests involve sort of what I would call "pixel hunting". I always behave as a hoarder when I play these games and pick everything up in every room, but I suppose one could easily miss letters, documents and items that sometimes you need to pick up and read in order to open conversation options with citizens.
 

wyes gull

Savant
Joined
Apr 20, 2017
Messages
424
Technically this is extremely unimpressive. The maps are small and tight and yet there's no visual setting that makes it run right while not looking like complete arse, as in texture loading, hair looking like swiss cheese and other random nasties. Mouse control is broken. Even in the lowest sensitivity setting, moving it any faster than snail's pace will make the character do a 360º on himself, and that happens occasionally as if the game decided to activate some uber mouse acceleration at random intervals. But then those are my fault, I mean, who in their right mind plays games on release nowadays?

Then there's the game. First impressions are... not good. Cutscene into cutscene into 30 second, hold up to win segment, into cutscene into 1 minute gameplay segment into cutscene into home base, press contextual button for small cutscene, into more cutscene. Jesus fucking Charisteas. Alright, intro segments are usually tripe but this one... woof. In combat, the game expects you to use autolock and mouse movements to cycle between enemies. You have one attack to damage, one to stun (so you can drain blood via button prompt) and you have vampire combat abilities you can use with 1-9. So far it plays exactly like VtMB except it tries to do the aiming for you, which combined with the mouse issues above make it a bit of a mess. It is substantially meatier than Bloodlines so maybe it can be better. Oh and jumping does not exist. Gaps are bridged in context-sensitive blinks via action button. Grand.

And then there's the writing. Picture the "my vision is augmented" line. Now imagine it with the enunciation of a thespian. Now have the character sound off every 30 seconds. "What power!" "My reflexes are sharpened!" "I am not human anymore!". Suddenly unintentional comedy turns into intense cringe. Monologues aren't quite as bad but again, the MC's diction is tacky as all fuck. And then there are parts that seem to suffer from severe translation loss. Take this scene: You're walking along a riverbank and a cutscene ensues in which MC finds a corpse. "OH THE HUMANITY!" (or something of the sort), he exclaims, oblivious to having killed 10 people in the last 12 hours*. Then he decides to investigate his murder as it might lead him to find whoever "sired" him. Reasonable enough. So you activate GAME-O-VISION to make the screen black and white apart from blood, which glows bright red, so you can be led through the nose to the place of the next cutscene, a bar. Here you actually get to go into dialogue yourself so you ask the barkeep wtf is going on and he tells you there's a spate of murders that has everyone scared, but we're open all night regardless because people need to drown their sorrows and "It all happens outside". Yeah. Also, the man you're looking for is upstairs. So you go upstairs and a cutscene ensues where you hear a man and a woman talking. The woman tells the man someone is eavesdropping (meaning you) and vanishes and the man beckons you in. Once you're past exchanging pleasantries (lol crucifixes), you ask him who the woman was. He tells you he doesn't know what you're talking about. Your response? "I don't think I should trust you". Out loud. Ok, so maybe that was inner monologue, maybe it- "The feeling's mutual". Oh god.
This is like a period stage play with really lousy actors and writer(s), not too dissimilar to Vampire (tm) fanfiction in places.

There is decline all over the place in this one but there are hints of something worthwhile in here. The character relations page posted above. The fact you can use the game-o-vision to suss out the blood quality of random people might mean that there's a choice in feeding. The dialogue portion I referenced above terminated after that exchange (and won't start over) while there were other options yet to be taken, which might mean there's a logical relationship aspect to some characters, them not functioning exclusively as info dumps.


*we're at a point where nameless mooks in game are like ugly people in Hollywood movies, they just don't count. And the cinematics do nothing but increase this disconnect.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
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Jun 2, 2017
Messages
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Bulgaria
I have played for a few hours...it is mixed bag with a lot of promise,the combat feels out of place in this game,mainly because of how XP i gained. You get to find somebody's dirty secrets for max XP and then you suck his hobo neck. It have good atmosphere and the controls feel good and smooth,but the game is clear console port with idiotic checkpoint/autosave system that is pretty bad.

The game had the most amusing opening i have seen,laugh my ass of :).

I go to the hospital and saw a criminal kill another criminal,the game ask me to eat him... and i am nah,that bloke looks like decent chap,also don't know his story for the full XP...leave him to alive. I go to the hospital and talk with people for half an hour,found a mixed couple that extorts sick people for for beds.....and i am all "Won't go resting on empty belly tonight!" grinning.
The level design can be better,it is very unrealistic,there is a tent field in front of the hospital while the hospital is almost empty and filled with junk like broken stools and tables.

The people's web is the meat of the game and it is pretty good!

The game is decent,worth checking out.
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,579
In a complete coincidence, I saw this review on my usual news website today.

Royce Wilson
news.com.au June 5, 2018 2:27pm
15c978eb840e523891c3460a56c7025c

Vampire games are few and far betweenSource:Supplied

FOR a long time, vampire myths were pretty straightforward — the whole Eastern European-accented pale figure with a cloak, sleeping coffins in old castles by day and terrorising local villagers at night thing, basically.

In recent years, the genre has gotten a lot more complicated, with the addition of vampires that hang about in nightclubs instead of castles, vampires that hunt other vampires, and even vampires that sparkle.

Regardless, we don’t see vampires in computer games all that often, which is a huge shame because they’re an enormously popular element of fiction and have been ever since civilisation stopped unironically driving stakes through the hearts of the recently deceased in case they had second thoughts about the whole “being dead” thing.

The gold standard of vampire-based computer games has long been 2004’s Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines by Troika Games; otherwise it was possible (but difficult) to play as a vampire in Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Skyrim open-world RPGs.

Vampire fans finally have something new to play in the genre at last — in the form of the game Vampyr, available on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Developed by DontNod and published by Focus Home Interactive, Vampyr takes place in London around October 1918, with World War I concluding and the deadly Spanish Influenza sweeping the globe.

You play Dr Jonathon Reid, a noted military medic and expert on blood transfusion, who finds himself afflicted with the flu and, deliriously stumbling around London’s East End for some reason, gets bitten by a vampire and awakes as one of them.

33424b817b8ffdf60ab06a9aab85ae11

You play Dr Jonathon Reid, a noted military medic and expert on blood transfusionSource:Supplied

Vampyr falls into that realm in the gaming industry known as a “Double-A” title, in that it lacks the marketing budget and backing of a “Triple-A” game from a major publisher like Sony or Blizzard, but it’s made with more resources (and by more people) than an indie game from a small studio or individual programmer.

This is not a traditional role-playing game; and is effectively — despite the some elements of choices and consequences — an action game where you can make some choices about who to kill and who to spare, and whether or not to undertake some side missions. Killing too many people will plunge a district into chaos, so it’s a good idea to learn as much as you can about your potential victims before deciding whether to feed from them or not. For some reason, the countless vampire hunters and night watchmen you kill don’t count, so it’s OK to feast on the blood of a dozen hired goons during combat with no ill-effects, apparently, because of reasons.

The voice acting is excellent, but the writing is terrible — despite nailing the Edwardian style perfectly, there are gaps in the story, the conversation trees allow you to keep questioning openly hostile people who have told you to get lost in no uncertain terms, and the writing generally didn’t flow well for me.

Despite being a doctor, I never felt like my character was truly grappling with his profession (and the Hippocratic oath) against a thirst for blood or the conflicted dual nature of his existence.

What’s particularly disappointing is DontNod are well-known for the highly regarded Life is Strange games, with a strong narrative focus, so I had higher hopes for Vampyr. I appreciate it’s unrealistic to expect a Bethesda or Bioware-level RPG from a double-A developer, but there’s so many missed opportunities here it’s hard not to wonder what happened.

The animations are stiff, combat is largely unavoidable, the ranged weapons lack impact — shooting someone with a .455 Webley revolver should put them out of commission, not irritate them slightly — and there aren’t any stealth options that I could see, either. And that’s without getting into Dr Reid’s curious inability to climb over waist-high fences (despite being able to teleport), enemies’ uncanny ability to identify a well-dressed gentleman on a foggy London night as being a vampire from the other end of the street, and the fact they don’t leave their weapons or ammunition behind after you defeat them — or how scarce ammunition is to begin with.

The enemies scale with you too, which doesn’t help — instead of feeling like a powerful member of the undead stalking the night to mete out justice or feed baser instincts, you’re fighting random goons who are quite capable of taking you down; it became quite frustrating for me.

What I will say is the setting itself is fantastic — they’ve done a great job of recreating foggy Edwardian London’s less savoury parts, and I wish the world was more open so I could explore it properly. It would also be nice if there were some more people in it, too — even taking into account the whole war and flu thing, the districts still felt pretty empty for the most part.

While I was hoping for a vampire game I could really sink my teeth into, the end result was something lukewarm that left me unsatisfied, despite a promising set-up.

There’s not a lot of vampire games around so kudos for the devs for trying something different, and hopefully Vampyr will inspire someone to make a more substantial vampire-themed RPG — but in the meantime, this one is for diehard genre fans only.
 

Barbarian

Arcane
Joined
Jun 7, 2015
Messages
7,348
Dear Lord that review is cancer.

What’s particularly disappointing is DontNod are well-known for the highly regarded Life is Strange games, with a strong narrative focus, so I had higher hopes for Vampyr. I appreciate it’s unrealistic to expect a Bethesda or Bioware-level RPG from a double-A developer, but there’s so many missed opportunities here it’s hard not to wonder what happened.

:hmmm:
 

Belegarsson

Think about hairy dwarfs all the time ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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Oct 20, 2015
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Uwotopia
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
The game had the most amusing opening i have seen,laugh my ass of :).
Oh yeah, about the opening: what the hell? Apparently the girl who Jonathan bit was his sister yet he was griefing for like 5 seconds then run away and never mention her again.
 

Barbarian

Arcane
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Jun 7, 2015
Messages
7,348
The game had the most amusing opening i have seen,laugh my ass of :).
Oh yeah, about the opening: what the hell? Apparently the girl who Jonathan bit was his sister yet he was griefing for like 5 seconds then run away and never mention her again.

Yeah, he also mentioned he was going to "visit his sickly mother" before it all happened. The writing has these "disconnect" moments frequently which spoil what is a mostly competent plot.

Anyway, I expect his sister's death and his "sickly mother" to be somehow brought to the plot later on. If they don't mention it again it will be a disappointment.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
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Jun 2, 2017
Messages
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Bulgaria
Buahahahahaha i found out a slow way to grind out xp. Every fight gives you 10 xp (maybe more later on ).....and every fight respaws once you die....and when you die you keep that items and the xp you have. IT is an idiotic system!
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,180
Location
Bulgaria
The game had the most amusing opening i have seen,laugh my ass of :).
Oh yeah, about the opening: what the hell? Apparently the girl who Jonathan bit was his sister yet he was griefing for like 5 seconds then run away and never mention her again.

Yeah, he also mentioned he was going to "visit his sickly mother" before it all happened. The writing has these "disconnect" moments frequently which spoil what is a mostly competent plot.

Anyway, I expect his sister's death and his "sickly mother" to be somehow brought to the plot later on. If they don't mention it again it will be a disappointment.
Hahahaha i loved when the protagonist was saying that he doesn't want to hurt anyone while i was ripping apart my first victim,managed to kill him before he finished his line. This game is a mess,but it could be fun.
 

Rahdulan

Omnibus
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Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
5,116
I haven't really bothered with reviews given braindead status of most of the sites, but is the game at least challenging? Because that's the only way I could actually see the entire "spare people and stay weak, or kill them and grow powerful" system work as intended outside of player restricting himself artificially for two playthroughs. What say our local experts?
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,180
Location
Bulgaria
:negative: The game have really bad design decisions. Respawning enemies and idiotic save system,it remembers everything you do even in conversations. Which is idiotic seeing how you could fuck up clue collecting while talking to people. Now it would have been ok if the dialogues weren't that kind of locked,telling someone that there is an option of plastic surgery lock you off the option to tell him that in is important what is on inside :retarded:. No options to dick around and try out different things.

Also the whole leveling system is pretty meh,all of the skills are combat orientated in one way or another. There is no utility skills like highlighting loot,persuasion or lockpicking. Also finding some locked chest in the middle of nowhere and not being able to rip it open is idiotic,you have to kill some dude to get the key for it.

Also the level design and how is written in the game is terrible. People whine that there is no space in the hospital while there is a lot of empty rooms and a whole three story building with a huge cellar that they don't want to use because of reasons.
 

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