Play Vampyr (especially if you like iZombie or Sherlock)

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The title would have originally been "does anyone play vampyr", but.. the game seems to have a very small following. So instead I'm gonna try convince you to get it so people can talk about it to me. Maybe. Probably not.

If you've ever seen the show iZombie.. I suppose you could compare it to that. Same general storyline - a doctor becomes undead, but they start to use their new undead powers to help them with their job. In vampyr's case, you are a blood transfusion specialist in 1918, you get turned into a vampire, and this is both bad and good. Bad, because as a doctor, its your job to protect people, but you can't protect people if you have to eat them because, y'know, vampire, good because being a vampire gives you the ability to diagnose someone's illness just by looking at them.

The best I can describe the game is "zombie apocalypse Sherlock." Really weird, I know, but basically the Spanish flu is about, people are starting to act really violent because of this epidemic and going seemingly insane and you have to question people and find out how the violence and insanity is linked to the epidemic, whilst trying to solve the mystery of who made you this creature that you now are.

What's really awesome is you have the freedom to make REALLY big choices in this game, and these choices you make can have REALLY big consequences - there's not a set storyline because how the game ends is based upon your choices - and your choices can mean life or death for the npcs in the game. (non playable characters, in other words, anyone other than the person you're playing as, Dr Jonathan Reid.)

Plus, you can choose whether or not you are evil or good in the sense that you can make the decision to drink from people, thus killing them, or drink from rats which is still sad but that's what you do on a good guy playthrough. But the game can make you guilty if you eat people because everybody has a personality and a backstory and you hear their final thoughts when you eat them... I love it. I love it.

You can give people medicine, you can start little investigations, fight people, eat people, chat with people (not real people, it's not multiplayer) and learn really intense stuff about them like they killed a man or something.

That's probably about it? Yeah? Go get it, go play it, if you already have it please talk about it to me because I love it so much. I love Jonathan. I love McCullum (a vampire hunter dude.) And I love Rufus!! (one of the npcs you can eat, but I haven't eaten him because I love Rufus, he's adorable and his best friend is a rat - I didn't eat his best friend, don't worry!)

The sort of period fantasy / horror games like The Order 1886, Dishonored, Bioshock, Bloodborne and this are all fascinating to me. The impact of ulterior factors, like the plague in Dishonored or wartime / Cold War politics in Bioshock really add to the background of the world, affording them life and legitimacy, and an eerie realism.

I'll definitely be buying this at some point but I'll have to wait a few days. I generally love the theme of Victorian - era and early 1900's games. They're far creepier than modern day or, inversely, pre - Victorian horror. Almost Lovecraftian in nature (on the topic; do you enjoy Lovecraft, Poe, Radcliffe, Shelley, and other similar types of Gothic literature?). I'm excited for Call of Cthulhu and the other Lovecraft - esque game (I think it was called The Sinking City or something like that).