Vampyr review — a dark, delicious night of the soul

Something you should know before playing Vampyr: this is not a joyful game. Even games about hipster-coiffed  bloodsuckers like Doctor Jonathan Reid, the newly undead surgeon star of Dontnod’s follow up to Life is Strange, come burdened with an expectation of fun. This game is ugly and hopeless even in its best moments, a series of dirty alleyways, docks, and gaslit halls where you make dirty decisions and fight mostly faceless monsters (the enemies whose faces haven’t rotted off in the process of becoming lesser vampires are largely interchangeable, hyper-aggressive human thugs). Just because something isn’t fun, though, doesn’t mean it isn’t pleasurable or good. Vampyr is good — flawed, but very good — and pleasurable.

What is most impressive is where it pulls its pleasures from. Role-playing games have drawn too frequently from the well of moral dichotomy over the past 20 years. Every time you take control of a Jedi, a Witcher, or seemingly any fantasy warrior born in America or Europe, you also have to choose whether they’re a moral paragon (literally in some cases) or an inveterate asshole. By the end of those games, you’re either a superpowered angel or an unstoppable devil. Vampyr is also a story and an adventure built on what looks like a moral binary, but it has one impressive difference. It is incredibly hard to be the good guy in Vampyr. Trying to be one can be frustrating and deflating thanks to repetitive, often unfair combat,  but I found the process so gratifying that I never wanted to stop trying.