GameSpy gives it 4 out of 5 stars:
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/vampire-the-masqu....html?fromint=1Pros
Awesome storyline, great dialogue, Beautiful character models and animations, statistics really impact world - a great RPG.
Sounds good.
Cons
Mediocre combat, some graphic and other bugs, Santa Monica hub is fairly ugly, poorly implemented FPS elements.
Hmmmm....
This week's release of Half-Life 2 was one of the biggest gaming stories of 2004. Almost lost in the deluge, though, was another game built on Valve's Source technology, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Here's the irony, though. Bloodlines is, by almost any measure, a spectacularly successful game -- a near-classic, in fact. The problem, though, is that what keeps it from being as great as it might have been is the very fact that it was built on Source technology. Everything that Troika is known for -- deep storylines, great character development, amazing world building, wonderful dialogue, and masterful use of the White Wolf Vampire: The Masquerade intellectual property -- combine to create an unparalleled RPG experience.
Sounds good.
But everything that the Source technology was supposed to bring to the party, including extraordinary graphic power, a revolutionary physics engine and awesome first person shooter style combat, ends up being Bloodlines' greatest weaknesses.
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />
Taken purely as an RPG, Bloodlines is almost flawless. Forget everything you've read about this game being built on a first-person shooter base, or the fact that you play the game from that perspective. Bloodlines is an RPG thorough-and-through. Players build their character using a slightly modified version of White Wolf's traditional character sheet. There they use points to give themselves ratings from one to five in things like strength, intelligence, wits, and appearance. Each of these initial ratings also has an impact on skill sets that are part of your character such as Research, Lockpicking, Firearms or Brawling. As you go through the game and gain experience, you'll be able to gradually increase these ratings.
Interestingly, it's impossible to ever "max out" a character. Unlike most RPGs where your character eventually become a walking engine of destruction, the experience system in Bloodlines really forces you to make significant choices as your character develops. Pouring all your experience into jacking up your strength and combat skills will give you a slack-jawed bruiser whose dialogue choices are limited to variations on "Give me what I want or I'll smash you". Putting all your experience into cerebral abilities, on the other hand, can leave you at a severe disadvantage when it comes to facing down some of the nastier residents of the World of Darkness -- many of whom have far too many teeth and far too little impulse control. It's a tough job to give the player a feeling of advancement while still offering credible challenges. Bloodlines pulls it off brilliantly, affording a great feeling of satisfaction as your alter-ego advances in power and knowledge while never allowing you to become so powerful that it spoils the atmosphere of fear, horror, and paranoia the fills the game.
Still sounds good....
Even better, your character's skill ratings and persona are intimately tied into the world. In fact, I don't believe I've ever seen an RPG universe that's as affected by the player as the one in Bloodlines. Everything from player dialogue choices to NPC reactions to the way you travel around is affected by the way you build your character. These reactions can be overt, such as news reports on the radio describing your recent activities. The best moments, though, are subtle, such as one character's reaction to my screw-up on a cargo carrier mission. It started out as a stealth mission, but my lack of skill eventually started a brawl that ended with me killing a bunch of crooked cops. The mission was a success, but my patron was angry at me anyway because of the difficulties I had caused him by having to cover up the murders. The story went on, but the experience was different and I may have missed out on some benefits (such as cash) that a happier Prince could have given.
*starts to drool*
That sounds rockin' to me.
The best example of this, though, is a player's clan. What vampire clan you belong to is extremely important in the game, as each clan has its own strengths and weaknesses. Play as an attractive human-like Toreador and you'll find that your seductive and persuasive abilities open up lines of conversation and interactions that are closed to everyone else -- but you'll be hard pressed during combat when a silver tongue isn't as important as a sharp blade. Play as a hideous Nosferatu and be prepared to skulk in the shadows a lot, as your very appearance is a Masquerade violation that sends most humans screaming into the night. On the other hand, your intelligence, investigative powers and skill with computers opens up information to you in some surprising ways. Play as a Malkavian and your dialogue choices reflect your madness and you'll occasionally hear voices through your PC speakers telling you secrets about the world and giving you clues -- unless they're lying. With seven clans to choose from, five endings, and all kinds of different ways to experience the game, the potential for replay is massive.
Sounds like my kind of RPG, w/ lots of replay value.
Of course, none of this would matter if there weren't interesting things to do. Here too, Bloodlines doesn't disappoint. The game's storyline is a Byzantine labyrinth of double-dealing and backstabbing that must be navigated by the player via conversations with dozens of characters. All the dialogue in the game is extremely well written (although there are a disturbing number of typos in the subtitles) and the game's cast of professional voice actors gives amazingly subtle and nuanced performances. Special kudos goes to the actress playing Malkavian twin sisters Jeanette and Therese Voermann who run the Asylum nightclub in Santa Monica. The final confrontation between these lunatic vampires who hate each other is an absolute classic.
I'm still waiting for the reason theygave this 4 stars and not 5....
The missions and quests that the game sends you on are a mixed bag of bizarre, though mostly fun tasks. Particularly good missions include a run through a haunted hotel dodging a nasty poltergeist to help put a ghost to rest; a raid on a crack house that rapidly becomes an homage to Dawn of the Dead; four minutes of sheer terror trying to dodge an enraged werewolf; a descent into an abandoned hospital to find a murdered TV crew; and even an optional side quest where you play a vampire detective hunting down a serial killer.
Sweet.
In fact, the only place the game really bogs down is during a couple of missions that are very combat-oriented. There's one particular slog through the sewers underneath Hollywood that just seems endless.
Sounds like hack-n-slash fest in that level.
Whenever the power of the new Source engine is applied to things that enhance the RPG aspects of the game, the results are a good as you might expect. Character animation and design is amazing. Talking to beautifully modeled NPCs that have full lip synch is a joy that never gets old. Most of the areas you'll travel through are gorgeous from both a technological and artistic point of view (the ugly, flat-looking streets of Santa Monica a notable exception).
Sweet.
Unfortunately, having powerful technology and knowing what to do with it are two completely separate things -- and building the game with this relatively new tech is the root cause of most of the game's problems.
Here we go....two pages of praising, now here comes the downer...
Consider that Source was created for Half-Life 2, a pure FPS shooter. Combat in Bloodlines, on the other hand, runs the gamut from standard FPS to third-person armed and unarmed combat.
Woohooo @ you can do either 1st or 3rd person. More games should allow for that switch to be available.
That's a tall order for even experienced action game creators. When it comes to Bloodlines, the team certainly tried, but in the end, it feels like what it is -- a fighting system created by RPG makers. Bloodlines' third-person fighting controls feel sluggish and sloppy. While there's some attempt to offer variety by attaching different moves to different key presses, in the end it degenerates to little more than button mashing against fairly stupid enemies.
So, the AI isn't so hot.....uh oh....
Using a gun is almost as difficult. Gun combat is played out in traditional FPS perspective, but your abilities affect how straight you'll shoot and how long it takes to target things. Even with all of your abilities maxed out, though; gun combat never feels like a smooth, intuitive experience.
Even when maxed out? That's weird -- it'd make sense, if you're a newbie and can't shoot straight.
No one was expecting Half-Life 2, but what we got ends up being a drag on the gameplay experience. There were a number of times where (despite my character having no skills in that area) I tried to use stealth options because I just couldn't take another fight with a Vozhd War Ghoul.
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />
Half-Life 2's vaunted physics engine is also wasted in Bloodlines. It's in there, all right, but it's mostly ignored. Except for one interesting puzzle where you have to use a barrel to stop a machine, the physics engine only comes into play a couple of times when you need to dig through piles of trash to uncover something or move stuff out of the way to find secret passages. In fact, the couple of times the game tried to use physics to create great set-piece battles, the novelty was buried under the annoying combat. One in particular had a monster flinging the bodies of dead sewer workers and metal barrels at me. I finished that fight by climbing up into a catwalk and emptying a .38 into it. The creature just stood there, apparently having lost track of me, and let me blow it away - a tragic loss of what should have been a memorable gaming moment.
Now it sounds even more so that the AI is quite questionable.
The game also suffers from minor (though persistently annoying) bugs. There are a number of small graphic bugs such as NPC arms sticking through doors and walls, the occasional polygon disappearing for a moment and graphic tags (like blood on the walls) fuzzing in and out as I moved through the world. The good news is that I didn't come across any really show stopping graphic glitches, but gamers should really make sure their graphic drivers are up to date (which initially caused us a larger set of problems). There's also an issue with quitting the game. It took an awfully long time for the game to stop running and our PC to return to normal functioning -- as long as two or three minutes in some cases.
What the hell? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />
The game also has the potential to slow all but the most robust systems to a crawl.
Ick!
My system is pretty robust and while Bloodlines ran smoothly at 800 x 600, it started to chug a bit at 1024 x 768, just one setting higher. It's an interesting comparison -- Half-Life 2, which is a much prettier game, also seems to run a lot smoother, showing how important the difference can be between developing your own technology and licensing someone else's.
Quite interesting. I wonder what Troika was trying to push over there to bog the game down.
In the end, though, the problems with mediocre combat wouldn't have stopped me from playing Bloodlines; having gone through the game once, they won't stop me from replaying it, either, in order to experience the different endings. How that will affect gamers in deciding whether to purchase the game depends very much on what kind of mind-set they go in with. If you go in with the idea that Bloodlines is a hybrid FPS / RPG, you're going to be dramatically disappointed.
I didn't expect it to be a hybrid RPG/FPS.
On the other hand, if you're looking for one of the best role-playing game experiences of this year, then you should really look into Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.
That part sounds good to me <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
Congratulations, Troika, on producing a Vampire game that doesn't… um… suck.
How many Vampire games were there before this?
I know of Vampire: The Masquerade by Nihilistic -- is that the only one?
