If you enjoy Vampyr‘s bark but not its neckbite, then your story-drinking needs may be met by an upcoming ‘Story mode’ which tones down the combat. Or if you’ve mastered the murder murder murder kill kill kill of Dontnod’s vampiric RPG and want more of a challenge, a ‘Hard mode’ will have your back. And probably put a knife in it. These two will arrive in an update later this summer, publishers Focus Home announced today. Before all that, a patch hit yesterday with performance optimisations and target lock-on changes, and the game has a wee discount for the next few days.

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If you’re like me, a recent playthrough (or two) of Vampyr has left with you a taste for something unholy… a taste for more complicated vampire stories that Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines can’t seem to quench. Well, for my children of the night, excellent news has just arrived via a cloud of mist that transitioned into a press release and then back into a bat: Netflix’s Castlevania has a season two and it is set to arrive just before Halloween on October 26th. What a terrible night to have… already made plans with some friends… that I need to cancel now. (Is cancelling on friends diabolical?) Bwahahahah!

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While no amount of patching (short of a Final Fantasy XV-style rewrite) will address its clumsy final act, flawed but fascinating gothic RPG Vampyr received its first patch this week. It addresses a few minor bugs and smooths out mouse and keyboard controls, including better lock-on targeting. Still, we’re a little sad to see some of the less game-threatening (and more YouTube highlight-worthy) bugs fixed, as they were a funny old lot.

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When I published my Vampyr review (summary: choice is an illusion, apart from when it’s a roulette wheel; the dialogue’s stuffy but the fights are tight if you invest in them), I estimated that I was about two-thirds of the way through the game. With embargoes and deadlines out the way, I was curious to see how it all resolved, and particularly what, if any, pdark consequences would ultimately ripple outwards from the choices I had made. It’ll just take few hours, I reasoned. One more working day.

16 hours of increasingly maddening play later, I grimly watched the credits roll, my mind a whirl of relief, contempt and despair. If my post-review return to Vampyr had immediately collapsed into the combination of soporific lore and desperately ill-judged combat excess that did its final furlong, I wouldn’t have minded so much. What frustrated me was that this was preceded by a strong stretch wherein it finally became the game of agonising vampiric dilemmas that we’d hoped it would be from the start. So close to brilliance, and then this abrupt decay into absolute folly. (more…)

“Miss, Miss, it’s so sunny, can we have Steam Charts on the field?”

“NO. Sit down and write about popular PC games in this oppressively hot room until the DAY YOU DIE.” (more…)

You better not shout, you better not cry, you better not expect the Elder Scrolls VI to be announced in front of an LA audience I m tellin you why. E3 2018 is coming to town!

Yes, and with it, so come the takes. The RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, wants in on this. So here are some of our predictions, hopes and fears for this year s dreaded multimedia assault on the nervous system. (more…)

I was going to call this article 10 Vampyr tips to stop you sucking at sucking , but this doesn t reflect my experience with the game. As you ll have read in Alec s delightful Vampyr review, the act of drinking blood is a wicked temptation. It s the quickest way to slurp up XP and lower the combat difficulty, but comes at the cost of depopulating the world of potential stories and causing regions of the map to sink into enemy-infested chaos. It s better to stretch your non-slurped XP as far as possible then, so I m offering advice about surviving with as few necks bitten as possible.

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“Forget everything you think you know about vampires,” the noblewoman in period dress tells me, in her straight-out-of-Hammer cut-glass accent. This was during our latest night-time meeting (for we cannot walk in sunlight), shortly after I’d caught her secretly sinking her teeth into the necks of the dispossessed, and shortly before I’d been beset by agony upon trying to enter a church. I don’t know what foolish notions her ladyship thought I had about my new status as a fellow vamp – maybe that they all have Welsh accents, or drink blood via their toenails – but ambitious, atmospheric fangs ‘n’ conversation game Vampyr doesn’t often veer far from the current neck-biter hymn sheet.

It sure does veer in almost every other respect, mind you. I’m not sure that 2018 will yield many games quite as expansive as Vampyr, but what I wouldn’t give for a director’s cut that oiled its creakiest coffin hinges. (more…)

I feel like Vampyr has been part of my life for a very long time. It was only three years ago that I first saw the game, but I’ve been following it closely since then. It’s always been at arm’s length though, seen in the occasional video playthrough or prior to an interview with the developers. Last week, I had my first chance to play it, and spent two hours healing and hurting the people of London. It’s been a long wait and at the end of it, being dead was a bit of a drag.

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Dontnod’s vampiric action-RPG Vampyr will launch on June 5th, publishers Focus Home announced today. Vampyr whisk us back to a flu-ridden London in 1918 as a newly-vampirated doctor to do murders, drink blood, and shape the future of the city as we wrestle with moral dilemmas. While Dontnod are best known for Life Is Strange, it’s probably more helpful here to remember they’re studio behind Remember Me, the 2013 sci-fi action-adventure game. Expect drinking from hearts more than heart-to-hearts; more rending than befriending; less spunk than spookies. Though god knows vampires (sorry, vampyrs) can moan and brood more than even the most troubled of teens. (more…)