Written by Jeff Buckland, 11/29/2004
Played on:
Windows
2004 hasn't been that great of a year for RPGs. There hasn't been a single one for the PC for months now that really stands out as being a great game, and the consoles haven't seen much better. Many RPG fans have been holding out hope for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, the pen-and-paper-licensed title from veteran developers Troika Games. Bloodlines promises a gothic atmosphere and action/RPG gameplay combined with a huge host of excellent characters and a well-written story.
Bloodlines is the first third-party game to use Valve Software's Source game engine. Source has gotten plenty of press recently, as it's also powering the visually breathtaking Half-Life 2. Despite the same use of the engine, I think it's folly to try and compare this game to HL2 in an overall perspective. Graphics, physics, and technical issues are fair game in my opinion, but gameplay? Not really.
Because the engine is so well-known thanks to HL2, I should probably mention that many of the features seen there are in Bloodlines; but in this case, they're used much more sparingly. Troika enabled the physics code for ragdoll-style dead bodies and various items in the world, but few items can be actually manipulated. The ragdoll physics also work, but they're rather exaggerated (especially in the case of melee combat) and not too realistic. Finally, the many special effects and other reflections seen in HL2 can be seen here in smaller doses. It seems that Troika wanted to just get the basics down and spend the rest of the time working on quests and gameplay, and I can respect that.
From a gameplay perspective, I'd much rather compare this to other action/RPG titles in recent years: namely, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Knights of the Old Republic, and Deus Ex. When considered against these games, Vampire: Bloodlines fares very well; its involving quests, unique atmosphere, solid action, and great graphics (for the genre) make up for the many technical and miscellaneous mishaps I found with the game.
Yes, Bloodlines was unfortunately shipped in a pretty buggy state - my guess is that Activision, the publisher, wanted to get it out in time for the holiday shopping season, and considered the number of bugs to be an acceptable risk. The same "stuttering" issues that are present in Half-Life 2 have made it into this game, and there are also quite a few well-documented graphics issues. Controls are also a bit wonky if you use any keyboard drivers other than what comes with Windows; disabling these programs will fix it, but of course that means temporarily disabling any special functionality on today's more complex keyboards.
There are also "holes" in some of the quests where the developers have required the player to do something in a specific way, but the level designers seemed to want to give the player more freedom. The result is that certain triggers for continuing the quest will not be met, and in the case of plot-advancing quests, one can be left stuck with a load as the only option. Those of us used to harder RPGs have no problem with this idea, but many times it's hard for the player to know that they did something wrong to screw the quest up. For this reason, I think that Troika should have spent more time tightening up various game events in order to ensure the player can move along. Fortunately, Bloodlines does auto-save and also keeps several of your quicksaves, so finding an earlier save isn't so bad. Still, this game needed another few weeks worth of bugfixes. I'm sure a patch will be released pretty soon, but finding a game-breaking bug is never very fun.
From a graphics perspective, it's hard not to compare Vampire: Bloodlines to this year's best-looking titles. For the most part, this game holds up very well, with detailed character models, an immersive look at a dark urban California, and nice animations for the many attacks and spells you can conjure up. Overall, some aspects of the game seriously lack the polish that some would expect nowadays - this is most evident in the cutscenes. While the characters' voice acting is solid and the dialogue is top notch, the animations are odd during some cutscenes and can really jar you out of what's otherwise a very immersive experience.
Clearly you can't have a game that takes place solely at night - with a ton of vampires - without some heavy gothic atmosphere. While I'm no expert on goth culture, Bloodlines sure seems like the real thing with its music, characters, and dingy atmosphere. It feels new, as well, as there aren't really a lot of game developers out there exploring this kind of setting.
The gameplay's always where it really counts, though, and Bloodlines delivers here. You'll play as a newly "embraced" vampire who usually would have been killed by the other established vampires under the circumstances, but the Prince in Los Angeles has decided to let you go and see how well you do in the vampire underworld. Quickly you are sent to Santa Monica to clear up some disputes and better learn your powers as a vampire; Santa Monica isn't massive in this game, as you really only have access to a few major streets, but these areas are detailed and full of stuff to do. Bloodlines allows you to accomplish your goals in many different ways: you can be an all-out brawler, firearms specialist, stealth killer, or social engineer, and all of these "builds" have plenty of merit. By the end, you'll be a killing machine; it's pure bliss going into a VTM version of bullet time while slicing your enemies up with a katana.
Not all of the melee combat is so great, though. Some of the later enemies are very frustrating to fight, as they have immensely powerful melee attacks and can spin around instantly; getting behind them is of almost no use at all. For this reason, anyone who picks from firearms or melee should still put some points into the other one, because some enemies are just way too frustrating to fight with just one style.
You can choose from a pretty wide range of characters, and their social status makes a huge difference here in how you will be doing quests. Play as the decrepit Nosferatu, and you'll find that your social abilities are just plain abysmal. On top of that, you can't walk the streets; you'll have to lurk in the sewers in order to go from one place to the next.
Some unique quests are based on your "clan" - essentially, your race - and your skills of seduction, intimidation, persuasion, and haggling will add new dialogue options to your conversations. These skills are also more useful in this game than in any other RPG I've played; in most games, social skills are rarely worth putting hard-earned points into, but here they're definitely worth it. Ok, so you can't go through the whole game without a good amount of fighting, but you can gain so many perks from social stats and skills that they're worth investing in on almost any character you make.
While you can't really customize the look of your character much, it's his or her abilities that will be much more finely tuned. During character creation you can choose your clan and gender, but you're stuck with whatever face you've got. At least gender makes a real difference in this game, especially considering the "seduction" skill. Anyway, then it's on to the character sheet where you can apply gained points to stats, skills, or unique vampire disciplines. Vampire rewards you with experience points for completing quests and advancing the plot, but there is no levelling system; instead, you apply experience points directly into various things on your character sheet. Some stats and abilities will affect multiple skills, and some skills are affected by multiple stats and abilities; for the most part, it's an intuitive system that lets you specialize in a few things before you get to the end of the game.
