Another game review, another Survivors-like to evaluate… And even if this journalist honestly tries to delve into other game genres, we can say that it often doesn’t hurt to dedicate a few hours to another Vampire Survivors emulator . And with its first-person perspective and its completely different approach to the weapons with which our character will decimate thousands of enemies, we have to admit that Vampire Hunters is different.
The game was developed and published by Gamecraft Studios in Early Access and has all the aspects of titles in the genre: hordes of monsters; a meta-progression that allows you to gradually improve your skills but also perfect your mastery of various weapons or unlock cannons and other holy water launchers; A difficulty that forces you to quickly try to find winning combinations… You can’t blame anyone if you use a formula that works.
What makes the difference here is precisely this ego vision: we go from a top-down game to a first-person shooter. From then on, the strategy will change very much: it is impossible to stay in place for more than a few moments, in what seems to be the only accessible arena in the game, since the monsters, although generally progressing slowly, will do so I’m happy to surprise you and attack you from the side or even from behind. And so this cartoonish battle against the forces of evil absolutely needs to be waged in motion.
The other change is the way the weapons are presented: for example, instead of only showing the projectiles fired by the player and the spells he can cast, we will be equipped with more and more equipment. More complex, which could ultimately include at least ten main and secondary weapons, if not more.
In this sense, fans of Mothergunship, another first-person shooter where you had to build your weapon from different parts, a bit like owning a crazy and functional Lego gun, will find your account there. And there is indeed something delightful and fun about stacking machine guns, rocket launchers, ray guns, flamethrowers and other pointy, sharp and deadly devices.
However, the big problem with Vampire Hunters lies in the difficulty: yes, you have to adapt to a new reality, in this area where there are very few bottlenecks, but it seems that the developers have forced the hint a little too much it was time to strike a balance between the damage dealt by the monsters and what the player counts as life points.
Add to this far too few healing potions, absurd additional abilities like restoring a maximum of 1/10 of a life point per second while a basic monster deals eight points of damage by touching our character, and so on, and you get a game that is those Those who stick with it quickly become frustrated. The fact that a game only managed to exceed the 10-minute mark three times in almost four hours says a lot about the difficulty of the title.
Vampire Hunters has several good ideas. And little by little we start to want to jump back into the action as soon as our hero is defeated. However, it is imperative that the developers adjust the difficulty if we want the experience to be more enjoyable and less tiring. Will this call be heard?
Vampire hunter (in the early access version)
Developer and Publisher: Gamecraft Studios
Platform: Windows (tested on Steam)
The game is not available in French