Vampyr | Review | Too Many Combats Spoil The Adventure Game
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In the process of trying to fit several mediocre pieces of gameplay into Vampyr instead of one or two solid ones, we come away with an over spiced dish. The “too many cooks” factor that’s on display in this new horror jaunt becomes quickly apparent, and it couldn’t have happened to a game that I was more looking to.
Released in June of this year, Vampyr is the latest game from indie darlings Dontnod Entertainment, probably best known for their story-centric Life Is Strange series. When I first heard about this one, I was all about it. The story centers around Dr. Jonathan Reid, a visionary doctor and recently embraced vampire. You’ve come home from the first World War to find London in the throes of the Spanish Influenza epidemic, and you must learn to curb or indulge your monstrous desire for blood while healing the sick and attempting to learn about your vampiric origins.
That is just about the coolest idea for a vampiric origin story. The parallels of disease and vampirism have been around since someone first pointed out, “Hey, this Bram Stoker story sure does sound a lot like the spread of syphilis to me.” It’s a bleak and gripping metaphor that has somehow escaped the more popular vampire stories of the modern era, and being able to play my way through a story like that sounded absolutely blissful to me. I was ready for a game about difficult choices with real consequences: the same way that Dontnod had done so beautifully with Life Is Strange.
And to that end, Vampyr does a pretty serviceable job. You travel the various districts of London, meeting the locals and learning about how their various stories all tie together. In true adventure game fashion you work your way through dialogue trees, find clues and hints scattered throughout the nearby hubs, and sew together a patchwork quilt of drama, heartbreak, and occasionally hope. At first glance, I mentally strapped myself in for a lovely story that I could literally sink my teeth into.
And then I got into the game’s combat system. And that’s when everything started to fall apart.
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