A Vampyre Story Review

There's a group of people who have been looking forward to this game, and they're fans of old LucasArts adventures.

For the deprived individuals who don't know anything about these adventure games, they were peerless examples of storytelling, humour, music and gameplay all wrapped in one tight package. They included such classics as Grim Fandango, Sam & Max Hit The Road, Day of the Tentacle and the Monkey Island quadrilogy.

Most of the talent behind these games were fired by LucasArts, spawning studios such as Telltale (Sam & Max, Strong Bad), Double Fine (Psychonauts, Brutal Legend), Crackpot (Insecticide), and Autumn Moon (A Vampyre Story). Out of all of them, the only full-length adventure game, like the ones made at LucasArts, is this one - A Vampyre Story.

The game tells the tale of Mona, an opera singer-come-vampire in denial, as she attempts to escape the Draxylvanian castle she's imprisoned in and get to Paris to pursue her singing career. She's accompanied by Froderick, a talking bat, which neatly avoids the sense of loneliness adventure games are often prone to.



The story is pretty well told, although. no, I'll get to that soar point in a moment. There're several interesting twists, and while there's nothing earth-shattering, it still ticks along nicely, keeping you relatively hooked.

It is, however, very wordy. Like all the best adventure games, there's much to see, examine and talk to, but unlike the best LucasArts adventures, the writing isn't snappy. Conversations on pointless objects can go on for an age and it's nowhere near as funny as it thinks it is. It's still amusing, and if you don't mind the long chats, you'll get suckered in.

Top marks must be given to the artwork, which imitates the lush hand-drawn look of The Curse of Monkey Island, joined with detailed 3D models. The effect really is quite stunning, and it's certainly the most attractive adventure game I've seen this year. The animation is sometimes a little stiff, and Mona moves far too slow, but this isn't really a problem as you can skip everything by using the Space bar (even walking.)



The puzzles, the gameplay's main thrust, are sometimes quite devilish. An early puzzle had me utterly stumped until something I'd taken as an inanimate background object turned out to be an actual character Mona could talk to. This happened twice in the very same area!

Usually the problem isn't so much solving the puzzles, but finding what you need. Thankfully Autumn Moon has included a feature I hope will become standard for Point N' Click Adventures - a button (in this case the Tab key) that highlights every examinable object on screen. There is absolutely no way I could've found that Perfume Refill bottle without it.

After playing such dross as The Lost Crown, A Vampyre Story's voice acting is a real relief, but its still not quite up to the standards of Telltale or Double Fine. It does its job though, and while Mona isn't quite as sultry as I'd hoped, she grows on you: Froderick is just great. The music isn't stand-out brilliant, but it's nicely atmospheric.



Lastly though, I must come to the real sticking point: this isn't a full game. This is more of an annoyance than a real problem, since Vampyre Story isn't a full-priced game either. Nonetheless, when the game ends it feels like the story's just got going, which is a real (ahem) pain in the neck.

Two sequels are already in production, but I'm not sure why they didn't just make it all one full-priced game.

I have to include a quick quibble about the save system too. There are no obvious save game files (it takes some detective work to discover which files are the saves) and you can't overwrite them. I mean, huh?



Oh well, this is still an excellent example of the beloved adventure genre, and barring Telltale's efforts, it's the best I've seen this year. The voices aren't perfect, the writing a little wordy, some things are too well hidden, and the narrative cuts off abruptly, but as big as these problems sound they didn't stop me from enjoying it.

Please Autumn Moon, can we have some more? Quickly?

7.5/10

Chris Capel