Vampire: The Masquerade is a franchise that has had a weird storied past. From games stuck in development hell, long breaks in the franchise, and games with online modes kept alive long after release thanks to fans. For a while, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 had entered its development hell stage that the series was done for, but over the last three years, we have received four titles in the series. All seemed to hold onto the triumph that was Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines in 2002. But thankfully, in Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice, we get to see the series in another light.
The story of Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice follows the aptly named Justice on a quest for discovery and vengeance. While out doing his vampire business one night, Justice returned to find his mentor dead and his precious artifact missing. After pursuing multiple routes, Justice was finally aimed at Venice to find his answers. This is where our game starts, and while the setup was cool and there were some narrative choices to make along the way, I was never fully enraptured with the story of Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice.
It, in the same vein as Vampyr from DONTNOD in 2018, comes off a little bit too ingratiated with the hardcore vampire lovers and leaves little to those of us who have a passing interest at best. There is too much moodiness with too little of the charm, and this can be seen even in the average conversations had among NPCs, often talking about how someone was murdered or how bloody something is. I would much rather hear meaningless discussions about their day-to-day lives. While this doesn’t do anything to bolster the story, it paints them as people instead of blood bags for me to feed on and lightens things up a little when all around you is angst.
Thankfully, the gameplay in Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice is spot on, well to a degree. The minute-to-minute gameplay in Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice is stealth-based movements, mixed-in pattern memorization of guard movements, and these incredible vampiric skills. I wasn’t initially sure because I am a huge proponent of assisting VR comfort wherever possible because you never know how one game will make you feel. Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice does not have a teleport movement option but rather a solely thumbstick-based free movement. It does cater somewhat to comfort as there are turning and movement vignette sliders for the amount of tunnelling and turn styles, whether free or snapping, and a degree option.
All of these do wonders, but the biggest issue is that some VR users will not play games without a teleport option. I can see why it would be a little challenging to implement due to a lot of the gameplay being based on noise, position, and speed. However, it is still a necessity, especially if you enable seated gameplay.
“The story of Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice follows the aptly named Justice on a quest for discovery and vengeance.”
Comfort issues aside, the movement was pretty smooth in Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice with only a few issues. One is the intro cutscene, which takes place on a gondola. While the gondola moves, Justice themself is very stiff and jittery, causing the comfort movement tunnelling to flash on and off constantly. The second one is a bit more egregious, and only because of the stealth focus of Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice.
Minor movements in Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice are frustrating. Climbing out of a window onto a ledge so I could use my blink powers to teleport to another balcony or climbing a small ledge to get an angle on someone for my crossbow was frustrating. Usually ending in Justice just vaulting over the ledge and into plain sight. Thankfully, Justice is so brittle that it only takes roughly three to four shots to die. Unfortunately, that death animation of Justice outstretching their arms is a little too lengthy.
When you get into the heart of Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice is when the game is at its strongest. You will eventually, after flailing around for the first hour, find a rhythm with it. Once you hit this rhythm and find the powers that work best for you, you’ll turn into this apex vampire, stealthing around and draining everything that gets in your way. Using these incredible stealth powers or even the more aggressive ones that pull your victims into what is seemingly a black hole, not to mention once you get the hand crossbow, things get a little bit easier when you have some form of defence.
“When you get into the heart of Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice is when the game is at its strongest.”
The immersion level is interesting in Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice. You won’t be involved in any wholly intractable rooms, but instead, choice objects are intractable. Usually, this wouldn’t feel great in a VR title, but it fits the gameplay, and in certain areas, particularly later in the story, there is some great use of the environment to aid in the immersion.
I played Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice using the Meta Quest 3, and it looked great. It’s got the same art style as Walking Dead Saints and Sinners, a sort of Cel Shadded comic book art style, and it works fantastically. Even the blood spurts maintain this style, and when you are holding an enemy up and start feeding on them, it’s right in your face, and nothing ever looks blurry or off. The load times also weren’t too bad, although load times are something we need to try and handle differently in VR because it’s quite immersion-breaking to just have a loading screen in front of you after clambering through a level.
My issue is that I did also try it on the Meta Quest 2, and things didn’t look so hot. There was just some texture pop-in. The load times were almost doubled from the Meta Quest 3. And my headset got incredibly hot. Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice maybe should have skipped the Meta Quest 2 because it’s trying things in the visual department that I just don’t think the Meta Quest 2 can handle.
Overall, Vampire: The Masquerade-Justice is an interesting romp through the Vampire: The Masquerade world with a story that didn’t quite click with me, mixed with some entertaining gameplay when I wasn’t being vaulted over ledges, and a great art style. But if you are picking up the Meta Quest 2 version, maybe wait for a patch because it’s not quite up to snuff.
