FIRST Vampire VR Game is Here!! VTM: Justice Quest 2 Gameplay

It’s time for a bloodsucking adventure. Vampire The Masquerade Justice, by Fast Travel Games, is the first VR game where you get to be a vampire. I first tried it at Gamescom 2023, but the show floor was too noisy to record, so here I’m playing the same Gamescom demo at home on Quest 2. It isn’t the full game, so these are first impressions.

The setup

You start by picking your arms and a voice (I went with the female voice), and I played standing, as I always do. The story opens with Justice, the vampire you play, explaining how she got her name: her sire gave it to her, first to mock her and later to keep her on the path, and eventually she embraced it. A precious relic has been stolen, and the trail leads to Venice. I’ve actually been to Venice, but I don’t remember it being this dark, creepy and gritty.

The atmosphere got to me straight away. I had goosebumps, which is funny, because I thought I was the vampire here.

The tutorial: grabbing, blinking and drinking

The first part teaches you the basics, and it’s a lot of fun:

• Grabbing from afar. You can pull objects to you from a distance. It feels very Half-Life: Alyx, which is awesome. Things break when you throw them hard enough.
• Crouching. I just do it with my real body.
• Blink. Hold B, aim with your hand and let go to blink across at high speed, like teleporting. You can cancel it with the trigger.
• Climbing. You can pull yourself up onto ledges, which fits a stealthy vampire.
• Heightened senses. Hold the left trigger and aim your hand to search the environment for clues.
• Hunger. Your hunger goes up as you use powers. You lower it by drinking blood, and drinking from mortals also heals you. Time it right for an extra boost.

Yes, you can eat a rat. I tried it. It’s disgusting. My first proper blood-drinking victim felt very satisfying, though.

I heard people compare it to Dishonored. I haven’t played that myself, but I can see why. The sound design is great too, with rain, motorboats and voices around you, and Fast Travel Games has always been good at that. For a Quest game on mobile hardware, it looks pretty great.

The harder demo level

After the tutorial, the demo jumps to a much harder level with powers you’d normally get much later. There are bonus challenges like Predator (don’t get spotted by any enemy or security system) and Pacifist (don’t kill anyone). I’m definitely not the pacifist.

The job: get into a construction site full of thugs and hide a phone with an incriminating message inside an old bar. My powers:

• Unseen Passage, which makes you invisible
• Shadow Trap
• Cauldron of Blood, which boils your victim’s blood. A very messy approach, and quite a sight.
• Crafted arrows for the crossbow on your arm (Y button): sleep arrows and corrosive ones

You can go in guns blazing, and you can even punch people. I tried it and died almost immediately. Stealth is the better option.

So I went stealthy: sleep arrows on guards, staying high so they wouldn’t look up, watching out for cameras, and feeding on anyone I put to sleep. The catch is hunger. Crafting arrows uses a lot of it, and once my hunger was maxed out I could barely use any abilities, not even blink. Then you have to find someone to feed on before you can carry on. I died once more, used Cauldron of Blood, followed a cable to the switch I needed, and with my heart pumping I finally made it through. I didn’t even get to Shadow Trap, so I’ll leave that one for you.

First impressions of Vampire The Masquerade Justice

The graphics look incredible for a standalone Quest 2 game. The mechanics fit the vampire genre almost perfectly: stealth, plenty of gore, powers, and having to drink blood to keep going. Managing your hunger adds real tension to every choice.

Launch details

On the day this video went out, Fast Travel Games announced that the game would launch on November 2, 2023 for $30 on Meta Quest 2, Quest 3 and PSVR 2. You can find it on the official Vampire The Masquerade Justice site.

Who it’s for

If you like stealth games, or you’ve always wanted to be a vampire, this is one to keep an eye on. You can go loud, but the game really comes alive when you sneak, plan, and feed at the right moment.