Greetings all! And yet another fine day for the gamer: ODST, Arkham Asylum, Borderlands on the horizon, Assassins Creed 2 lurking in the shadows of beyond. Truly, a fantastic year drawing to a close, with an entertain sojourn into storytelling next year!
But I am not here to talk on the joys of games to come. I am no shrouded ghost, come to haunt the misery gamer, to show them what could have been. Oh no!
I come as reviewer of games past! To enlighten you as to the treasures you may have missed. And what delectable delicacy have I selected to inflict upon your eager, straining eyeballs?
Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines
Yes, indeed, a game that makes one’s grammar cells cringe with it’s title and causes the PC gaming crowd to jostle and growl menacingly! Let us begin.
Vtm:B is based upon the roleplaying game produced by White Wolf, which is itself named Vampire: The Masquerade. Many assume it is a sequel to the first game, Vampire: The Masquerade, but it is markedly differen. First and foremost in these is that whilst the previous game is far more reliant on traditional “point and click” Diablo-esque Role play, this particular game is a first person affair: more shooter than roleplay, at least initially.
Famed as the first game to utilise the Source engine, developed for Half Life 2, this particular “feature” was a blessing as much as a curse, as the game was, in many ways, an experimental “test” of the engine. Evidently eager to make use of the famed facial animation and physics engine, this attempt to combine a first person shooter and an RPG resulted in a strange hybrid, bug ridden and unstable.
Yet it is, ultimately, an amazing game.
Harking back to Deus Ex, for whom most of the fans feel the game is a spiritual successor, VTM:B combines aspects of character freedom and action, a twisting plotline, multiple choices and a sense of involvement in a story. This is not you saving the world. This is you saving your own skin and getting your own back. Which, considering the glut of games which, over the years cast you as the ubermensch super marine, is a breath of fresh air. Although, since you play a Vampire, maybe not so fresh.
Did I not mention that?
Oh yes, in this game, you are the nasty thing that goes bump in the night. And your choices are varied: do you aspire to Dracula levels of seduction? Are you an animalistic beast? A political “Blade-esque” vampire, filled with authority? A horrific Nosferatu? Or a madness afflicted crazy?
That last one isn’t just down to gameplay style, either: The Malkavian choice is one of the more amusing ones, providing a meta-game aspect, similar to the tongue in cheek jibes from games such as Max Payne. mainly because they’re stark raving bonkers.
The game is played from the first person, primarily, though switches to a third person view when using melee attacks. The camera is acceptable in both views, yet is hardly perfect, especially in third person. You begin life as a fairly weak little bloodsucker, uneducated in the ways of the night. Your character design chosen by answering a series of questions which can dictate your “bloodline” (Hence the title) and your particular strengths. You can also opt for a manual input. Some RPG fans may be disappointed in the limited number of choices, but the game sticks fairly well to the template as laid down by the tabletop game. However, when it comes to character appearance you are offered 2 choices: Male or Female. And whilst these vary between the bloodlines, there is no choice beyond that.
Dumped into the mean streets of Los Angeles, you are exposed to something few games really get right: an excellent voice cast. The first character you meet is Smiling Jack, a staple of the table top game and here voiced by John Di Maggio, he of Bender fame. The characters are what make this game: no pop up briefings or walls of text here. All the voices are rich and delivered with a sense of awareness, drawing you in. And some of these guys are really nasty pieces of work. Your interaction with these characters is conducted by the staple of the RPG: the multiple choice conversation bar. Various responses are dependant upon whether you posses certainly skills as well as your bloodline choice. These won’t hamper the plot, but may effect the rewards you receive for the various missions on which you are dispatched.
After your trial by fire, or hopefully not, being undead and all, you are unleashed upon the first “hub” of the game: Santa Monica. The game itself is divided into four main areas, which open up as the plot progresses, each with various stage branching off with various side missions. How you navigate these streets is also dependant upon game choices: Skulk through the sewers or travel openly in the air? If you’re a Nosferatu, I wouldn’t advise the latter.
The game is well presented, with minor texture skipping at distance, but this in itself is rarely an issue, due to the clustered nature of each of the hubs. However, it is clear that certain animations and textures weren’t completely finalised prior to release, with the occasional animation repetition or clipping error. Most of the time, the graphics and presentation evoke the seedy, foreboding sense of the setting. The scantily dressed “ladies of the night” to the rusty diner in Santa Monica all give the game a sense of moral decay.
The mechanics work well, mainly in the dialogue sections, with the wrong choice often cutting off an entire side-option, ensuring one is careful in choosing. Whilst your choices may not have world-impacting consequences, there are enough gameplay slash personal ones to matter.
Combat is a slightly different affair: The game is not a case of twitch and “aim for the head”: it draws from your selected stats, your character only able to wield certain weapons with certain skillsets, which are calculated. Each successful hit results in a number floating from your enemy, which grows darker until they drop. Whilst a good gauge of the damage you do, seeing as you don‘t know how much health your opponent has left it is often a case of “hammer the trigger until they drop. And seeing as combat is not the most tactical of affairs, this can make some parts of the game feel more a test of patience than of skill. The AI doesn’t utilise cover well, nor is there any form of co-operation amongst your foes: melee monsters charge you, ranged enemies fire at your location, which they always seem able to pinpoint, whilst bosses just follow a pre-set pattern of attacks. Tactics in these situations seem limited to trying to soak damage and whittle away at targets health, hoping your combat skill is enough to kill them before they drain your health.
The various vampiric abilities help a little in this, again dictated by bloodline, yet some seem more useful than others. The invisibility power is certainly useful for the stealth based character, whilst celerity (bullet time, for those non fans) is great for combat. Others seem mainly augmentations for the passive options, but it really depends on play style: melee or ranged, magic base or gun toting maniac?
These skills, along with ones base abilities, are improved via the acquisition of skill points and the odd skill-book littering the environment. Everything, from your ability to hack computers, to picking a lock or just being able to swing a weapon are dependant on these skills. And skill points are only awarded for the completion of missions. The amount of combat also increases as the game progresses, meaning that your ability to acquire skill points becomes difficult, unless you had the forethought to store up skillpoints earlier in the game. That said, the sneakier players will find their patience rewarded more than the “run and gun” crowd. Basically, if you aren’t outfitted to fight at first, then your challenge will increase.
This lack of balance plagues the game a little. Coupled with crashes and several broken quests make the game, at least initially, a bit of a trial to get into. Add on to this only the one official patch and the game seems broken. However, a thriving community has built up around it, providing community patches which solve a lot of the crashing and balancing issues
So far, I seem to be fairly “neutral” on the whole game. But then we hit the story. Whilst the engine doesn’t live up to it’s full potential, the setting, the various levels and challenges posed to you, along with the methods of world interaction provide an incredibly addictive experience. Take for example the method for regaining health: follow a person into an alleyway and drain their blood! But even here, choice has a factor: kill them whilst doing so and you risk losing “humanity”, eventually devolving into a true monster. Can’t find a suitable, lonely human? Lure a prostitute into said alleyway. Accessing a computer? Your character sits at it and you have to type in passwords and commands.
The characters themselves are also a joy, with varied back stories that are a mixture of amusing, tragic and genuinely horrifying. The missions range from typical combat to being able to manipulate people at a party. The combat becomes all encroaching, which is a minus, but there is some satisfaction at becoming able to kill tooled up vampires with only a couple of rounds from your desert eagle!
The locations are varied and engaging, with shout outs to classic films, media commentary and the odd bit of self deprecating humour about gaming itself. The plot twists and turns nicely, the various sidequests allowing you the opportunity to earn some extra cash or just explore. There are a view collectible questlines, some hidden little tidbits to find. Often these are inconsequential, but they add to the depth of the game. Main characters live or die by your choices. The game draws you in very well, pushing you through haunted hotels and gruesome snuff movie theatres. And whilst the balance is at times slightly off, you can often play according to your preferred style.
Ultimately, it is worth a look, even now. For a five year old game, it holds up well, providing a plot that allows a certain amount of choice, relying on your decisions made during the game, as well as a setting that feels true to the world it is based on. For a developer it would have been very easy to just make a shooter with vampiric elements, but Troika took the concept and ran, creating a game with as much innovation as Deus Ex and the adult elements of GTA.
