I Am A Vampire

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here, hasn’t it? However, I have a good reason! A week ago, I was embraced by a vampire and sent to Los Angeles to fulfill a number of tasks. My sire, unfortunately, was exterminated and I was left to often fend for myself as a fledgling. It has been a hectic week to say the least; but I apologize for the absence nonetheless. It’s not easy being a bloodsucker…

Of course, my faithful kine, I am referring to the PC game Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines! I decided to revisit this title recently, and bought the game from Direct2Drive. I tried to play this years ago, but at the time it was pretty buggy and unable to run on the computer. Not the case this time around, thankfully.

To sum it up: I was really satisfied with the game. I finished it last night, finally. And while I did notice a few things in game that were annoying and other reviews had pointed out, I generally came away with a great sense of satisfaction having blood-sucked my way through a week worth of quests and storyline.

I think the biggest annoyance I found in this game was the combat. It was a little difficult to battle with enemies in this, especially using ranged weapons like guns. Even melee, which other reviews said was better, I found kind of difficult to get the hand of personally. Specifically, keeping my attacks aimed at a foe. Seemed like half the time I missed because my character kept spinning around and cutting into the air. I wish there had been some kind of a lock-on command.

Other than that, the game was excellent.

The graphics were quite pleasing, save for a few texture flickering problems I came across. The story was compelling and often times the dialog was funny and witty. And I loved how almost every dialog option you had to choose from could determine the nature of your relationship with the NPC you were talking to and how it could affect the rest of the story.

There were a lot of different clans to choose from when starting the game, each with their own special abilities and looks. Character customization, however, was limited to just gender and your stats. You can pick up new clothes (aka body armor) in game to change your appearance a bit, but for the most part you couldn’t really customize the look any further. Not really a big deal though. I found most of the models pretty appealing as is.

A word of advice for anyone who’s never played this before: avoid picking Nosferatu for your first character! It’s what I chose first. The character is neat, and I think the model for it looks pretty cool … but this is one of the harder ones to play. Because of how the Nosferatu look, you cannot let humans see you in most areas, or you’ll risk a penalty for alerting them to the existence of vampires. This makes getting around the various areas of the city a little more challenging. You’ll end up in the sewer most of the time, although the Nosferatu do have the ability to become invisible as one of their clan traits.

I just think it’s not a great character to start out with, personally. But definitely one I will go back and play again. I ended up picking a different clan, after a few missions with Nosferatu, that could walk amongst humans without alerting them, and this made things a lot more comfortable for breaking into this game.

Replayability is great, by the way. As I mentioned above, dialog options will often determine how you progress in the game. And considering how many conversations you have with various NPCs, I can see how different a story could play out if you decided to play it through again with a new character. I think there are something like 4 possible endings, but beyond just the finale there are a number of things I did that affected how my story played out in general.

When I did finally complete this, I was sad that it was over even though it wasn’t what I’d consider a short game. I wished the ending had left the game in a sandbox state, kind of like Grand Theft Auto does when you finish, so I could just keep messing around the city, completing side quests and drinking blood!

However, reading a good walkthrough for the game will tell you the point of no return, and you can always make a save-game just before it (like I did) to come back to later without entering the final chain of events that lead to the end.

You don’t gain levels in this RPG, but you do earn points along the way that you can spend on abilities that will make your vampire more powerful. Some of the skills are pretty cool too, and can really help with how you get your missions completed.

Lockpicking and computer hacking, for example, are extremely useful for getting around security and locked doors. And intimidation and seduction can be quite fun in conversations (you get extra dialog options when your skill is high enough).

This game was quite detailed, and I’m doing it no justice really. There’s a lot of fun to be had in this RPG, and I really encourage you to give it a go if you are into this genre, and especially if you are a fan of vampires!

Final Note: Been thinking about creating a machinima piece from video capture while playing the game through again, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to remove the HUD. Can’t find any help through google either. If you happen to know how, please leave a comment! I’d really like to put together a video from this, and removing the UI will be a big help so I don’t have to creatively crop my way through all the footage during editing.