{"id":644,"date":"2022-06-10T00:20:05","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T00:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=644"},"modified":"2022-06-10T00:20:05","modified_gmt":"2022-06-10T00:20:05","slug":"vampyr-pc-technical-review-and-first-impressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=644","title":{"rendered":"Vampyr PC Technical Review and First Impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

\u201cFirst Impressions\u201d is a really weird thing for me to title this piece about Vampyr<\/i>, because I\u2019ve played it quite a bit more than that implies. Not enough to review it based on our \u201cno reviews until completion\u201d guidelines, and frankly, not enough to feel comfortable reviewing it. Apparently, 22 hours isn\u2019t enough to figure out what I think about Vampyr<\/i>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly enough to give you an idea of where my thoughts are going, though, and to talk about how it holds up on PC. Which, uh, is where I may have some rather unfortunate news. Vampyr<\/i> isn\u2019t outright bad<\/i> on PC, but it\u2019s absolutely a console port with some additional rough edges, some jank, and some optimisation issues.<\/p>\n

Of course, this is a pre-release press build, and there\u2019s apparently a day one patch happening, so there\u2019s a chance some of this will be remedied by launch. I certainly hope so, but I can only really comment on what I\u2019ve experienced.<\/p>\n

First things first, the obligatory slew of menus:<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr
\n\"Vampyr
\n\"Vampyr
\n\"Vampyr
\n\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

Also: set the subtitle size to small, to see more than about 6 words at a time.<\/p>\n

Honestly, there\u2019s not a great deal I can say about these.<\/p>\n

The graphics options are all about as you\u2019d expect; while there\u2019s no specific option to turn off motion blur or anything, dropping Post-Process Quality to Low does remove most depth-of-field and assorted nonsense. Not bad. Resolution Scaling is also in if you want to make the game look much worse, although it\u2019s almost certainly the option that\u2019ll provide the biggest benefits to framerate.<\/p>\n

That said, Vampyr<\/i> doesn\u2019t really look either bad or spectacular, regardless of the settings. There are noticeable differences when you see comparison screenshots, but when playing the game, there are only a few things you\u2019re likely to notice \u2013 a few lower quality textures and a lack of anti-aliasing, mostly. (The below screenshots don\u2019t have the resolution scaling adjusted.)<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

High.<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

Low.<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

High.<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

Low.<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

High.<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

Low.<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

High.<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

Low.<\/p>\n

Side-by-side, though, you can see some bigger differences, most of which are atmospheric. With the settings turned down the traditional London fog and gloom is significantly reduced, there\u2019s less incidental detail (like weeds growing through the cracks in the pavement), and you can actually see everything because depth-of-field isn\u2019t getting in the way. But, uh, the latter can be individually removed, as noted, and Vampyr<\/i> generally does a really good job of creating a dark and grim London plagued by both disease and vampires.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m running this on an i7-3820 with 16GB RAM and a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, so you would probably expect me to not have any real framerate issues with Vampyr<\/i>. This is mostly true: the game runs fine and is entirely playable, but then, it\u2019s not a fast-paced action game so minor framerate blips don\u2019t cause any issues. However, I\u2019m not running at a constant 60 FPS.<\/p>\n

Indoors, things are usually fine, and a mild drop in framerate when transitioning between the game\u2019s zones is also understandable. Outside, with all graphical settings turned up to full, things run anywhere between about 40 FPS and 60 FPS depending on the specifics of the scene. The absolute lows are mostly the result of short drops lasting a few seconds rather than anything constant, though; Vampyr<\/i> usually averages in the mid-to-high 50s at 1440p.<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

For all my talk of how it doesn\u2019t look spectacular, Vampyr has some lovely visual effects.<\/p>\n

Lowering the graphical settings doesn\u2019t change this overmuch, giving around 50 FPS as a new low instead. This worries me slightly in terms of optimisation: it doesn\u2019t seem<\/i> to be a particularly intensive game, after all. Fortunately, as noted, this isn\u2019t a phenomenal-looking twitch-shooter, so minor blips like this don\u2019t really do anything to make Vampyr<\/i> difficult to play or any less enjoyable, especially because they mostly happen in the busier social districts of London where combat isn\u2019t an option. Do note, again, that this is all running at 2560\u00d71440, and it may well be significantly better optimised for 1080p.<\/p>\n

On a mildly interesting note, GeForce Experience<\/i> tells me that my optimal settings are actually to run Vampyr<\/i> at 3620\u00d72036 and have it scaled down to my native resolution. I gave this a shot. The framerate dips were greater, but again, things still remained entirely playable. Quickly spinning 180 degrees or walking into a busy screen would drop things down to 35 FPS or so for a moment, but then the game would catch up again.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there are more problems troubling Vampyr<\/i>\u2018s PC version, much like the Spanish Flu is the tip of the iceberg for the game\u2019s recreation of 1918 London. Mouse and keyboard controls are one of these. Now, pretty much everything is redefineable, and 100% of my playtime has been with mouse\/keyboard, so \u2013 again \u2013 these are annoying problems rather than utter game-breakers. Bear that in mind. I mean, I could complain about Q being the walk key (which is mildly annoying, because trying to hold that down while using WASD to sneak around behind someone and then hit F to sneak attack them can require some uncomfortable finger gymnastics) but I can just as easily redefine that, even if a \u201ctoggle to walk\u201d button would\u2019ve been nice.<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

Stuns start battle but leave any enemies within the immediate area disoriented, letting you drain them of some blood or get a few quick hits in. So yes, sneaking up on people has its advantages.<\/p>\n

It might be an artifact of the occasional framerate swings making me think this, but at times I\u2019ve been sure there\u2019s some form of mouse smoothing going on, and finding a mouse sensitivity that didn\u2019t feel horribly wrong took some time. But the bigger issue is in combat, where there\u2019s one mechanic that basically just <\/b>doesn\u2019t work<\/i> on mouse and keyboard.<\/p>\n

In combat, once you tap CTRL to lock onto an enemy, you\u2019ll pretty much always be able to see them and attack in their direction \u2013 especially useful against foes who can teleport around. If you want to swap targets, you move the mouse in the direction of the foe you want to lock onto. Simple.<\/p>\n

Except aaargh, because this almost<\/i> never works<\/i>. Occasionally \u2013 like when Vampyr<\/i> first taught me to do this \u2013 it will. But since then, I\u2019d estimate it\u2019s functioned maybe 10% of the time I\u2019ve tried to use it. I\u2019ve tried nudging the mouse gently. I\u2019ve tried swinging the mouse so hard I\u2019ve nearly flung it across the room. I\u2019ve tried arcane chants and blood sacrifices. But mostly, I\u2019ve just given up and resigned myself to the fact that I have to unlock from my current target manually, and then try to relock onto my intended target before I take too much damage. Or I guess I could plug in a gamepad, since everything is clearly designed around this, but that feels like giving in. I mean, the menus generally work really nicely with the mouse!<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

There are also occasions where the game appears to load in vastly lower-quality textures than it should, like with this poor chap here, who appears to be a mannequin.<\/p>\n

And then there are the other bits of jank, which I rather doubt are limited to the PC version. Subtitles are riddled with typos. The camera, during conversations, occasionally picks the worst possible angle; I\u2019ve had one in-depth discussion of the troubles facing London while staring at a close-up of the protagonist\u2019s back (although this has<\/i> happened a lot less since a rather large patch shortly after receiving the press version).<\/p>\n

There are also a few very rare issues with the game logic, but that\u2019s not entirely surprising considering Vampyr<\/i>\u2018s scope. I managed to create a catastrophe in one district, and on going to survey my work (and hopefully repair the situation) I found a very definitely dead NPC standing in her usual spot in the social zone, alive and well, but non-interactive. After wandering into the havoc-stricken area and back out, the game seemed to remember she was meant to be dead and she vanished for good. I\u2019ve only seen this happen on extremely rare occasions across 22 hours of play, though, and it\u2019s never impacted the gameplay itself or bugged out a quest.<\/p>\n

So the PC version is a port, and a bit of a rough one at that. Gamepad would probably be the suggested way to go for controls, and at the bare minimum, you\u2019re going to have to deal with some bits and pieces like typos and occasional framerate drops. (It also does that horribly annoying thing where clicking to skip text winds up skipping the person\u2019s entire series of lines<\/i> rather than just whatever\u2019s currently displayed in the on-screen subtitles, which is a good way to really upset me.)<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

And okay, sometimes the angst and melodrama fits the gothic theme.<\/p>\n

But enough complaining. Let\u2019s talk a bit about Vampyr<\/i> itself, because I\u2019ve played it for a good number of hours and I want to outline some thoughts, for me as much as for anyone else.<\/p>\n

This is a terrible pun which I\u2019m sure a billion other reviews are going to use, but Vampyr<\/i> is biting off more than it can chew. While it sometimes works \u2013 and works gloriously<\/i> \u2013 it often feels about as flawed as its port job.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re Jonathan Reid, an esteemed doctor returning from the frontlines of the war to London, when you\u2019re rather unceremoniously turned into a vampire and dumped in a mass grave. And then the first person you encounter in your post-revival thirst for blood is your sister, which does not end well for her.<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

You talk surprisingly well for someone with a lot of holes in your throat, sis.<\/p>\n

If tracking down your progenitor and coming to terms with being a vampire isn\u2019t enough: the Spanish Flu is raging throughout London so a doctor\u2019s work is never done, there\u2019s a group of fanatical vampire hunters swarming the streets, and there are whisperings of some dark machinations in the shadows.<\/p>\n

The most unique thing Vampyr<\/i> has going for it is its levelling system. London is split into four districts, each of which has a social hub full of named characters with their own secrets \u2013 and any of these can be drained dry for a massive<\/i> experience boost, at the cost of the district\u2019s stability. Should the stability fall too low, the district itself will fall into chaos, apparently removing all vendors and quests from the region and making everything rather unpleasant should you try to head back there. Excellently, you get more XP from healthy and happy people than the sick and miserable, so even if you\u2019re planning on being a total bastard it\u2019s in your best interests to help these people out by curing their illnesses and completing their quests before you drag them off into a corner for a fatal kiss.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s even a touch of Ice-Pick Lodge\u2019s excellent misery-\u2019em-up Pathologic<\/i> in there, as illnesses spread every time you rest, and choices you\u2019ve made may heavily impact region stability \u2013 all of which has led to me dreading<\/i> the night reports that come every time I return to a hideout to spend my experience. This is also definitely a Dontnod game rather than a BioWare RPG: even the best intentions can come back to bite you in the arse, as I rather painfully discovered.<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

Learn to dread things like this, and bear in mind that if you come across someone who needs rescuing, they probably won\u2019t survive the night.<\/p>\n

Earlier on, when talking about bugs, I mentioned I managed to create a catastrophe. This was absolutely unintentional. I thought it was in the best interests of the district and the people there. I was being nice. Instead it led to the closure of a social zone and the deaths of four named characters. After that, I\u2019ve learned to fear pretty much every major decision I make, and remember that good intentions aren\u2019t necessarily what will actually help.<\/p>\n

But the downside to this is that these major occurrences are pretty rare, and right now, a lot of the sidequests seem almost inconsequential. There are hints of intrigue in there, but there\u2019s barely any resolution to most of the things you find out about people (largely done by rummaging through their houses for letters), except to possibly make you feel better about murdering them for a large XP boost.<\/p>\n

Also, to prevent you from utterly derailing the plot, you\u2019re limited in terms of who you can murder at any given time. You need a certain level of Mesmerise to convince citizens to walk into a dark alley with you, and this seems to be improved by proceeding through the main questline. So no, you can\u2019t immediately go and murder the most prominent NPCs everywhere as soon as you like.<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

Vampires have a sort of Batman vision, letting you see people through walls and analyse the quality of their blood. Useful for picking targets, not walking into ambushes, and finding out where someone you want to talk with has buggered off to.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, I like the idea of this experience system \u2013 that playing the game as someone trying to resist your bloodlust makes it harder, because you\u2019re essentially turning down large amounts of experience. But combat is rarely difficult anyway, and the biggest change is the amount of damage you do, so \u2013 realistically \u2013 draining people of their blood just means that fights are less irritating because enemies feel less like damage sponges. As a specific example, I\u2019ve killed bosses more than double<\/i> my level without taking a hit, but it was an absolute slog. And when few of these named NPCs make much of an impact and have little personal evolution, it\u2019s hard to care.<\/p>\n

Combat itself is semi-rote action-RPG stuff, in terms of swinging away at enemies and trying to dodge or parry their own attacks. However, as a vampire, you have abilities powered by blood (gained by using certain weapons in combat, stunning foes so that you can drink from them, or eating rats). You can launch spears of blood at enemies, or summon clouds of exploding shadows, or rip them apart with claws. You can summon shields of blood or teleport next to ranged foes to strike instantly. Enemies have both a health bar and a stun bar, and as noted, the draining the latter lets you either drink some of their blood or unleash a few hits without fear of reprisal.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s all been done significantly better in countless other games, and it isn\u2019t particularly interesting or challenging on its own. Fights against huge foes who\u2019ve been amped up throughout plot events inevitably end in disappointment as I do the exact same thing I\u2019ve done against other enemies, only the fight lasts several minutes instead of 30 seconds because I\u2019m horribly underlevelled.<\/p>\n

\"Vampyr<\/p>\n

Pfft. Just because you\u2019re 20 levels higher than me and appear sturdier than most of these walls doesn\u2019t mean you can tell me what to do.<\/p>\n

Basically, it has some nice combat ideas that aren\u2019t particularly well-implemented, and some absolutely smashing story\/NPC\/consequence ideas that aren\u2019t particularly well-implemented. I kinda wish Dontnod had stuck to doing one or the other. I also wish they\u2019d resisted the urge to delve into cringe-inducing dialogue every now and then, but even Life is Strange<\/i> did that, so I can accept this particular foible.<\/p>\n

Still, Vampyr<\/i> has a lovely aesthetic \u2013 the music in particular is excellent at evoking a gothic London atmosphere \u2013 and the moments where your decisions catch up with you are great. There are some marvellous set-pieces, although on a first playthrough (with only one autosave slot) it\u2019s very hard to tell how much my decisions in these scenes actually<\/i> matter. I have a very, very strong suspicion that some of them are emotively milking me by making me think something\u2019s my fault when the outcome is already set in stone.<\/p>\n

This is partly why I still don\u2019t feel able to review Vampyr<\/i>, right now. I need<\/i> to finish it to see how much some of these things matter, and ideally I want to start a second playthrough to try things differently. More appraisal is needed before I can tell if it\u2019s a diamond with some exceptionally<\/i> rough edges, or if it\u2019s a cheap piece of tacky plastic trying to be more than it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cFirst Impressions\u201d is a really weird thing for me to title this piece about Vampyr, because I\u2019ve played it quite a bit more than that implies. Not enough to review it based on our \u201cno reviews until completion\u201d guidelines, and frankly, not enough to feel comfortable reviewing it. Apparently, 22 hours isn\u2019t enough to figure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[814],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}