Vampyr - Reviews

No one here bought it first day then?

Thrasher said:

So if the writing, C&C, reactivity of the world is good enough than that can certainly overcome mediocre combat, as long as it's not more than 50% of the gameplay. Can you playa good guy or is it too boring that way?

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From what I understand, you can try to be good, but that makes things harder as you grow more powerful by feeding. So, I guess sometimes it'll tempt you to feed on the innocent.

As long as you can get by, by only feeding on the bad guys, that might be ok.

I'm still unsure if I want to play 50 hours in a dark environment...

JDR13 said:

I already have. It's no different than most games on the first day.

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I assure you it's different. Well, unless you're talking about dark souls rubbish, then of course it's no different. But darksouls is not most games. Look, god exists, and that not most is the very proof of it.

Try to find such reports in some other recent game that's considered good. Trails of Cold Steel for example - and that one is ported from consoles. No kbm and no mushroom problems on anyone's side? Of course not, developer there (or "porter") didn't sell untested junk.
Sure, a few ignorant developers still sin when it comes to controls on PC, but the biggest ones, for example stupid Square Enix, stopped pushing backspace and ijkl agenda within recent titles.

Ok joxer

Lucky Day said:

No one here bought it first day then?

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I had it preorder for some months now, and jumped in right on release day.

I personally like it quite a bit.
Pros:
+ graphics are beautiful. the lighting is great, and really adds to the atmosphere
+ music and voices are great
+ writing and storytelling seems good to great
+ social systems are really a novelty in this game, and besides narrative purpose, they also have gameplay effects

Neutrals:
=gameplay is acceptable, and the combat system is decent to serviceable.
=quite a bit of mechanics systems interacting with each other: skill trees/crafting systems/leveling up items/etc
= not sure if this is a negative, or how to take it, but I don't like that in dialogue you almost never see Dr. Reid's face. The camera always stays over Reid's shoulder, and focused on the person you're talking to. I would have better liked it if they switched always on the person talking, like Witcher 3 did it. But I guess, you can't have it all, especially since this is not AAA. But for a AA it's great.

Cons:
- doesn't seem to be very optimized. Especially after installing the latest geforce drivers, it actually seems to work worse. I'm running at 4k in ultra-wide on a 1080ti, and couldn't let everything on max. Had to tone down AA a bit. And it's still not perfect. But it's acceptable if you're ok with the slight downgrade (frankly I'm not sure I even notice a graphics difference)
- controls are fine overall, but I also seem to have an issue, while playing with m&k, with switching targets after I'm locked onto one. Apparently, I have to move the mouse left or right to switch, but that's a very bad control binding to have. Because you move the mouse quite a bit anyway, so how exactly do they differentiate between switching targets and just normal mouse movement. I'll have to see if I can't switch to a different binding. On a controller the setting is fine, because it's a deliberate thumb-stick movement.

Overall, as I said, I like it quite a bit. Exploring 1918s London is great. But my most favorite element so far are the social systems they put in place. I love being put in morally grey-area situations and deciding whether to keep my thirst in check, or just let loose on an npc. And the fact that the game encourages you, via gameplay bonuses, to explore all facets of an npc, before deciding their fate, is also nice. Personally I intend to role-play Dr. Reid as peaceful and morally decent as possible. And maybe I'll try a replay with a maniacal serial killer later.

Hum you should have to push a button or something on the mouse to switch targets…

duerer said:

I have a mildly cynical theory on this:
As per hardcore RPG aficionado standards, Vampire:Bloodlines is the gold standard.
I think many of us are waiting for a game similar to VtM:B.
….

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This.

In Norwegian we have an expression (derived from ski jumping): "Jumping after Wirkola". Bjørn Wirkola was a Norwegian world champion ski jumper who dominated the sport the mid 60s. Historically one of our very best. Anyone jumping after him was face with a real challenge.

Is there similar expressions in your language?

I would find it very difficult to judge the game by it's own qualities, so no matter how good it is, I would be disappointed. Unjust, irrational, maybe seven sad(ly?), but I don't think I could enjoy this game.

pibbur whose personal ski jumping record is about 1 meter. With fall.

Capt. Huggy Face said:

Well, the RPS reviewer said the opposite of Chien's streamers, and herein lies the rub for me in not paying much attention to reviews of games I'm actually interested in.

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Streamers demonstrate, they play live. People see how they move through the story, if they are sucked in or.
Different from other video makers who address a report of their experience.

At the moment, streamers are absorbed and intrigued, they spend time on side quests, they want to know more.

I've played 1-2 hours so far, I'm enjoying it a lot. I like the combat, or what I've seen of it to this point. Framerate is mostly between 40-60 on my 390 & 4690, though the area I've just got to sometimes drops to mid 20s when spinning the camera around. Story so far is relatively compelling, I am definitely interested in what's going to happen next. Does a good job of dropping you into it as well.

ChienAboyeur said:

At the moment, streamers are absorbed and intrigued, they spend time on side quests, they want to know more.

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Obviously they suck.
Knowledge intriguing to absorb is in books not in games. Videogames are supposed to be played for fun, not for scam and not for earning $.

weird. i have played an hour probably, foudn the writing / characters boring and dumb. also found the lack of choice at the start , and the press x stuff, triggering.
gonna give it a few more hours though, get out of the prologue or whatever

Browsed through some recent reports and I'm seeing something odd.

Quite a few people state that they accidentaly killed a civillian and now they're not happy because their intention was the opposite of it. Can someone explain this a bit more? How can you accidentally kill someone when trying to save them and if it happens, why can't you revert to previous save then? Is it because of impossible target switching with K+M?

joxer said:

Browsed through some recent reports and I'm seeing something odd.

Quite a few people state that they accidentaly killed a civillian and now they're not happy because their intention was the opposite of it. Can someone explain this a bit more? How can you accidentally kill someone when trying to save them and if it happens, why can't you revert to previous save then? Is it because of impossible target switching with K+M?

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Could be players didn't understand that "feeding" always kill your target.

Or it might be tied to one of the choices you can make for that NPC that have an unexpected consequence later. Really, most players want choices&no-bad-consequences and not choices&any-consequences in their games.

Having played DONTNOD two previous games, I don't expect any "good consequences" from any of the choices. lol

From what I've understand it's not players having problem with c&c. For example a sidequest needs you to help some civillian and if you ignore that and fastrun, the civillian dies later - noone sees an issue with that. In fact, IMO, it's superb design where a fastrunning IGN reviewer will face consequences for ignoring sidequests. I wish this design, where sidequests affect the main game, gets adopted in all future RPGs. Proper sidequests of course, not Bethesda's radiant stupidity.

It's some game mechanics, could be dialogue, could be controls or something else, but I'm not sure as I didn't buy the game and discussions are made by people who assume the reader plays the game and knows what are they talking about.

Not that I've played the game, but in defense of it, wasn't it just released? Give it a few months and I'm sure there will be some patches issued that will address some of the obvious problems.

Oh, its early access?