Last week, a new free-to-play battle royale game hit both the Steam and PlayStation 5 market for players to enjoy. This game was Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt by Sharkmob and it claims to be a decked-out game set in the World of Darkness universe with crossplay. While it is technically true, I would not really call it crossplay and on top of that, it doesn’t even have cross-progression despite having to make a specific Sharkmob account to play. Even with some immediate issues, there is a lot to love about this game that makes me keep coming back to it. In short, this game gives me one of the most love-hate relationships I’ve had with a new game in a while.

Gameplay

The gameplay itself is where the ‘love’ half of my relationship with this game is. They really have you embrace the Vampire aspect in this game in just about everything you do. From the start of the game, you don’t just begin looking for weapons, armor, and health items like in every battle royale; you look for human NPCs to feed on.

Feeding on human NPCs gives a different type of boost to your stats, but it is good to get a few feedings in early. Another bonus of feeding on an NPC is that it will fill your health back up when you are low. You just have to make sure another NPC doesn’t catch you feeding on one because if you are caught feeding on a human then you will go into ‘Bloodhunted’ status, which means you are revealed on all players’ radar for a time. This is easy to avoid though since you can just point a gun at an NPC to make them run away so they aren’t there to see you feed on the other one.

Other than the NPCs you can feed on, there is also the soldier NPC to look out for. These NPCs are armed and will shoot at you if they spot you. While killing them isn’t exactly hard to do, the gunfire is sure to give away your position to other players. It’s best to just avoid them.

Finding weapons, items, and ammo is just like any other battle royale game. The only real difference is that in this one, the drop spots have a blue smoke around them to show their location. You can also find gold crates, which will have a single weapon of high value - just hope it is one you like. Other than random spots, you can also find stores that you can go into. Opening a store door will set off an alarm, which gives away your position to nearby players. However, the payout is that these stores are loaded with whatever their focus is. Be it weapons, health, or whatever, you will find an abundance for the whole trio to get what they need.

Before the game actually starts though, you will need to choose the character classes you want to play as. There are seven different types and each one has its own abilities. The choices range from battle-focused options like the Brute and the Enforcer, the team-focused options like the Muse and the Siren, or there are the surroundings-focused options like the Sabetour. Learning each of the different classes is helpful and having a top three choices to work with is definitely something I would recommend.

Movement is really neat in this game. You can just run around regularly if you’d like and your jumping height is pretty high up, but you can also climb walls of just about any building. You can also jump off of walls for an extended distance reach. While each class does have an ability for combat, of kind, their other ability is generally used for movement as well. The type of movement changes according to the archetype your class is in, but they are all helpful and fun to do.

Audio and Visual

They definitely put some detail into the sounds department for this game. You can hear footsteps differ based on if they are walking on a flat surface, a plant-based surface, or even the shingles on the rooftops. You can hear a lot of the subtle stuff that you might not expect to hear, which is definitely good for a situational awareness necessary title like this one. The music in the game is pretty fitting, but mostly made to blend with the background, unless you are in the lobby area.

As far as aesthetics go, this game does a good job of having a high-quality build of the standard expected graphics players expect to see in games. There is a very apparent level of care put into the environment and characters. Also, it was pretty cool to see that the smoke ring wasn’t a plane circle and had a unique pattern for each game.

Replayability

This is a battle royale game, so if you are having fun with the build this game provides the genre, it will be replayable.

What It Could Have Done Better

Let’s start by talking about why it isn’t crossplay, in my opinion. While you can run into and face off against players from either platform, you can’t party up with your friends on different platforms. This was a huge pull away for me because I had a few friends that wanted to play with me but their PC can’t run the game, so they are on the PlayStation 5, but I don’t even have a PS5 yet so I am only on PC right now. So, oh well, I guess.

Running solos and trios with random players is how I have managed to play the game most of the time. There were only a couple of times I had a friend from our partnered Discord group join up with me. This is where I found another problem and that is that you can’t befriend or party up with people you are teamed up with at random. You need to remember their name, wait till you are back in the lobby area - the Elysium, and then search for them in the menus to add them before you can party up with them. This is a huge inconvenience and is just overall not user-friendly.

Other than the actual party systems, the general set of weapons needs an overhaul. The sniper rifles are practically useless, which is a big hit to me as the usual team sniper, and some of the other weapons are just wild in their damage ranges. Plus, I have had a player literally block two back-to-back point-blank shotgun blasts with a sword - which is just ridiculous. This overhaul could also be applied to the abilities, but not as dramatically. They just don’t feel as useful as they should.

Verdict

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt is a unique battle royale title that I want to enjoy so much more than I currently do. Despite having an appealing take on the genre and a bunch of gameplay aspects that make this game so cool and easy to enjoy, there are so many things that make me pull away from loading up another round. Perhaps in a few updates and once they actually apply a real crossplay system with a proper party system, then I can enjoy this game for everything it offers. But as it stands, I enjoy a good bit of this game even though every round brings me more of the same frustrations.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt is now available on PC via Steam and PlayStation 5.