Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice caught my eye, not because I’m a fan of the series, admittedly, but because it looked like a it took inspiration from one if my favorite stealth series, Dishonored. It’s not that I don’t like the Vampire: The Masquerade content, I just never got into it at all. From what I can tell, it has some very deep lore in its own World of Darkness setting. While I may not be familiar with the lore or the vast amount of other games in the series, I love vampires and I love stealth games, so mixing all that in VR sounded like a bloody cocktail worth biting into.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice is an open-ended, narrative Adventure RPG set in the World of Darkness universe. You play as titular Justice, who is on a quest to find out who killed their mentor and stole a precious artifact. The quest brings Justice to Venice where they will need to use stealth, persuasion, and an arsenal of upgradable abilities to sneak past enemies undetected or punish the guilty in the seedy backstreets of nighttime Venice.

I will say that the story itself didn’t really grab me much. Yes there are some story turns, but unfortunately, they weren’t very impactful since you can see them coming a mile away. I think one of the biggest issues with the storytelling is how it is presented. Before each mission, you are standing in a room behind a desk looking at someone sitting in a chair. It isn’t obvious at first whether you are the one talking, or if you are the person in the chair being looked at from someone else’s perspective. It’s confusing because during these intros, other characters will chime in with dialogue and they won’t even be in the room. I’m not sure if this was intentional, but it’s just a confusing and, frankly, boring way to give the mission briefing.

Besides the story just being a bit lackluster, the characters themselves don’t really provide anything engaging either. For being a supposedly evil nasty criminal underbelly ran by vampires, there isn’t anything over-the-top at all. No crazy bad guys that will set a fire under you, nothing to get the player WANTING to stop them. The majority of the normal enemies you can barely notice a difference from regular humans, other than the fact they wear a mask and a police outfit. Even the bosses you fight have no impact. At one point you have to fight these vampire twins that are supposedly terrible beasts, but you’ve never seen anything they’ve done or even heard of them before. It all just sort of lands flat.

Unfortunately, lackluster is sort of a theme throughout my time with Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice. It’s not bad, but I felt like it didn’t do anything to wow me. It’s clearly taken inspiration from Dishonored, but did so in such a run-of-the-mill way that VR aspects couldn’t save it. Let’s take the setting, for instance. I love Dishonored because the world feels alive and lived in, and there is so much depth to the art work and level design. Here, however, I don’t feel like this piece of Venice was ever a normal city. The depth just isn’t there, and while the game offers some options in how to approach situations, it still felt very, for lack of a better term, gamey. Being gamey isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it really stands out in VR.

I will say that not all of the level/mission designs are bad. A couple of them are actually quite good and up to the standard of a good action stealth game. Unfortunately, these are far in-between. The majority of the time you will be in the open Venice area, which essentially offers two paths. You either go up high by climbing drain pipes and ledges, or you stay on the street and try dealing with the bad AI. Besides Venice you have the sewers, which are aesthetically boring, and then you have a couple missions that are featured in large buildings. These actually offer multiple path ways like chandeliers, air ducts, rafters, and plenty of rooms to hide in.

Overall, gameplay offers some fun with its variety of vampiric moves and gear, I just wish there was a bit more creativity with them. For your base vampire moves, you have the ability to teleport up to ledges or across areas as long as it’s within range. You can also use this to do a teleport attack move that will send an enemy flying. You also have the ability to turn invisible, and set a demonic floor trap that will drag your enemy to… somewhere. Then there is the ability to essentially boil the enemies blood and make their head explode.

Besides those moves, the only thing that makes you truly feel like a vampire is being able to suck blood from enemies and even rats. As you use moves you will get hungry, so of course you’ll need to feed on anything with blood. Rats are a great source of some easy snacking, due to the sheer amount of them running around everywhere, even in the homes. Then of course there is feeding on humans or other vampires, and once again, I just feel like this could have been better.

Essentially, once you sneak up to an enemy (or get a quick drop on them), you can reach out and grab them, and lean your head into the neck to start the syphoning. A meter than pops up that slowly drains, and if you stop feeding at the right time, you will gain additional blood, the death will be quiet, and the body will disappear faster. So missing the sweet spot or just draining them completely will be less filling and will leave the enemy wailing so others can hear. This conceptually just makes no sense, because if I drain them all the way dry, they shouldn’t be alive to scream and move. Once again, this just gamifies one of the most visually and conceptually interesting things about a vampire. Now your eyes are locked on a meter instead of the thrilling action of bleeding out these enemies.

Justice also has access to a wrist attached dart gun, which I think I used more so than the trap or head exploding move. There are three different types of darts you can choose from: Acid Dart, Sleepy Dart, Death Dart. Acid Dart is mostly used to dissolve chains holding doors or ladders closed, and for a collectible item that is around the levels. Sleepy Darts are to put an enemy to sleep so you can either sneak by or for an easy kill. Death Darts are pretty self explanatory, they just kill. You can craft additional darts by using blood, but that means it will increase your hunger, so be careful how many you make without a snack around.

There is a skill tree in Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice, and yet again another aspect that is sort of a letdown. Not because of the upgrades themselves, but how you gain these levels. There is a lot of symbolism in having to dump your blood into a cauldron to access the special realm in where you can harness more powers. You’re giving your life essence and even the life essence of those you have syphoned in order to increase your moves. Wouldn’t it be cool if the act of consuming blood and depositing it in this cauldron was a form of experience you then spend to increase your power? Nope, at the end of each mission you just get experience points with bonus XP for being a pacifist (no killing), bonus XP for not being detected, and bonus XP for collectibles found. You then just spend that on upgrades.

Now the actual upgrades themselves are just fine. You’ll be able to upgrade your teleport attack to were you can do two additional attacks, taking out a total of three enemies. You can upgrade your bolts so that way the acid bolt will deactivate cameras as well. Leveling up the sleeping bolt unlocks the ability to create an invisibility cloud around an enemy you’ve shot in the head, allowing you to move in for the kill undetected. There is a good balance of stealth moves and combat moves so you can have the option to be a pacifist if you’d like.

Visually,  I do like the art style, again this reminds me of that sort of painterly look Dishonored has. Even down to the sort of blocky faces the character models have. The big let down for me was the art designs of Venice and the underground stuff. Honestly, it looks really generic overall. Very late in the game, however, are some really awesome designs for the vampire chambers. These have the best puzzles and art direction of the whole game, it’s just a total shame it’s at the very end and only a small part of the game. There is an issue with the UI being very jittery when looking around; the icons would create these dragging shadows behind them and it would annoy the eyes. Also, the game must have no anti-aliasing because the jaggies are abundant.

Sound design is another aspect that is mediocre at best. Like a lot about Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice the sound design isn’t bad, it just isn’t memorable. I don’t remember any musical track that caught my ear, or any unique sound bites or use of sound for gameplay. The general sound effects are fine, but nothing that will immerse you into the settings. Same goes for the voiceover work. For the most part the dialogue is fine; I will say there at least weren’t any standout bad acting.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice is a game I was hoping to get more from. The world from which it pulls its content from seems rich and full of crazy things. Being able to be a vampire and actually use slick moves, and suck the blood from enemies in VR sounded so cool. Marry that with the inspiration from Dishonored, and I truly thought this would be a hit. Unfortunately, it just turned out to be a middle-of-the-road stealth game that didn’t capitalize on the unique setting and ideas of being a vampire.

 

Graphics: 6.5 The general painterly art style is a nice look, however, there are some bad jittering while moving, and the lack of anti aliasing makes things look jagged.	Gameplay: 7.0 A good balance of stealth and combat depending on how you want to play. I do wish level designs had more depth.
Sound: 7.0 Nothing standout sound design wise, but nothing bad either. Voice acting is all serviceable and general sound effects seem realistic for what you’re doing.	Fun Factor: 6.0 While there is a decent variety in stealth and action moves, it all feels generic for the genre. Nothing stands out, until the last hour of missions.
Final Verdict: 6.5

Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice is available now on PS VR2, Oculus Quest 2, Oculus Quest 3, Steam VR.

Reviewed on Oculus Quest 3.

A copy of Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice was provided by the publisher.