Think Yakuza or Shenmue, a small and dense open world. Four connected districts
Interesting smaller districts was done really well in Yakuza, Kamurocho became a character itself in those games.
Think Yakuza or Shenmue, a small and dense open world. Four connected districts
I feel your pain.
In Vampyr, all your conversations, all your dealings with the petty concerns of mortals, all your hours spent scouring an ever-twilight and labyrinthine London and engaging in tricky fights that play out a little like a baby Bloodborne come down to a conversational lottery at the end of each 'act.' Choose unluckily and you'll incite almost comically melodramatic outcomes not remotely implied by the vague dialogue choices offered. The main plot does at least march on, broadly keeping this carnage off to one side of it, but it's nonetheless a gut-punch to, say, instantly lose major NPCs.
Maybe Vampyr consciously embraces the butterfly effect here, despite spelling most everything else out at great length, or maybe its writing needs another pass. Certainly, smaller things have been lost in translation. While the dialogue as a whole is solid (if overly dour), the subtitles are gently peppered with errors, the occasional line sounds mangled, and too often an excess of bone-dry exposition takes precedence over personality.
The Rock Paper Shotgun review went into a little more detail on one really big sticking point I had with Vampyr that I didn't have the space to get to in my word count: the dialogue summaries on the conversation wheel are BAD at giving an accurate idea of what you're about to say/do.
A ~70 MC is relatively common indicator of a divisive game that will really appeal to some while the flaws will feel more notable or game just doesnt click for others. Call of Cthulhu, Bloodlines, Metro, Singularity, Condemned all fit that mood well, and Vampyr sounds like it does tooWell, many great and my favorite games don't have the highest ratings on Metacritics, but I still love them
For example - Call of Cthulhu :Dark Corners of the Earth (76 MC)
Vampire : Bloodlines (80 MC)
Cryostasis (69 MC)
Metro 2033 Xbox360 (77 MC)
Singularity (76 MC)
Condemned Criminal Origins (78 MC)
So if Vampyr is going to end being in the 70' MC score range, it's a still great score in my opinion
Hmmm. No loading screens at all out of nowwhere for me. I mean if they mean like while running down a street or something.Nice review by ACG, I'm definitely gonna get this eventually. Just not now while I'm in the middle of other games.
Do we know what kind of enhancements the X and Pro get in this game? Also, the IGN review speaks of framerate dips and weird loading screens sometimes appearing out of nowhere. Hope they patch that out.
Fantastic review, you were saying everything I wanted to hearRated it a Buy for ACG
Loved it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lidwgHSddIQ
Some small issues but nothing that really impacted its delivery
I can somewhat agree with that sentiment and it's something I forgot to include in my own review. The game does suffer from, what I call, "the Mass Effect" problem in that - like you say - your actual responses don't always give a true reflection of the choices presented and can in fact have you speak in a tone that seems rather conflicted with the wording. But in the end, while it can be a tad annoying at points, it wasn't really something I'd deduct points over or consider a "major" criticism of the game. A momentary annoyance for me, but nothing more.
I didn't have too much of an issue with it for regular dialogue choices (which is kinda down to how borderline inconsequential a lot of those seem) but the fact that it happened with two big end-of-chapter story decisions for me was a real bummer.
It just shocked me how much I liked it and how feedback rich it is.
So you wake up as a vampire, you do something you regret and then set out to find what happened to you.I'm genuinely curious as to the reward here. The gameplay loop. What is it? What does it look like?
If you like the idea of role-playing as a vampire - not like Bloodlines roleplaying but roleplaying the classic vampiric struggle of if you kill, who do you kill, ruthless predator or supernatural vigilante or self-hating creature of the night who refuses to feed and so on- it sounds like this is something you'd want to check outI want to get this game, but man i don't want to be turned off by it because of the reviews.
Dude... do you know how much awesome of a reviewer you are? If you didn't know then allow me to tell you "pretty freaking awesome" :-)))It just shocked me how much I liked it and how feedback rich it is.
Hmmm. No loading screens at all out of nowwhere for me. I mean if they mean like while running down a street or something.
FPS issues DID happen but the patch really fixed them. Not sure if IGN played it with that. X and Pro both have a very good temporal Anti Aliasing.
So you wake up as a vampire, you do something you regret and then set out to find what happened to you.
You are thrust into a world with 60 unique npcs over 4 districts. All the NPCs are tied to another or more than one. You get to learn about them by talking to them, maybe doing some sidequests for them, curing them of illness and so on. Here's the kicker, they're how you earn XP other than doing the main story, if someone is healed if you know everything about them then by "embracing them" you get the most XP or as they call it EP(evolution points) after which you can go rest and get skills/health and stamina upgrades. That's the gameplay loop, investigate around while you wrestled with eating people to get stronger.
There are a couple shoutouts to past titles. BUT I don't remember that one lol
Does anyone ever say Life is strange lol.There are a couple shoutouts to past titles. BUT I don't remember that one lol
Well it would take maybe 3 playthroughs to say NO for sure. But I would say. No for my playthrough.
Oh that's nice to hearI like that you can follow trails without relying on the "vampire/witcher/batman sense", meaning the bloodstains are actually there.
Ha. Great review Karak, like what I saw and heard, will be looking forward to this one come tomorrow.Well it would take maybe 3 playthroughs to say NO for sure. But I would say. No for my playthrough.
Yes you can use a sidestep into the shadows ability. And it can be used to sneak past many. Though each enemy group has a possible countering character like the Undead who can see into the spiritworld or the humans priests who can see through itCan you use the stealth or leaping skills to avoid combat?
Also in the earlier dev stream, there was a moment where Jonathan sees a group of hunters ahead but they hadn't noticed him yet, so he could have gotten away before being seen. Has any players encountered moments like that or are they very rare?
Yes that's a little bit annoying.
Well it would take maybe 3 playthroughs to say NO for sure. But I would say. No for my playthrough.
...That doesn't make sense in that context. Interesting. Why would they say it even?I can confirm that the phrase is used.
Slight hint: it's in the last district we unlock, spoken [in tandem I think] by 2 very peculiar npcs.