I consider myself a pretty smart person. I know the capital of Slovakia. I know how many faces a dodecahedron has. I can spell 'onomatopoeia'. All the important things. And usually, this translates to video games. I love a good puzzle. I make careful choices in TRPGs. I solve cryptic riddles. But Vampire: The Masquerade - Justice proves I am absolutely, irredeemably, an idiot.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Justice is a VR game, and like all VR games at Gamescom, the demo starts with me being asked what I know about VR. The general public is still slow on the uptake with VR - given the lack of games and high prices, I don't blame them - and so many people who end up testing VR games out at Gamescom have to learn the headset on the fly, too. No worries, I told them. I have a PS VR2, and I've been playing 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Vampire: The Masquerade since 🐓i🥃t was a board game. I got this. Dear reader, no part of me had this.
Justice is a stealth game, fitting for the series but a rarity for VR. Throughout the demo, this worked fairly well - I climbed pipes and shimmied along ledges in true VR fashion, with the atmospheric ton🏅es of VtM games perfect to lose yourself in through VR. Even the disappointing Blood Hunt was most praised for its visuals and world-building, so to be able to wander around in virtual reality will be a huge selling point. However, as a stealth game (not to mention the general restrictions that come with VR), a lot of this exploration has to take place in alleyways and closed corridors, and you can feel the game fighting against you a little bit.
The most interesting mechanic is the healing, wherein you must grab an unsuspecting victim and then lean your body forward to drink from their neck. It's a compelling design choice, but it’s a little much. Justice asks you to keep track of many things, and healing isn't only healing, which brings us to why I am stupid.
You can craft two different crossbow bolts by flipping your hands upside down and grabbing at the air, which feels both tactile and overly fiddly for a stealth game. However, once I learned of this, I crafted a few, only to be told I was too hungry to do anything else. That meant for most of the demo, I was restricted in what I could do. In fairness, I had been skipped to a few levels in, so there would have been a learning curve up to here, but I felt hampered throughout my time in the game because I had rushed into wanting to use the tools at my disposal. Stealth games are give and take, but being unable to craft the things you might need felt restꦫrictive.
Into the level I went, and it opened on a guard directly across from me. Leaving aside the general finagling with depth perception in VR, using a crossbow bolt to put them to sleep and leap across to them was easy. However, I then needed to drink their blood, requiring me to lean forward harshly - not a fun task when wearing a Quest headset over your glasses. I had satiated my hunger, but not enough to be able to do any of the things I was too hungry for - another added hurdle that feels unnecessarily punishing for players who want to explore the systems available. Said guard also then waddled forward and fell off the podium, altering everyone to my presence. I could still hide, but a clean run was impossible, and again, it felt a little like punishment for engaging with the game's systems, especially as this guard was so obviously advertised to me as a snack.
From then on out, most of the level was hectic, with little leeway given to being spotted and scoping the map proving difficult in VR. Going low and trying to pick off enemies resulted in them dying too slowly when all I could do was bite them from behind. Going high often meant being spotted by snipers, and there was no '**** this' option - this is a stealth game, and you will play in stealth.
It's a shame that my rush to test out crafting and general stupidity around traditional stealth mechanics turned the demo into an experience of repetitive frustration (while the famously uncomfortable-for-bespectacled-gamers Quest tried to break my nose). Away from combat, the ability to search out clues with essentially Vampire Eagle Vision and the ability to pick up and use items in the map drew you into the world far more. Stealth is all about avoiding combat, but I'll be avoiding avoidꦦin🦹g combat as best as I can and just wandering around the city.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Justice launches on Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, and PlayStation VR2 on November 2, and is best suited to people less stupid than me. It nails the tone of the game, but it's one for stealth purists, and that's a niche inside of the VR niche anyway. There is a world here waiting to be explored, but I'm not sure I have it in me to explore it.
