Product Description

Vampire: The Masquerade--Bloodlines continues the famous White Wolf gaming tradition in a new role-playing adventure, combining intense first-person shooter combat with an open, non-linear world, rich character development and an immersive storyline. The game plunges players into the dark and gritty vampire underworld of modern-day LA as a creature of the night, interacting with and battling mortals and other creatures of darkness with an incredible array of vampire powers, skills and traits. Based on Valve's Source Technology, the same game technology used to power Half-Life 2, Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines is being developed by RPG developer Troika Games and is based on White Wolf's World of Darkness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6931 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: ACTIVISION
• Released on: 2004-11-19
• ESRB Rating: Adults Only
• Platforms: Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP

Customer Reviews

So far... wow... a first thought on bloodlines
Normally I don't like to write a review until I have finished with the media (watch the dvd, read the book etc) and yet here I sit, writing a review on a game which I have had for a day and am about 5-6 hours into.

The reasoning is clear, however, Activision's decision to release this right on the back of Half-life 2 will cause folks to think more before purchasing and the only reviews thus far were written months before game release (don't know how that works, but...)

Well so far so very, very good. The game has proved to be so much more than it's predecessor (VtM: redemption). One would expect it to have moved on graphically (after all it uses the source engine) but the real move is in gameplay. This is truly an rpg, you can choose your clan and the choice has real impact. Choice can also be made by answering a series of questions, rather than picking. This device has been used before but, if you answer honestly, you should get something that resonates with your gaming style.

Another improvement is in the ability to feed. Try to feed of a peasant girl in VtM:R and, no matter how hidden away, a guard would come and humanity would be lost as you battled your way out. In Bloodlines you can truly go and feed, so long as you do not break the masquerade. In fact, as a toreador (for example) go and seduce a couple of likely looking kine in a nightclub and you can feed publicly to your heart's content (or so far as their hearts holds up!)

The game has a definite atmosphere, there is - early on - a haunted hotel that has some genuine jump moments and is superbly designed, even if this part of the game is "on-a-rail", linear areas are fine if there is a reason.

So is there anything wrong with this game. Well a few things. The city hubs are small, this is understandable, but because the hubs do not link up (yet) it looses some of the immersion. Not all npc's can be talked to either, a little odd as it wouldn't have taken much to have some throw away dialogue added. These are minor design things, however.

Lack of a map could have been annoying if it wasn't for the smallness of the hub area. The much discussed (in previews) physics engine can also throw up minor issues (walking over a sheet of metal that you've knocked over does not end up like walking through taffy in real life).

These issues are, so far, minor and I hope they remain so.

One thing to note, however, is that this is an 18, not one for the kiddies I'm afraid. There are adult references all over, not necessarily blatant so far, but there, plus you play a bloodsucking creature of the night.

So, as the title says, so far... wow. I hope it continues but on what I've played so far I have no qualms in recommending this game.

Amongst the greatest games ever made
While perhaps not quite a gaming-household name, the now defunct Troika is one of the greatest development teams ever to have existed, and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is one of their finest achievements, and one of the best games ever made.

Bloodlines is a roleplaying game - to most people, that would mean picking a class and then going off on some epic quest to save the world, and pretty much killing everything you meet along the way, gaining experience as you go, developing your character in a fairly strict, class-defined way. Bloodlines is a completely different animal. A major contributing factor in this is that you don't earn experience points for killing stuff.

All the experience awarded is through completing quests, which makes the game fundamentally different to a typical D20 roleplaying game. Because everything then defers to the playstyle of your class - if you're a stealthy character, it makes no sense that you'd fight your way through an area like a warrior. No, you'd stealth through, and since the enemies don't yield experience, you lose very little (or, usually, nothing) in playing your class your way. It's a fantastic gameplay style and it amazes me that no one has yet imitated it.

You'll start by picking a class in a fairly traditional roleplaying game way, or you can answer a few questions about your preferred playstyle and the game will pick a class for you. All of the World of Darkness clans are represented in the game, though there are really only four archetypes: fighter, stealther, spellcaster and `talker'. Every class is a balance of these four styles, and mostly it's just the extremes that are worth playing, as they offer the most distinct and diverse experiences.

If you're not familiar with names like White Wolf, World of Darkness, or Vampire the Masquerade, don't worry - you don't need to be. Troika does a wonderful job of introducing you to the world through the eyes of a newly sired fledgling vampire, whose sire is killed due to vampire politics. After a quick tutorial with your new vampire friend (voiced by none other than Futurama's voice of Bender, John Di Maggio), you're thrust into the Santa Monica vampire underworld.

The game takes place mostly in first person, though a third person option is available. You'll explore the environments in a fairly standard RPG manner, seeking out talk-to-able characters who are usually quest givers or otherwise drive the story. The game takes place entirely at night, so you won't have to deal with sunlight and, with the exception of the hideous looking Nosferatu clan (who must keep out of sight, hiding in sewers), you can interact freely with humans.

The missions you go on are mostly pretty standard RPG stuff, go here and get that, go here and kill that, go here and talk to him/her. But that you can often take several routes through a mission are what really make the game fantastic. As a member of the insane Malkavian clan, you can smite nearby enemies with temporary insanity and simply walk past them, as a fierce Gangrel clan member, you can tear them apart in bestial rage, or as a member of the Nosferatu you may simply turn invisible and stalk past them. As experience isn't earned for combat, it doesn't make a difference.

Similar diversity exists when talking to people. Character skills like intimidate, seduce or persuasion offer additional dialogue options that will aid your agenda, if you have sufficient skill. Other skills come into play as well, sometimes you may open a locked door using your hacking skill, or you may find a key hidden under a pile of books with a high perception skill, or you may be able to simply kill someone who possesses the key. Rarely will insuffiency in one particular skill prevent you from completing a quest, though completing quests in certain ways may impart bonuses.

The story, which I won't spoil, revolves around an almost cliché vampire Armageddon, but you're not some great hero on an Epic quest to thwart evil, you're just stuck in the middle of a political struggle and you're trying to find out what's going on. Some things feel cliché, but Troika does a wonderful job of making their game very counterstereotypical, and you probably won't see the ending coming - unless you happen to talk to a certain Malkavian.

The combat is easily the weakest part of the game, but it does at least take place in real time. You have a selection of guns and melee weapons available - but thanks to the extraordinary healing speed of most supernaturals, guns aren't very effective. This is a melee game. You'll tear people apart with knives, axes and swords, or use your vampiric abilities to confuse or destroy enemies. Being a vampire, you are remarkably strong and resilient, and you're pretty hard to kill. Your health regenerates fast, and all it takes to keep you healthy is a little blood now and then. You feed on innocent humans and enemies alike, or even rats, and you can always buy a few blood packs at the local blood bank for tight spots.

The voice acting and writing style are singularly fantastic throughout - some of the best I've experienced in a game - and coupled with a large number of interesting, albeit generic, rpg missions, an engaging and non-standard main quest arc revolving around politics, a host of fascinating characters and a beautiful engine (source), Bloodlines is perhaps the best roleplaying game I've ever experienced. The only downside to the entire game is the combat, and the ending few hours are rather weak (being a series of dungeon crawl style constant-combat events). The game was released in an absurdly buggy state, but running fully patched, I experienced no bugs, and only a few drop-to-desktop crashes here and there.

Bloodlines is one of the best games ever made, and is severely underappreciated, do yourself a favour. Buy it.

Good Game, but a bit buggy
Firstly I have to say this requires a Good PC. My System is a Athalon 2.8Ghz, 1GB RAM and a Radeon 9600 video card (pretty much entry level these days if you want to play the latest games at high-medium to maximum detail levels) and the game ran fine for me. Maps took about the same time to load as they did in KOTOR(which incidentally was, while excellent, pretty bugged as well when it came out). However the game wasn't an entirely smooth ride, I did encounter one crash to Desktop bug three quarters of the way through the game, there is a workaround on the game's tech support website, but it's up to you to decide whether you want to bother with this or just wait for the patch. Apart from that any other bugs I encountered were very minor, like the back of my characters coat sometimes folding through itself when running, all things I'd hope would be addressed in the upcoming patch. At least I'd hope so. So, to reiterate, don't buy this game if you've got an aging PC, and decide now whether you want to wait for a patch for bugs in game, if so, give it about a month and check the game's website for patches. If you decide not to wait, have a check over the Tech Support site at Activision.

Anyway, with that out of the way, let's get onto the game itself. As you most probably already know the game is based on the RPG company White Wolf's now ended Vampire: The Masquerade franchise (the games plot takes place just at the beginning of the Gehenna storyline which ends the franchise). As you begin you can either generate a character manually, allocating gender and vampire clan(of which there are 7 represented in the game as potential Player Characters) then add dots onto a character sheet in a system very similar to the pen and paper version of the game, or if you don't want to do that, simply answer some questions and let the computer generate a character it thinks will suit your playing style based on your answers.

Right, after all that and a brief introduction which takes your character from mortal to undead bloodsucker, your sent to Santa Monica to deal with some 'trouble' there and you get to see the game's first 'hub' section. And it looks nice, its night, and the streets are populated with people going about their business pretty much oblivious to you as they would be to anyone else on the street. The graphics are not as good as Doom 3 or Half Life 2, but better than those of Deus Ex 2 or Thief 3. But who plays RPG's for the graphics? Plus, it does not suffer from the sort of problem which plagued Thief 3 where people would collapse in really unrealistic poses, doubled over with their back turning the wrong way in a painful looking fashion or similar.

Gameplay follows the usual standard of computer RPG's, doing small quests to help you complete the big quest that's your main objective in this section, something Troika send themselves up for in the game(listen out for the advert for their 'new game' Frankenstein: Breadlust). But the quests are varied enough and nearly all have different ways to complete them and there are some excellent places to visit, like the haunted hotel you have to go through early on which can actually make you jump sometimes. The game also has a similar sense of humour as the other games developed by Troika, something that's quite welcome in the often po-faced World of Darkness. Characterisation and voice acting in the game is spot on, each character seems to have the 'right' voice and personality.

Finally a special mention must go to the music in the game. Though the music on the title page and character generation is forgettable, the in-game music manages to be scene setting without intruding too much and when you go into a nightclub, actual songs from bands such as Ministry, Lacuna Coil and similar bands are playing. All this means the in-game music adds greatly to the atmosphere of the game.

In conclusion, I liked this game. It engrossed me like no game has since KOTOR, but is it as good? In all honesty, no. KOTOR is still the better game, but Bloodlines comes close. With the proviso that you need a *good* PC to run it and that it currently suffers from some bugs, both of which may make you want to hold off buying for a short while until patches are released or you upgrade your PC.