I cannot understand why certain games don’t become series. There is a unique setting, a good system and such a selection of characters which is much weaker in other games. What’s more, all of these contain so much opportunities that wouldn’t be exhausted in another three or even five games after this one. Bloodlines got an average of 80% in the press, became a golden disk, and was forgotten undeservedly. Compared to the whole setting it is only a tight extract, but it can find its legs easily.
In appearance the World of Darkness doesn’t differ from our petty human world. However, inside we find nothing else but creatures of darkness and endless webs of their intrigues. These creatures are leeching on us, humans, or they use us for cover, sometimes they need us for other reasons, so we can feel ourselves safe, more or less.
Basic laws of survival are simple: Besides guarding your secrets and keeping your humanity it doesn’t harm to get to know the power structure. Vampires introduced strict regulations on “birth control” and maintaining the principles of hiding in human society, so they are not overpopulating humanity – and because they are small in numbers, they do better keeping their existence in secret. They are not invulnerable, and if every armed organization calls a hunt on them, they won’t last long.
Forget garlic, and the stake is causing only some paralysis, it doesn’t end what nature started. They don’t have to sleep in coffin, and they are not sucking common people dry in the alleys. This setting is like Interview with a Vampire‘s (1994.), but in a darker, grimmer and more horroristic tone, dated 2004.
Bloodlines basically is a computer role-playing game, and within this category it’s a TPS/FPS action-adventure game dressed in horror elements. Maybe this sounds difficult, but everything is true.
It is an action-adventure game, because during character development you are forced to put a few points on combat characteristics. In most of the quests you can tackle your enemies or talk yourself out of the given situations, and it happens that you can avoid combat entirely by sneaking. However, some fights are unavoidable, and certain locations are terribly difficult to pass without combat.
TPS/FPS ranking is assured by switching between the two as you like, and shooting is generally recommended to be done in first person mode. It still doesn’t sound like a big novum, because there are a lot of games in which you can do the same. However, depending on character development and your personal playing style you can convert the whole game a serious FPS.
Because you are playing a vampire, it is evident that horror elements appear in the game. The genre is not steeping every moment, so I can tell that the game is almost without claptrap (there is only one place where I always get frightened for a moment, but it’s not because of the “horrorness” of the scene, so yes, there is at least one move with claptrap). Of course, we are lurking mainly around horror, so most of the various quests are connected to it.
As, for example, the case of a not a little crazy prosthetic limb maker, or the investigation after murderous monster and a mystical vampire disease. Or the case of the snuff video which will never get to the official publishers, and after that, the searching for the lair of the Nosferatu vampires – which, in my opinion, is ensuring one of the most difficult row of tasks in the whole game. I don’t tell you any more… But I must: It happens that you need to withhold a zombie apocalypse. But you really won’t get more here!
But the point is still waiting to be taken: Bloodline is a bloody good CRPG. Character creation is a little bit limited – but it is not annoying for a moment – and during character development you need to increase at least one of the combat skills (brawling, melee, firearms) to at least an average score, but besides these two things you can make your character completely unique without bruising its effectiveness. But by the word “effectiveness” I don’t just mean combat prowess.
And if it comes to effectiveness, I cannot pass by variability in Bloodlines without a word. I’m writing neither about the four quarters of the city nor the combat locations – they can be boring if you are playing the game more than once – but about the characters.
As a role-playing game, Bloodlines is almost completely allows the using of individual skills. You can sneak invisible, you can be faster than bullets, and for example, you can emphasize the term “mad dominatrix”. With this latter you can burrow deep into the minds to persuade people around you by seduction, intimidate, persuasion, or even by supernatural influence. And they better do what you want.
So being a vampire is pretty fun, and everything is about this here. And about being too close to death in every little second of your unearthly life. You may believe you need not to fear of death, because you are an undead who can regenerate injuries fucking fast, and even faster with the help of some blood, but you are wrong. Vampires live in the shadow of final death, which can come easily if you are getting too much injuries, or if you are burnt in a junkyard, or if you are bitten to death by a werewolf. This latter is big, mean and hates you to the bones.
So being a vampire is not just pretty fun but pretty dangerous too. The creatures of a demented Tzimisce or the Chinese life-eaters (like vampires, but with a different background and beliefs) can kick your ass roughly, to tell only two examples.
Not to mention your bad social situation. You are standing almost on the bottom of the whole vampire society, without Sire (your vampiric parent is executed in the very beginning) you are just an errand-boy (or girl), and you can go higher on the ladder only by your skills and cunning. By judgment you are only hairbreadth above the apocalypse-waiting, dirty and bestial Sabbat vampires. And they too hate you and try to kill you.
Anyway, you are at least disliked by almost everyone, for various causes. But if you are clever and artful enough, you can achieve some honor or appreciation. Perhaps you can never achieve both of them, but this rather is a characteristic of the always scheming vampire society than a flaw in the game.
The technical equation is the regular one: Troika Games = brilliant game + at least a hundred bugs. It’s worth to quicksave often, because the characters can stuck in some cutscenes, and it’s terribly hard to enter certain air-shafts (you can climb up on the grate, but you cannot jump into the hole), etc, etc.
Luckily, the game easily makes all of these forgotten.
—Garcius—
Title: Vampire: Tha Masquarade — Bloodlines
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Troika Games
Hompage: —
Style: modern day, CRPG, supernatural horror
What I liked:
World of Darkness
based on an RPG
story
What I didn’t like:
a hundred bugs
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