Vampyr is an action role-playing game developed by Dontnod Entertainment. The game is available for the Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, PS4, and the Nintendo Switch. You play as Jonathan reed a doctor who gets turned into a vampire. The game is set in London and sees Jonathan struggle with his newfound bloodlust as he attempts to uncover why he was turned.

You start out as a lonely hungry vampire and it's all a bit disorientating at the beginning. As things progress, you start to investigate and uncover the truth behind why you were turned and also how to quench your bloodlust. The game does a great job of giving you freedom of choice as you don't have to kill civilians to feed. But if you do, you'll become much stronger with more points to allocate to your leveling up but don't get too greedy because if you do the burrow that you've been eating people in the quality of the blood in that area will be affected and vampire hunters will start to inhabit the borough.

So, it's a fine line between fulfilling your thirst and leveling up. Obviously, though I just killed every civilian I could to get super vampire powers because why not. Speaking of vampire skills at the end of a night you can visit your safe house and as you sleep you can level up your healthy blood levels and all sorts of other special moves and abilities. You have a vampire sense to follow crime scene type investigations.

You can miss a jump, use melee weapons, and even firearms or you can just be a charming vampire swine and lure innocent people to back alleys to guzzle away at the red stuff. Being a doctor means that you can also cure the locals to improve the quality of their blood before you eat them. How thoughtful, but eat too many people and that borough's economy will suffer and your deeds will even appear in the local news rack. Now, the combat in this game it's a bit of an issue you can use melee or ranged weapons as well as skills but the animation and the fluidity whether it's single or group-based combat is not great. It makes most encounters quite laborious and a bit of a struggle it's quite disappointing as you think fighting as a vampire would be really fun but it ends up being a bit of a chore.

You can upgrade your skills and weapons through but even later in the game, you don't really feel like a vampire because you can die way too easily. Finally, the story is well put together in the early stages but it does start to descend into a bit of a fast the further you go. You constantly have to listen to your character's voice-over talking to himself a little too much. I honestly don't understand why games have their main characters always talking to themselves. But in summary, it's a game that really captures the essence of what a vampire game should be. It's dark, gothic, morose, and full of film noir styling.

The graphics are good but they're not without their issues. The game world it's dark, well structured, feels like a lived-in place and the character models look okay but it is the animation that's the main issue. Especially, during combat and it's very poor and feels very dated considering the game is not that old when you look at games that came out at the same time as this the animation for this is very very poor. In terms of sound, the musical score is absolutely delightful it's dripping with dark morose melodies and tones that really accentuate the mood and the atmosphere of the game world and the vampire theme.

The voice actors do a very good job and deliver their lines in keeping with the tempo and the moment. Another, nice touch is after you kill a person you get to hear their last thoughts in a short monologue it's a very nice detail and it makes each kill feel more personal. The game captures the right atmosphere for a vampire game. The gameplay is enjoyable with detective work combat and exploration to keep you busy. The music and voice acting is very very good and it's nice to see a game with real consequences to your actions as if you keep killing people that burrow becomes more dangerous in the future. While The combat is not the smoothest, the story loses its way after a strong start, and the animation looks and feels very dated.

Final Thoughts

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The game is a darkly atmospheric adventure game that strikes a good balance between exploration, combat, conversation, and vampire shenanigans. The game world feels authentic and mood, the voice acting is excellent, and the music is simply stunning. For me, it's the best vampire game I've played but it is an underdeveloped genre something I've never really understood as vampires like they're so cool when you compare them to zombies. There are thousands of zombie games and yet we don't have that many vampire games. However, the game is far from perfect with animation that needed more work. The combat system is a bit of a struggle to get to grips with and just a few other little minor issues. You're a vampire, you would think that it would be smooth, fluid, dynamic, it would be like your neo in the matrix. But it's really not like that it's just um a little bit clunky and something you have to endure but barring that and some story missteps it's a really enjoyable game I really did like. It's more like I said the best vampire game you can get in my opinion.

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