WITH its complex moral dilemmas, Vampyr looked on the surface like a game that you could sink your teeth into.

Set in London during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, you play as a doctor-turned-vampire called Jonathan Reid who is torn between his desire to heal people and his undeniable thirst blood.

It is a tantalising premise for a game where the French developers Dontnod imagine that vampires retain a part of their humanity and can contain their monstrous instincts – to a certain extent.

So who you save and who you sacrifice is up to you and everything you do has consequences.

On paper that sounds great, particularly as Dontnod were also behind one of the big hits of 2015, Life is Strange, in which choices and consequences also played a big part. But this overly-ambitious title quickly starts to fall down when you pick up the controller.

The idea is that who you spare has a big impact on the story in a world where even the lowliest person has some inherent worth.

But the voice acting is so sloppy and the background and personalities of most characters is so dull that you do not really care who you are saving or feasting on.

Vampyr also labels itself as an action role-playing title.

But it feels more like a sim management game at times because you are expected to do health checks and create medicine for the people you encounter, draining the experience of any pace or excitement.

And when you do get to fight vampire hunters and ‘skals’ (primitive vampires) the gameplay is clunky with a big difficulty curve.

The combat does get easier – with plenty of experience-based upgrades to unlock – the more people you sacrifice (to add to the moral dilemma).

But you can only ‘level up’ in safe houses which can be a bit of a chore to find and often means you’re spending half the time backtracking.

Add to that agonisingly long loading screens and unpolished graphics and you have one of the big disappointments of 2018.

RATING: 5/10

DAVID MORGAN