Posted in: Games, Review, Video Games | Tagged: game review, motorhead, PS4, Victor Vran, Victor Vran: Overkill Edition

Another Port Filled With Villains To Slay: We Review 'Victor Vran: Overkill Edition'

Published Tue, 06 Jun 2017 20:45:36 -0500

Victor Vran was released back in 2015 on PC as an action RPG that felt like a Diablo III type game with some different mechanics. Since then we've seen a couple updates and the Motörhead DLC be added to it, but nothing much else has come of the game since then. Now the game is coming out on console through Wired productions. We got our hands on a PS4 copy and tried out the ported 2017 release for ourselves.

Now because this game has already been out for two years, we're not going to rehash over a review that you've already read, so we're just going to cover the basics as far as the port goes. The game pretty much plays like the original—you start off walking into a situation where evil is about to become an overwhelming storm on the innocent people of Zagoravia and you've decided to help stop it. Once you start, you end up becoming part of the resistance to fight it off.

For the most part, the difficulty and the challenges are pretty set in their ways and don't deviate from the original. You explore, you hack enemies to bits, you open up new areas, you find treasure, things get harder and you continue moving on. There really is no difference in the story or the way you tackle situations, either. Much of the gameplay is fairly easy to grasp and understand since it plays like your usual hack-n-slash RPG games, with a little bit of surprise to the levels which will peel away walls as you walk around.

You can't really mess around with your character or make them different, you play as Victor regardless of the situation. But you can upgrade your armor, weapons and other gear you take into battle with you. This is done either by visiting the merchant shops in the city or by defeating enemies and picking up the junk their dead corpses leave behind. I found that delving through the dungeons gave me a much better selection than checking back at the market, and it was all free to boot. That's not to say you won't go back to town for stuff, it just means you won't need to visit as frequently.

The two elements that didn't play off as well for me were the co-op and the Motörhead DLC. First, I was able to find someone online to do a little dungeon crawling while we had the game before release. But often I would see that person duck out to get some random treasure and leave me stranded with a hoard of enemies. Co-op would work best if there was better communication and an understanding of what needs to be done as a team. As far as Motörhead goes… Sure, it was fun to fight as Lemmy with some of their songs playing behind me. But 40 minutes into the DLC that got old quickly. It didn't add anything to the game beyond wearing a skin and getting a new soundtrack.

Graphics-wise, Victor Vran's port keeps the graphics in tact, though I did feel like there was a twinge of a sluggish pull to it. I don't think you come across many games that go from PC to console that don't run into this issue—you feel the speed from the PC and then you feel how much slower it is when it sits on the PS4. It's nothing against the game makers, it's just that one system has customization to make it run better and the other does not. That being said, the game looks just as good as the PC version and doesn't detract from the gameplay at all.

Overall, Victor Vran is a decent game and it works well on the console. If you've wanted to play this and couldn't because the PC sucked, this is an good port that only has a few issues. But calling it the "Overkill Edition" feels weird since not a lot came out for the game while it was new, and what little came out didn't enhance the game or expand the story and characters. It's like branding a Happy Meal with the title "Super Happy Meal" and you find out it just comes with an extra packet of ketchup. The game is alright, but I feel like this was a missed opportunity to do something special with it.

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