Vampyr (PS4)

A far more enjoyable game than I expected. To be frank, if you’re into purely action games, this isn’t going to tickle that fancy, his is a heavily dialogue driven game and more thought provoking.Your protagonist is a brilliant surgeon specialising in blood transfusions who for reasons unknown, is suddenly turned into an Elon, a powerful vampire. The story is set in a very grimy representation of 1918 London during the Spanish influenza outbreak, and is full of intrigue and mysteries which our character, Jonathan Reid, can participate in to uncover why citizens are turning into deadly deranged monsters, all the while trying to avoid dying at the hands of a vampire killing cult.The story is quite branching, and how you talk (or what you do) to NPC’s (non playable characters) can really change outcomes on what happens to them and how your character progresses. You can play it evil and drink blood of citizens or you can try to heal them and stop London fro,pm becoming a cesspit of disease and vampirism.The story is semi open world, there’s a lot of area to explore but a lot is also unavailable to access until you complete certain tasks or get further in the story. My only gripe about the open world is a lot of the map is VERY vague and doesn’t dictate points of interest most of the time. Let’s say I’m on a side quest for Tom Watts...it won’t show me where I’m meant to go to complete it for him, nor will it provide me a marker to lead me back to Tom once I’m done. You can look at the map any time, but it only really points out where hideouts are, it won’t tell you where the pub is, or where certain characters can be found so unless you have a good memory, you can get very easily lost.There’s no fast travelling (although occasionally you can open a shortcut through quest progression) so you do a lot of walking and getting lost as the paths aren’t always as clear as the map makes them seem. He map itself is frustrating and easy to get completely lost in (especially with so many dark areas).Incredibly enjoyable but heavily dialogue driven, prepare to spend hours just talking to NPCs alone.If you need a comparison to similar games, look towards Thief or Dishonoured for reference to more or less what the gameplay is very much like. If you love those types of games, this is right up your alley.The storylines are very good and not too cliche, and the voice acting is quite decent and believable, not as hokey as some games so it keeps you engaged. Graphics could be better. Controls are a bit iffy and the game tutorials are vague, it didn’t teach me how to use guns even though it encouraged it, so I’ve resorted to biting and melee combat.

Completed it at 3AM 07/06/18The game was great! Had a nice little open-world to it, definitely had some sort of Bloodborne combat to it (Only little dumbed down), the choices you make affect your gameplay. Was all enjoyable! But 2 things in the whole game that was not to my liking or was pretty poor in design.Story:Story was pretty well made! It had a lot of detective work to it, witch mean a LOT of dialog, talking, wondering around, etc.. Witch not a bad thing, I'm autistic, so my attention span for me, can be short and can get bored pretty quickly if nothing happens. But I tried to sit through every dialog and every NPC chat to learn about them and the story in general.HEADS UP: If you think this will be full on combat, blood and gore. You'll be slightly disappointed. More talk than combat in my opinion.Combat:Fun but not great. While depending on your choice, you can either suck the civilians life and gain big about of EXP or never touch a human and be really low level, while not difficult, you will take time killing some foes. (I took the "don't eat any human" challange)All I did was stack HP, stamina, Blood and bite and only had my vampire healing ability. 2H weapon and beated everyone with it, no problem. Never used a range weapon that was in the game.As for bosses... Prepare for disappointment... (Sorry if this is a spoil, but it was pretty bad design on them. Even DS, Bloodborne, Nioh, Salt and Sanctuary did a better job than these.)So if you are use to Bloodborne, DS, Nioh all those type of games, you'll pick it up with no problem.Others will pick it up quick, but the whole combat just felt like Bloodborne to me.Bug/Glitches:Never encountered any.One possible bug is when you keep switching in/out of your workbench crafting meds for civilians, the game will sometimes freeze completely acting like the game has crashed. It hasn't, just wait for few seconds or spam your controller till something happens. (Worked everytime)Another thing to point out, further I got into the game, more FPS drops it seemed to happen. Not heavily, but like stutter drops. Was little annoying but not game breaking.NPC/Dialog:Sorry, but whoever did the voices for NPC's did a bad job in my opinion.They sounded so dull and barely no effort into each character. Most sounded like they was just reading the script and got bored.Some sounded like they were trying too hard with a british accent.Most dialog you say to others was like a repeat over and over again, was getting really repetivite at times and even some civilians sounded like they was just repeating themselves to keep the chatting going on for EVER!... Correct me if I was wrong, but it sounded like it to me.Why 4* in stead of 5?Was really a fun game to play!They did a great job on this!Problem I had was the combat was basic and you could just press Square throughout the game without the use of any of the vampire abilities. And the bosses, even near the end was just nothing worth remembering, poorly done and sometimes unfair because of your stamina.Bosses looked cool, but they showed no sign of being "badass" or "Deadly" in the moments.