Jump to content
passwords have all been force reset. please recover password to reset ×
MFGamers

Vampyr


DisturbedSwan
 Share

Recommended Posts

Played my first 70 minutes of this earlier.

I'm incredibly impressed to say the least, I tend to say that a lot nowadays but first impressions are excellent.

It looks phenomenal, the lighting effects are spot on and the texture quality has got an slight stylised look to it that makes everywhere feel rich and vivid, if you've ever had a dream to go through a Jack The Ripper era London with all the typical accompaniments of the period then you're well catered for, it definitely looks the part and recreates an incredibly moody, rich, dingy and dank 19th century London. There are compromises though as it is a AA-Indie title like the facial animations and obviously the overall texture quality, lighting and things like that can't match a AAA title, but you know what it is still so damn good and the atmosphere they create with it is better than a host of AAA titles out there.

Part of what makes it feel so special is the music as well, it is just sensational. I don't know how they've done it but it feels so in tune with the aesthetics, like they playtested for hours on end to get the right atmosphere at the right times when you're exploring the streets or speaking to someone, it has this eery, mysterious, noir-esque feel to it that just makes you want to explore every nook and cranny of the environment and pulls you deeper and deeper into this world.

Combat is better than I expected in all honesty, I seem to unlock more stuff via an upgrade tree as I go along but at the moment it's simplistic but fun with a stun, bite, knife slash and ranged move in my arsenal. When you've got more than one enemy on you it feels satisfying going from one to another and slicing them about, but it doesn't look that fantastic on screen if that makes sense, it feels a bit rudimentary and the animations are lacking but it works well, feels great and I'm sure it'll only get better and more complex over the course of the game.

I won't say anything about the story so far - I'm so early on there's not all that much to say in all honesty - but it starts incredibly well and has only built up more and more intruige and mystery as its gone on, I just cannot wait to see what happens next and nothing much is even happening, the early signs of an excellent story to me.

Lots of photos:

 

 

427290_20180606013657_1.png

427290_20180606014006_1.png

427290_20180606014046_1.png

 

Spoiler

427290_20180606014454_1.png427290_20180606014224_1.png427290_20180606014817_1.png427290_20180606015023_1.png427290_20180606020516_1.png427290_20180606020855_1.png427290_20180606021229_1.png427290_20180606022920_1.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think i might be about 90 minutes in to this. I don't stricly know how I feel about it yet. The controls feel a little loose, the graphics look nice enough on the X, the voice acting has been good in some parts , bad in others, it's all over the shot. Also, I don't particularly like my character yet, nor any of the people I've had to talk to.

 

I am stuck though, that's not helping my mindset. Got to this massive Sewer Rat boss in the sewer's of all places.. Anyway, i've died to him 9 times i think, it's just been this huge spike in difficulty. The worst thing is, when you die and continue any health serum's you've had and used stay gone, so you restart worse off than before. Also, the Rat's range is huge, he gets me from miles away sometimes. It's not a quick fight either and i've lost all patience with it so i've tuned the cunt off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I found this a massive disappointment. The combat isn’t very good,your objectives aren’t always that clear. I hit a huge spike in difficulty early on. After multiple deaths I thought “fuck it,I’m going to kill everyone I can to level up with their blood”.

Only for that not to be allowed,because I hadn’t developed enough of a relationship with those characters. So I went “bollocks to this” and returned it to Boomerang.

 

I play games to have fun. This felt like a fucking chore.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

After my initial positive impressions I gave up on it at around the 3 hour mark. I just spent an inordinate amount of time talking to patients in a hospital and couldn’t be arsed to go back to it afterwards.

 

I did like the combat the little I played of it though, but it was a shame that some parts of the city are gated off with combat so you can’t do them until you’ve levelled up. 

 

I heard Dontnod are working on a patch that takes the combat out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I’m not great at letting these things go. I kinda wish I could just pack it in but firstly I need to beat that boss to show him he can’t fuck with me. Second I’m always worried things will pick up just around the corner and I’ll miss out on a great gaming experience. I’m gonna give it a few more hours.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

Spoilers,obviously. But I watched through this,and felt I haven’t missed out on quitting. There’s dialogue sections that last at least 30 minutes. And from what I played,I can believe it.

 

I really wanted to like this,and was going to listen to the dialogue without skipping. But towards the end of my time with it,I was skipping as i was utterly bored. 

 

Easily one of the most disappointing,forgettable games of 2018. It hasn’t hit the usual run of “shittiest games of the year” lists that hit YouTube. And that’s understandable. Because it’s not shit. Just janky,and really,really boring.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 months later...

contrary to everyone else I'm quite enjoying this. I've a lot of the same issues as everyone else, the combat isn't great, it's fine and you can dodge and pick at stronger enemies, but it also feels like I'm not reading the UI well, I'm never entirely sure if a move is charged, if I've got stamina left. It queues up actions, so you can do an extra dodge or an extra stun when you don't want to, meaning you get hit or burn stamina. I'm still using my early weapons, leveled up one (because they won't go further), not that I've an abundance of materials anyway to improve them anyway, but changing mid-fight and using potions is an arse, not some as intuitive as I'd like

 

It starts well, then takes a dive once you hit the hospital. I quite like some of the stories, and the general tone of the game, but it is a lot of just walking around and taking to people, it probably needed the morgue area to be forced on you a little earlier just to kick up the pace a bit. I'm in Whitechapel now, it's kind of the same routine, walk around talking to people, learning a bit more, then finding things around the environment to open up more chat options. There's guards on the run up to it to fight, some are fairly strong, I only fought who I had to, maybe I should have fought more to gain levels because I've not eaten anyone yet. There's someone who I think is going to get bit, a couple, but I don't want to until I've maxed out their story and I know they aren't key.

 

I'm liking it though. It needs to be a bit pacier I think, but I'm enjoying it quite a lot. It reminds me of that Thief game I really liked but the rest of the world hated

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not going to give constant progress updates, but I got a warning that areas have health, I think it's tied to how many people are sick in an area, but there's probably more too. In the hospital area I cured a patient and the health of the area increased. In the next area it was already in trouble. The warning you get is that if you let an area get too in to ruin it causes characters to go missing, with monsters starting to appear on the streets.

 

The below is spoilers for the end of the blackmail quest

Spoiler

I found nurse Crane, talked to her and let her live while wiping her memory. I'd cured a couple of people around the area, at least one anyway, so maybe this wouldn't have happened if I'd cured the other people I could. Maybe I saved too often, maybe it's just supposed to happen, but the region became critical.

 

This hadn't happened when I left Crane's hospice, I hadn't slept at that point, but in the courtyard with locked gates there was now a group of vampire hunters. I'm not sure If I was supposed to miss this and they were supposed to be there when I returned, because I killed them, slept, got the message about the area being critical, healed some people, killed some monsters, then noticed there was a marker on the map where an event had occurred.

 

The event was that there was no one around Crane's hospice, the patients were gone... kind of. They were now Skal (the low level vampires), and Crane herself had turned in to a stronger version. I don't know if this was as a result of my actions or if it would have happened anyway. Or maybe there was a way to avoid it but it would have taken an inordinate amount of work and forsight. Either way it annoyed me. I don't know if Crane's story was done or if I'm now missing what seemed an important character because of random chance and not fully understanding the rules of the world

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Had the same thing happening to me regarding the spoiler. You can avoid it with the other option which might not seem particularly clear but there are certain hints around the documents found in that building that doing what you did to that NPC can have certain side effects. I didn't pick up on it either but it's there.

 

Overall I liked the game, even though I never finished it. Started playing it when it came out but at some point it got so hot (in real life) that I just stopped playing altogether and I couldn't really get back to it afterwards. Maybe I'll try again at some point, maybe not.

 

I did like its glacial Shenmue-like pace but it certainly does feel more like a byproduct of their storytelling ideas than a conscious design decision. It did give the game a unique mood and feel though and made the dramatic scenes more impactful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 8 months later...

Good luck with it. The wheels rapidly come off a few hours in, the janky combat and massive difficulty spikes turn what could have had potential, into a total chore to play. 
That, and every single NPC has a dialogue tree thick as a phone book, with a fraction of anything interesting to actually say.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll assume that they patched this up considerably since the majority of comments above, as I'm really loving it. Combat doesn't feel too dissimilar to Dishonored (albeit there you were often avoiding combat) with a mix up of abilities and physical attacks, although the London streets oddly remind me of Nightmare Creatures.

 

I'm now at Lv 10, and in the Whitechapel area doing the blackmail quest. Odd sidequest done here & there too, no particular difficulty spikes encountered so far.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Really enjoying it, maybe around 10 hrs played, and I've almost finished the blackmail quest (made the decision with Dorothy, just got to return to quest provider). However, having also got all 9 medicine recipes, I've been going around curing everyone, and doing their side quests, before concluding Act 2. I feel pretty strong in combat too, no problems with anything encountered so far.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Finished, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Great story and engaging conversations bring the world to life, and I did not experience any difficulty spikes or frustrations.

 

I played the good guy, not embracing anyone (outside storyline) and got the super great ending . Looking at the PS Trophy stats only 14% have the 'completed game' trophy, and just 3% doing it in the 'pacifist vampire' manner which I did. Also by taking this route you miss a fair amount of XP, but even so the challenges were quite manageable.

 

Well worth a re-vist if you were put off upon its original release.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 years later...

I'm on the fence with this. I want to like it, but it's just so so shit on so many fronts.

 

Combat is terrible. It's so wishy washy and the amount of times I've been latched onto from miles away is way too high. I've managed to interrupt stuff I didn't know I could. And when I've tried it again it's not happened. The occasions it works it feels great, but those parts are so far and few between than it makes each fucking fight a slog.

 

Lock on is all over the place

 

Skills don't fire off. The amount of times I've gone to claw at someone and it's like nah mate. No reason for them to not trigger, they just don't.

 

Sneaking is pointless. You just do yourself over and there's literally no point to it unless you need to feed your blood meter. The sneak attack shouldn't reinforce the enemies stance.

 

No mini map.

 

In fact the map in general is shite. It might as well have been drawn on a napkin.

 

Awful menus and convoluted health system of areas and relationships there within.

 

NPC's move about constantly and it makes finding them to talk to them a chore. Especially when each character sort of unlocks secrets on the other and you're walking back and forth between them. 

 

Huge loading screens even with a good SSD.

 

Quests don't really explain what the fuck you need to do and are signposted awfully.

 

Difficulty spikes everywhere. This would be less of an issue if the combat was so inconsistent. 

 

For some reason some of the talky bits are unskippable. Which is not great because a lot of the time they're boring as fuck.

 

I have no idea what I am meant to be in this story. Am I the good guy? The bad guy? When you make choices you look like a right schizophrenic because your decisions go all over the place.

 

I am not impressed. I feel like we're living in a landscape were FROM have basically given people that are not as good at them at making combat systems ideas, but none of them can really carry them out. There's nothing stand out in this game that I can say to someone, hey, you should play this game, this part is pretty bad but the rest makes up for it.

 

It's just mediocre at best and downright offensive at worst. I don't know if I'll see the end, the game's lucky I even gave it a second stream in all honesty. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't want to 'pre-make' your mind about it, but I already knew you'd hate it when you mentioned it in the stream topic.

 

It has a lot of theoretically cool ideas but barely any of them really work as well as they should. I did enjoy it, but it's not a game I would ever recommend to someone. I might give it another shot at some point though to see if my impressions have changed. I think there's a lot of stuff in here that works better if you know how to approach it, particular in its quest design and the whole "health" system of its districts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...