Alongside Sniper Elite 5, likely the biggest game of May 2022 is Vampire the Masquerade: Swansong. Not to be confused with Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodhunt. Swansong is a third person action and exploration narrative RPG about vampire society and its politics, while Bloodhunt is a competitive battle royale, free to play game that came out last year. Swansong isn’t an open world game, but should have plenty of locations to visit, investigate, and explore. We are getting strong Vampyr vibes from Swansong, and since that 2018 game is one of our favorite titles ever, we’re quite looking forward to Swansong.

Vampire the Masquerade: Swansong is developed by Big Bad Wolf and published by Nacon, and comes out May 19, 2022 for PC and all major consoles. We don’t believe the game will have dedicated PS5 and Xbox Series versions, as it’s really not a demanding title in terms of performance, but expect automatic “upgrades” in the form of native 4K 60Hz on the newer consoles. This should not be a problem considering the modest requirements of the game on PC (the recommended graphics card for this game is a GTX 1070, which is from six years ago). 

Not really, while Swansong is set in the Vampire the Masquerade universe, which has been around for decades in different forms of media, the game offers a new story and new characters. In fact, there are three vampiric characters that we’ll get to play as, each with their own story and abilities. There are strong RPG elements in Swansong, with a skill tree and abilities that characters gain with experience. Because vampires are also very fashion-minded, we think attire will play a crucial role in this game.

Regarding combat, from the materials we saw thus far, don’t expect lots of real time, fluid combat. There will be some, but the focus is on exploring, investigating, and talking to other characters. 

As we mentioned earlier, Swansong isn’t a big AAA game that requires a lot of powerful hardware to run. We expect it to perform very similarly to the Sherlock Holmes games that were developed by Frogwares and also published by Nacon until mid-2021. 

IPS panels will definitely make Swansong look better than TN or VA monitors. It’s the kind of game IPS was made for, since speed isn’t the priority, but color coverage sure is. Since this game is about vampires, we expect the color red will be quite important. Also, we recommend playing in 4K because fine detail is going to be also important in Swansong. We get the impression there will be lots of collectibles to read and examine, plus investigating locations should be a big part of gameplay. Thus, the more detail you get on your screen (and the wider your viewing angles), the better. 

It’s spring and some of the year’s big games have already come out, like Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West. Vampire the Masquerade: Swansong looks like a nice way to keep us engaged for a while, and so if you’re in the market for a gaming monitor for PC and console, we hope you’ll give the MOBIUZ range a thought, because we don’t just write about games, we play them. And we make monitors that bring out the best in each title.