So there is a big Vampire: The Masquerade video game coming out this year after all. Except, it’s not an RPG like Bloodlines 2, it’s a free-to-play battle royale. I know that sounds strange but I’ve played it, and it’s better than I expected. It’s a pretty impressive production, actually. It has a studio of around 200 people behind it: a newish Swedish studio called Sharkmob, led by Ubisoft Massive (The Division) veterans. And they’ve made something dark, handsome and atmospheric. Something entirely in keeping with what you expect from a Vampire: The Masquerade game.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt preview
- Developer: Sharkmob
- Publisher: Sharkmob
- Platform: Played on PC
- Availability: Closed Alpha begins 2nd July. Full release later this year on PC (Steam). Will be free-to-play. Consoles a possibility for the future
The game goes like this (and ‘this’ will be quickly familiar to anyone who’s played a battle royale game, which at this point is probably everyone?): you queue solo, or in teams of three, for a big fight in the locked-down city of Prague at night. Exactly how many players can fight together isn’t finalised yet. The current rough-count is 45.
You start with no weaponry, so you need to loot it, as well as collect armour and blood packs (health refills), pulling them from the back of police vans, or chests and containers, and sometimes shops, that you find around the city. And the playing area in Prague gradually shrinks as a red mist rolls in.
The difference in Bloodhunt comes from your being a vampire. Being a vampire enables you to scrabble up the side of any building simply by holding the spacebar, and to slide along rooftops and leap from them, as well as use your senses to scan the area around you for things of interest. Things like loot, or the whereabouts of a noise (like gunfire), or civilians (I’ll come back to them).
Each type of vampire also has special powers. There are three for each character. The first power usually entails a huge boost to movement, be it from a giant leap, an invisible dash, or a kind of spectral teleport; the middle power is passive, which can be something like a health-regen or a partial-vanish while crouching, but there are more; and the third power is an active ability, which varies from damage to support. There are things like ground-pounds, traps, bats that scan the area, heals, and bullet shields. They’re satisfying to use and, because there are only three powers per vampire, plus the scan scan, they’re all relatively easy to get to grips with and understand.