Honourable Mentions: Dark

For the last couple of days I have been playing Dark, a cel shaded video game in which you play a vampire – Eric Bane.

Eric has no memory bar his name and a brief glimpse of a fast thing attacking (the games lore suggests that most new vampires lose their mortal memories), has visions (or delusions?) of an angel and he is not actually a full vampire as he hasn’t drunk the blood of his sire (nor does he know who that is). This is problematic as, without that blood, Eric is doomed to turn into a ghoul, more animal than human.

Eric Bane

Luckily he came to at the Sanctuary, a vampire run night club – unusual as vampires are normally loners. Eric is told that if he drinks the blood of an elder vampire this might replace the blood of his sire but, of course, these vampires are unlikely just to give him their blood.

The game is a stealth game with an rpg element for powers and extra experience being given for not setting alarms off in a given area. The use of any given powers is paid for from blood reserves (initially two bars but upgradable to four) and thus Eric has to feed to replenish them.

vampire vision and feeding

The game is okay. I like a good stealth game but this was a too “on a rail” and should have had more of a sandbox element, the story was a tad too simplistic with a shadowy corporation hunting the vampires with paramilitary enthusiasm and the scrip could have been better. The biggest sin… it didn’t take too long to finish (I got it Saturday lunch, it was done by Monday and that included working, watching a film, family stuff etc). Difficulty affects the number of saves available in a given area. All that said, to be honest a vampire game is so rare (especially playing as one) that the game would be welcome for that reason alone and it did have some genuine vampiric action (feeding being a vital part of the game, for instance).

The game is on Xbox and PC.