Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt's battle royale gets full launch this April
On PC and PlayStation 5.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt, developer Sharkmob's free-to-play battle royale spin on the long-running RPG series, is getting its full PlayStation 5 and PC launch on 27th April.
Bloodhunt (not to be confused with Big Bad Wolf Studio's upcoming RPG Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong, Paradox Interactive's troubled Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, or indeed 2019 visual novel Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York) was announced toward the end of 2020 and had a limited Steam early access run the following year.
It is, all in all, pretty much exactly what it sounds like, casting participants - either playing solo or in a team of three - as vampires and setting them loose across the rain-soaked, moon-drenched streets and rooftops of Prague. All players have access to basic vampire trickery such as the ability to scramble up walls, but the characters they choose (from one of several vampire clans) inform the additional supernatural powers they're able to deploy. Oh, and there are lots and lots of guns to loot too, if you'd just rather just do the shooty thing.
In fact, the guns rather spoiled the fun for Eurogamer's Robert Purchase when he took a look at Bloodhunt last summer - "It's not really my idea of a vampire fantasy", he wrote at the time - but there's been plenty of progress on the title in Steam early access since then, so it'll be interesting to see how it stacks up on a second visit.
While PC players have already had a chance to vamp it up in Bloodhunt, the game's full launch on 27th April will mark the first time it's been available for PlayStation 5 players, and Sharkmob has offered a closer look at that version of the game in a new post on the PlayStation Blog. It features a lot of obligatory chatter about its support for Tempest 3D audio, adaptive triggers, and haptic feedback, but the key bit of details shared in the post is that Bloodhunt will be playable at 4K/30fps in Quality mode and 1440P/60fps in Performance mode on PS5.
And if you feel compelled to spent some money on the free-to-play Bloodhunt ahead of launch, there'll be a Founder's Ultimate Edition to pre-order, containing various outfits, emotes, icons, player card backgrounds, and customisation items, alongside 1,000 Tokens to spend on a Battle Pass or whatever else happens to take your fancy on a cold, dark Prague night.