Vampire The Masquerade Blood Hunt Release Date

vampire the masquerade bloodhunt ps5 review

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt PS5 review. Despite missing out on the battle royale 'boom' of the belatedly 2010's where seemingly merely about everyone and their domestic dog decided information technology would exist a expert thought to make one to accrue those wobbly fat stacks, Swedish developer Sharkmob has yet rocked up in 2022 with their own effort – and the results are both welcome and surprising.

Using the ever expanding Earth of Darkness gothic setting as its creative bedrock, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt (to give it the sort of total lengthy title that these World of Darkness games seemingly cannot get enough of), taps into its established setting and lore to bring hugely satisfying traversal and an innovative PvE camber to the battle royale genre, resulting in a genre effort quite unlike any other so far.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt PS5 Review

Bloodhunt Injects New (Un)life Into The Shopworn Boxing Royale Concept

Taking place in the eternal twilight of favourite vampire destination Prague, Bloodhunt is a free-to-play, third-person battle royale effort that at its base leans on the familiar staples of the genre. The goal, as you might expect, is to be the concluding vampire(s) standing in solo or team modes while the active map area shrinks thank you to an oppressive gas (it's red hither, obviously) that encroaches upon your domain and quickly murders anyone not quick enough to escape its deathly grasp. So far, and so battle royale then – only this is where things outset to get a little different and more a little interesting.

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For a offset, the City of a Hundred Spires proves to be quite the setting and non just considering its total of rain, neon signage and twilight dappled streets. Every bit per its nickname, Prague is generous blimp full of gothic styled towering architecture (hence the appeal for the fanged folk) and this is significant non least because of how it feels precisely calibrated to take advantage of Bloodhunt's excellent traversal system.

Fully embracing the notion that you're a super strong beast of the night with superhuman agility to kick, Bloodhunt lets you leap insane distances and quite literally climb up the side of any edifice or surface you want. When used in tandem with an exaggerated sliding move that would make the Vanquish lads jealous, Bloodhunt's hyperkinetic traversal feels rewarding, refreshing and satisfying – standing out in a genre where the virtually you usually make it this regard is a jump, a ladder climb and a parachute – if y'all're lucky.

Of course the upshot of this movement system is that battles in Bloodhunt very often unfurl into spectacularly acrobatic affairs, every bit the opposing ranks of the undead wreak havoc beyond rooftops in ballsy and chaotic encounters that frequently spill down into the streets below with simply a moment's notice. Honestly, until you've leapt a hundred anxiety into the air from one building to the next earlier climbing up a massive cathedral tower, you'll non want to become back to the usual cookie-cutter traversal methods that other boxing royale games offer.

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Being a vampire, especially ane in the Globe of Darkness setting, brings with it its own set up of unique boons and challenges that you wouldn't necessarily experience in other boxing royale titles either. For the uninitiated, the Vampire: The Masquerade setting is predicated around the Masquerade itself, a prevalent mask of sorts that exists between the vampires and the humans that sit down below them on the food concatenation to maintain precarious residuum of order. However, the Masquerade can exist broken by acts of savagery such as feeding and killing humans, all of which can bring existent problem to players.

It's here we encounter the existent gamble and reward Dna that is threaded throughout Bloodhunt's gameplay and which also serves to underpin its more esoteric PvE trappings that other battle royale offerings lack. While the various humans that loiter and walk the streets of Prague can be tuckered of blood, brilliantly each human volition offer up a different series of stackable buffs that make you stronger the more of that detail human type you lot feed from.

Whether it's improving your special abilities (more on that in a jiff), providing you with increased health regeneration or even gifting you an actress life after you lot die for the first time, there's genuine benefit to seeking out these fleshy ignoramuses and sinking your teeth in. Where the risk part comes in of form, is in how such behaviour affects the Masquerade itself. If you're spotted feeding or killing a human being, you'll be Bloodhunted (they had to get that in there somewhere, I guess) and will announced on the radar of all of other vampires in the local vicinity, making your (un)life very hard as a outcome.

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Speaking of having a hard time of it, Bloodhunt'due south PvE leanings as well brand themselves keenly felt where the boodle side of things come into the equation as well. Similar every other battle royale game since the dawn of homo, Bloodhunt features a veritable armoury full of tied ranged weapons, melee weapons, trinkets and single use consumable items to keep things spicy. The kicker however, is that the higher end loot isn't just guarded past skillful quondam-fashioned alarmed bounds that audio their deafening klaxons if you attempt to breach the bounds, simply also by highly trained and well equipped vampire hunters that can impale even the almost hardened vampire in just a few hits.

In genre where the only opposition is often only other players, it's refreshing to see a developer similar Sharkmob deftly engineer a range of more embedded threats like this, as it not only keeps the downtime between those histrion versus role player encounters that much smaller simply it also provides players with a whole heap of other stuff to do that doesn't just revolve effectually murdering the opposite team and tea-bagging their prone forms.

Another benefit of the World of Darkness setting is that there are many, many different types of vampires than you would normally arrive other comparable works of gothic fiction and lore. In Bloodhunt such multifariousness manifests every bit the four different vampire clans that you tin choose from – Brujah, Nosferatu, Toreador and Ventrue. Essentially representing the macro classes of Bloodhunt, each of these clans have different traits such every bit damage dealing, stealth, tanking so on that endear themselves to specially types of play. Where things get actually interesting however are in the archetypes that exist for each race – providing a baseline of special abilities, perks and buffs that become progressively more stiff the more than enemies you kill and the more in-game objectives you consummate.

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Equally tremendously fun as Bloodhunt is nevertheless, there are a couple of adequately sizable flaws that currently hold it back from greatness. The first is that crossplay with PC folks is grossly unfair right now cheers to the inherent control advantage that PC owners boast on account of their keyboard and mouse configurations, so if you lot're seeking vampires to dance with from other platforms, be prepared to dice a lot and very rapidly in ways that seem badly unfair.

Speaking of unfair, another issue that currently afflicts Bloodhunt right now is that melee combat feels more than than a lilliputian bit overpowered and certainly, when used in tandem with certain other archetype abilities, it tin brand using firearms experience like an afterthought rather than, well, the first thought.

Elsewhere, different other examples of the battle royale genre such every bit Call of Duty: Warzone or Apex Legends, Bloodhunt doesn't actually take anything resembling a cinematic opener to its matches. Instead of falling from the sky in dramatic fashion, or even more applicably rising from some local crypt earlier emerging onto the streets, you merely just choose your starting indicate so the game begins with you effectively teleported into that location. It'south surprisingly flair-costless for a game that shows an abundance of it in some many other aspects of its design.

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Finally, one other observation is that regarding Prague itself. Despite how evocative the design of the metropolis is (and Bloodhunt'south Prague certainly stands tall equally 1 of the more than attractive boxing royale maps out in that location, that's for certain) it really isn't that big – even with all that additional verticality thrown in. Additionally, Prague is the only map currently available in Bloodhunt too, so once you get used to its every nook and cranny, which doesn't have equally long as you think, the map can beginning to feel overfamiliar. Hither's hoping that Sharkmob taps into other global cities for Bloodhunt; personally, I'd honey to see twilight versions of New York, London, Rome and many others.

Every bit boxing royale efforts become, Bloodhunt is surprising; which is more than other like-minded efforts can lay claim to. Though cross play remains unbalanced confronting more than capable PC players and concerns over balancing and map diverseness remain, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodhunt yet brings a scintillating alloy of furious traversal, inspired PvE design and smashing lore from the Globe of Darkness setting to fashion one of the most refreshing boxing royale efforts in quite some fourth dimension.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt is out at present on PS5 and is free to play.

Boxing Laissez passer and Founders Edition code kindly provided by PR.