Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

The Good
Note: 2nd update. Maybe a game I've played more than a week needs a little better review than just 100% trashing it cough

The sacrifices I made just to fulfill the tech requirements of this game (sigh). Anyway...

Oooh, another Vampire: The Masquerade game...boy have I been waiting a long time for this one. Got quite upset with the previous version due to bugs and hardware conflicts, hoping this one would make it up...

Wow, nice graphics...very nice...takes forever to load, but very nice. Oooh, it's an RPG too, from screenshots I dreaded it was just an adventure game, thankfully for RPG diehards like myself it had the very unique "clan" character creation. Too bad I never played the actual board game.

Graphics
Yeah, baby. Graphics were to my opinion, "ahead of its time" or at least very much appeasing. I must again note the great use of color in this game. I hate horror games with gloomy colors...this isn't one of them. Although still in dark blend atmosphere, Bloodlines has no problem in using bright colors to brighten up the mood...especially the color red.

Story
Though I didn't play the game long enough to actually experience all the story (due to technical conflicts)... I do recall the "sick and twisted" plot of the "underground" of urban cities. Especially at downtown Hollywood I thinks. Most of the missions are essentially one cult or horror movie after another. The effort put in the story is extremely well received at my end anyway.

Music
I must admit, I've never been exposed to Gothic music before. And after playing this game, I was hooked with one of the music tracks you can hear at a local club. Probably also the only RPG in existence where your hero can dance...and really good too! (Final Fantasy X-2, for a dancing-mood-plot game you should be ashamed!) Even the NPC (Non-player-characters) can dance equally as good. I literally, usually just let my hero dance at the club and watch for minutes and minutes...(sad to think that he can dance better than me...oh well)

Combat
Combat was pretty much straight forward. The controlling system was alright, not the best that I've experienced for these types of games (the best is still Fable), but still enjoyable...though shooting was somewhat tricky.

I do remember something else very well (excuse the ladies). This is the first game I know that has woman's breasts bouncing up and down (again, 'scuse the ladies). At the beach there's this Maldovian? vampire, during the dialog I couldn't take my eyes of those things going boing, boing, boing. Egad, I thought I was old and experienced enough to get past these stupid teenage ideas. But nooo, the only dialogs I got from her was boing, boing, boing. Some wrong with my brain man, something seriously wrong....:p

The Bad
Sigh. I don't think I've ever personally badmouthed a whole developer group. But Troika really has gone to far. I'm still pissed about the truck load of bugs they did with Arcanum...and that was still AFTER I downloaded 2 freakin patches.

But before I get ahead of myself, I was seriously disappointed with the previous Vampire the Masquerade game, since the game went way slow and buggy in several scenes. I thought they would gain wisdom from past mistakes....only to find out they also developed Temple of Elemental Evil, which by the way, the demo was better than the game.

Sorry, back to the main issue. Loading game....still loading game...egad it's still loading? Don't remember the last time a game took this long to load? Oh, wait, there NEVER WAS a game that took this long to load. What the hell are they doing with the programming, trying to get a World Record on pissing gamers by long loading hours? Considering installing the game was long enough....sheeesh.

The one major thing that totally wrecked my gaming experience was, guess what? Loading....(again). Can you imagine that E V E R Y single time you go to a different room it takes nearly 5 yes 5 minutes to load. You go to a small store just to see the inventory and it takes 5 minutues to load. I got the minimum spec requirements, probably not the recommended, but hey, does anyone really HAVE to upgrade their PC everytime some idiot developer thinks they should be innovative with the latest tech equipment. The developers of DOOM had the decency of warning players. I think I've wasted more time waiting for the dang game to load than actually playing the dang game.

And there's this final bug that was quite amusing. Everytime I went to the beach (yes, the vampire girl...I'm hooked), suddenly the game gets into "slow motion". The graphics turn in "matrix coding" and you move 1 frame every several minutes. Probably because the dang game hasn't finished L O A D I N G the last time and was still trying to make up for it during gameplay...

The Bottom Line
I don't know about you but none of the people I knew actually finished the game due to several bug or technical related issues that seriously lead to major anger issues.

Another possibly great game ruined by Troika. Way to go fella's! Won't be playing any future games from you guys!

To think, some of these dudes actually were from the Fallout team....sigh.

(Oooh, Troika recently shutdown! Hope it was because of my review! Hah!)

The Good
I have a friend who keeps bugging me to play Werewolf: the Apoplectic, which I’m sure is a fine game, but whenever he describes the workings of the world, my eyes glaze over like I’m watching The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen again. It’s much better to jump into the game world and attempt to figure it out, which is what Vampire: the Masquerade—Bloodlines does. Vampire: the Masquerade has an equally complicated mythology with political factions and rivalries extending back to Cain, but once you’ve picked your vampire clan, all you need to know is that the head of the Camarilla was ready to kill you, but the “head” of the Anarchs called him on it, none of which matters right now because Sabbat forces are hunting you.

As mentioned above, players begin by selecting which type of vampire they are. Other than the hideous Nosferatu, whose blighted appearance confines them to the shadows and sewers, vampires of any clan can blend in with human society. Bloodlines has seven playable vampire clans (open to both genders). The biggest difference between clans, other than aesthetics and role-playing potential, involves core abilities and Disciplines. Disciplines are akin to spells and, this time around, their implementation makes sense for a CRPG. Some vampires can turn invisible, others can transform into wolves, while others still can cause an enemy’s blood to boil.

Bulking up the rest of Bloodlines’s formidable character sheet are physical, social, and mental attributes and talents, skills, and knowledges. These varied traits influence everything from a character’s appearance to their computer skills. Combined with the variety of vampire clans, Bloodlines has an amazingly deep character creation system. Nosferatu hackers, mad Malkavian mercenaries, Gangrel brawlers are all here.

Bloodlines is an RPG and, while technically a sequel to 2000’s Redemption, it plays completely differently. The original game resembled a standard dungeon crawler, where the player led a coterie (party) through a series of vampire-laden chantries (dungeons). Bloodlines, on the other hand, resembles Deus Ex. Gone are coteries; in their place is a single character game played from either a first or third-person perspective.

Instead of sprawling continents and centuries like its predecessor, the world of Bloodlines is confined to four huge maps spread around modern day Los Angeles. Players begin in Santa Monica, and travel to Downtown LA, Hollywood, and Chinatown on a series of missions. I doubt Hollywood has a zombie problem, but overall the areas have a realistic feel. Rather than having NPCs standing about, pedestrians bustle, homeless people gather around burning barrels, young toughs wait for cops to pass by before tagging buildings, and people enter clubs to drink and dance.

Bloodlines has a solid set of story-based missions, but some of the most fun comes from stumbling onto side quests. What is the connection between a tattoo artist and a prosthetic limb designer? Does a walk-in clinic hold a vial of Werewolf blood? Sure the main quests with its serial killer, ancient sarcophagus, and Asian vampires are interesting, but so are the ones involving escalating levels of brinkmanship between two retired hitmen, a one-armed swordswoman and her quest for vengeance, and a Cemetery Man who’s caught between his duty and his urges.

An extra bonus to completing Bloodlines’s quests is seeing how their resolution plays out. Everything your character does impacts the game. Good acts (as good as vampires get) restore your character’s Humanity, keeping the vampire’s bestial nature at bay. Throughout the game, you can act on behalf of different factions, which influences the game’s events, most heavily during the ending sequence.

The Bad
Bloodlines is a good RPG. If it weren’t buggy to the point of instability, it would be a great game. Superb, even. The first problem I had occurred during the opening animation, or lack of animation. Characters that should have moved around on the screen did so without the usual running or walking, instead they moved around like Colorform characters.

Shortly after that I entered into combat. I didn’t mention combat above. Bloodlines has tons of combat. Hordes of combat. Plenty of weapons. Piles of cool offensive spells. But severe framerate problems, loose controls, and an annoying feature where, when reloading a game saved during combat, your character’s gun empties its clip, made combat frustrating. This may sound a bit harsh, but I am astonished at how clunky combat is considering how important combat is to the game. Shocked even, to discover that we’re talking about the Source engine here.

Other interesting quirks I ran into involved event triggers which failed to trigger. Hours after I rescued her, I saw a cutscene of a girl being kidnapped. I fumbled with stuck doors which were mission critical. There was an epic bar fight in which the patrons took no notice. Probably my favorite element of badness involves the Quick Save. Press F9 and in as little as one minute, your game will be saved. And for a game with long saving times, the loading times don’t disappoint either.

Apparently some of my problems were caused by my having the wrong sort of video card. The NVIDIA slogan, “The Way It's Meant To Be Played,” should be accompanied with an image a boot stamping on a human face—for this game. I also patched this game several times (and edited in Python to fix one bug).

The Bottom Line
For all the annoyances that come with it, Bloodlines is still a great game and one of the better CRPGs to come along. Only one of the problems I ran into was a game stopper. Bloodlines has a satisfying character creation system and, having tested a few characters and checked a few FAQs, Bloodlines has a very high replay value.

The biggest drawback I see to Bloodlines is its over emphasis on combat. While players have a free hand in creating their characters, I’m pretty sure that players who don’t invest in combat skills will get creamed. This is a shame for a game that has so many other options more suited towards actual role playing.

The Good
My review's may be rather short but get's straight to the point without any spoilers:

Plot/Dialog: One of its strength are thankfully the plot and the dialog's with the NPC's you encounter. The main story start's out slow, but it get's more and more interesting also simultaneously more mysterious. The longer you play, the more unsure you are what's really going on. Later on your final point of confusion you had to decide which clan you will follow to continue your last mission.

Graphics: Okay, its the Half-Life 2 engine, but I don't think its on the level of Half Life 2, but it's still rather good. They put the world of bloodlines in a dark, dirty, gothic like atmosphere which fits very well in this game. While some graphics are bit too blurry others are really eye candy. Especially during conversations the facial expression are very well done, you can clearly see if their are pissed off, bored, interested or even naughty.

Music & Sound effects: A real pusher for the atmosphere are the selection of punk/metal music in the clubs or the dark moody ambient music while you wandering through the streets. The sound effects are also quiet good, but sometime you hear more than you actual see (like you hear a car is passing you, but you actually don't see any driving cars in the streets.)

Replay value: Since you can play different types of vampires with also different specialization its makes fun to take play it again and solve the quests in a other way (which gives you additional experience points). It also doesen't matter that you know the main story already, even more interesting is the second view on it.

The Bad
Code flaws/Bugs: Since Ive heard about some bad bugs in the final version, i've waited until a patch was out to play the game. Still there are minor glitches, which didn't make it unplayable but gets angry at times. Sometimes the game/script seems to halt without any reason or buttons suddenly don't work. While you run through small side streets you often cant pass an NPC while two NPC can pass each other without any problems.

Loading times: While in Half Life 2 you followed a one way path, you didn't encounter much loading breaks within 10 minutes. In Bloodlines you can go wherever you want, so every time you leave or enter a building/city its breaks to load for 5-15 seconds. And boy that happens more than often, so thats gets very annoying very soon. Also quick save deserve the name only in its first 15 hours.

Hardware requirement: If you want to get the full experience in 1024x768 and above, you need at least 2,5 Ghz, a good graphic card (especially for the quality shadows), 1 GB memory (to reduce loading times)and a fast hard drive (same as on memory).

Design decisions: For my taste its a bit too action oriented (especially near the end), therefore its a bit sad that there are no other permanent party members which help you out in a battle or on quests. Don't misunderstand me, its not so heavy action oriented like Troikas predecessor Temple of elemental evil but unlike in TOEE the combat system in Bloodlines had its flaws (again sprite collision isn't Bloodlines strength). Also there are few interactions with objects and NPC's. Its minor, but I liked the reactions of NPC's in Half Life 2 when you throw a empty can to them, they start to complain or even hit you. Such small things you will not find in Bloodlines.

The Bottom Line
You like role playing games, but you get sick playing the 287's fantasy version of paladin against trolls and skeletons? Then try Bloodlines, you will like it. I hope this one is the big break for Troika Games, since they produced rather unknown gems like Arcanum or even Temple of Elemental Evil which is good when you take it for what it is.