Review: Vaporum (PlayStation 4)

Vaporum is a grid-based dungeon crawler RPG in an original steampunk setting, inspired by old-school classics of the genre. Stranded in the middle of an ocean, in front of a gigantic tower, the hero has to find out what the place is, what happened there, and most importantly, who he is.

Pros:

• Nice graphics.
• 3.15gb download size.
• Platinum trophy.
• Steampunk dungeon crawler gameplay.
• AA sharpness slider.
• 5 difficulties-casual, easy, normal, hard and brutal.
• Options-old school mode, elite mode, game tips, stop time mode and movement type classic or continuous.
• Old school mode-disables automap.
• Elite mode-saves only at level start.
• Nice hand drawn cutscenes.
• Atmospheric soundtrack.
• The map fills in as you play and adds points of interest but also allows you to add your own notes and markers.
• Puzzle elements.
• 4 Exo rigs(suits) each act as a class and has its own pros and cons for the main attributes. Classes (rigs) are- Thauma, Assault, Combat, and Heavy.
• Controls-Can enables free look, cursor mode, and repair.
• 2 hands- main and off hand to equip and use weapons and items.
• Tooltip to show/tell what’s going on.
• Combat-free For and attacks have cooldown timers.
• Voiced characters.
• Fumium-is your EXP and once you level up you get points to put in the skill tree to add and improve skills.
• Drag and drop inventory system.
• Gadgets-add extra attacks and abilities.
• Old school game feeling.
• Many enemy types.
• Slight horror aspect in that it’s a dark game, you can hear enemies scurrying about.
• A very basic tutorial like opening.
• Simple to grasp.
• Decent story.
• Big levels with many routes to discover.

Cons:

• Only one control layout.
• Small text.
• Way too much camera sway.
• Combat is slow.
• Using the Tooltip constantly does get annoying.
• Have to manually shut down the inventory after looting.
• Manual only saves can cause issues like saving at the wrong time.
• Claustrophobic feeling.
• Bland world.
• Overly complicated controls with a lot of key combinations and hold this to do this or tap to do that.
• The game only recognizes pickups at certain angles.
• Circuit tree (skill tree) feels underwhelming with very little incentive or sense of reward or progress.