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In V Rising, you’re a fledgling vampire on a mission to become absolute bossferatu of a Gothic open world. You get a Diablo-ish combat system, the ability to shapeshift into a spider, and a whole castle to prance around in, crooning at the moon. I like this premise almost as much as I dislike the fact that V Rising is also a survival game, in which you must fell trees and master a crafting system like a common turnip farmer.
What do we hope for when our interest in a game is almost perfectly balanced by our disinterest? We hope that the developers will treat us to a free-to-play weekend, in which our perhaps-unfounded reservations might be strategically offset by the endorphin rush of not having paid any goddamn money. This, V Rising creators Stunlock have now done. The game is free to download and play on Steam from right now until Monday, 16th September at 5pm UK or 10am PST.
Here are some things that intrigue and beguile me about V Rising, based on how it’s been described to me. Firstly, you actually have to worry about sunlight, a traditional vampire weakness that gets tidied under the carpet in a lot of Hollywood adaptations – looking at you, Gary Oldman. You’ll need to drink blood regularly and it confers different benefits depending on your victim, which encourages you to develop a palate, rather than pouncing and draining without distinction. You can summon things like death knights, and teleport your castle around like in the Castlevania show (once it’s levelled up, at least).
Still, it’s hard to look past the survival game taint, which seems totally contrary to the vampire premise. “To become a more powerful bloodsucker, you have to craft leather pants and copper swords and raise your gear score a la Destiny,” Edders wrote in our V Rising 1.0 review. “To gain power is to build things, until the thing you want to build requires you to build something else. And to build that something else, you need something else.”
This is not how Dracula did it, Edders! Vampires are supposed to be monstrously decayed aristocrats! If Dracula wanted some new leather trousers, he’d champ on the tanner’s neck and turn him into a ghoul minion. Please, Edders: tell me this is possible in the game.
If the non-free version hooks your interest, V Rising is currently 30 percent off with 20 percent off its cosmetic DLC (including a Castlevania-themed DLC pack) until 24th September. Find it on Steam. I guess I’ll give it a shot myself, but I ain’t crafting no pants.