Saber Interactive handles the transfer of Vampyr to the Nintendo console.
Nintendo Switch receives by surprise the port that has extended the longest since its respective announcement. Dontnod and Focus Entertainment have delegated the move to one of the best positioned studios as far as this task is concerned. Saber Entertainment worked under the blanket all these months in unison with other similar commissions, such as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It is said soon.
In this case, Vampyr's situation was a mystery. Until this precise month of October we did not know of its final launch date, set a few hours after you read this Reviews. Precisely from that ignorance we have taken a positive surprise. Looking at the performance background of the Xbox One, PS4 and PC version, everything pointed to the choking of the hybrid hardware.
Portable mode.
There are small edges, especially on the portable side, but in general it has met a note with no challenge.
The plague
Those who have not been aware of the adventures of the creators of Life is Strange, must know the peculiarities of a title that catches from the narrative. We will embody Jonathan Reid, a surviving doctor of war who, through a series of misfortunes, has been plunged into darkness. Darkness that completely changes your sense of life, good and evil; As a vampire, you must now choose between suppressing your instinct or collaborating with the fall of the city.
First of all, we are facing a work that passes the bar above the current average. Through frequent dialogues in eloquence, Vampyr has a script written in exquisite touch. Leave grounds, and when that happens it deserves to be pointed out. But not only does it shine together with letters, it also does so because of the ideas it raises in the playable.
It shines for the construction of a system of characters and districts that develops the sim life scheme. All the characters involved in the plot have relevance within the city, which will vary the situation of the game in general according to its future. If we are careless with the survivors, the black plague will spread, while if we treat the disease we can give the native population a chance.
Desktop mode.
As we said in our Reviews, “if we kill a character ahead of time, we may never discover the mystery that other individuals hide. The stories of the characters are interconnected. Somehow, it seems that the game prefers not to kill, at least until the tracks come to light. ” By drinking blood, we will gain more experience at the expense of forever pointing to the bitten character.
Among the ingredients that make up the Vampyr cake there is one that takes weight in the crossings around London: combat. The action given by the game is simple, sometimes too direct, which leads to situations that are not entirely enjoyable. Once we dominate the vampiric powers we can unleash many more movements than the base, but until that time comes we do not find many reasons that give some control to the controls. Its focus, as we commented last year, is "the attention in the narrative".
Transfer to Nintendo Switch
Transferring a title of the present generation to the Nintendo console entails certain sacrifices that are not always welcome. Beyond the geometric complexity, textured and modeled, the resolution is the first cut that usually suffers, especially when transported in portable mode. Note the special thing about this case: the desktop versions already had performance problems. The base version of our original Reviews was performed on a PS4 Pro. At that time we said that "Dontnod must improve performance, which without being catastrophic, occasionally suffers severe slowdowns." The problems extended when the screen was "frozen for a few seconds", which made it "quite annoying."
Portable mode.
The first impression with Vampyr on Nintendo Switch is a real astonishment. We are not facing any graphic wonder, there is no doubt about that; The surprise comes from the hand of being able to enjoy a game designed for this generation in a hardware of this caliber and that does it with dignity.
But there are certain problems that blur the experience. The first, the loading times: according to our data, the initial load when the game is installed on an SD card is 53 seconds, almost a minute to start a game stored in a quiet spot on the map. The charges between the districts, on the other hand, are reduced to a little more than half.
Desktop mode.
As for the resolution, the trimming means that in a portable mode the faces are not correctly distinguished in medium and long distances. It is not something to put the scream in the sky, although it will bother the most demanding profile. If we go to the desktop mode, the game looks like a smaller version of the Xbox One and PS4 versions, which makes it perfectly playable and enjoyable.
We have not experienced serious drops in the rate of images per second. The few that exist do not intercede in the gameplay, which is appreciated. What we have noticed is that, being a third-party game, the console does not render with enough speed what we have behind; when it happens, we will see a brief white flash around the world. It usually occurs more frequently when we are in an outdoor area.
CONCLUSION
Vampyr on Nintendo Switch is another example of the excellent work that Saber Interactive does when it comes to optimizing large resources in very small spaces. The first moments in front of the game amaze at the way it moves in a hardware of these characteristics. The loss of resolution does not compromise the game at all, in fact the performance is hardly affected. The only big black point lies in the loading times, long, and rendering time of the environment, too slow for what a third-person title should be. What is clear is that we are facing a very dignified version.
THE BEST
- Port more than correct.
- The narrative, fundamental pillar of Dontnod.
- The aesthetic and soundtrack.
- The way in which decisions affect the world.
WORST
- Slow loading times
- Small problems in rendering environments.
Very good
Remarkable game that we will enjoy and remember. A good purchase, highly recommended for lovers of the genre. It is well taken care of at all levels.
