vampire the masquerade: bloodlines

Well what can I say? This very late review is past the patches and the demise of Troika Games, and they say you shouldn't speak bad about the dead. In this event I am half and half decided to stay true to that saying. Anyway:
VTM Bloodlines is a modern vampire game that mixes a 1st person view shooter take with the 3rd person behind camera run around beat things to pulp. The idea is really good, shooting should be made from 1st person view, only a few games like Max Payne and Outcast has really made the 3rd person view handle action in a good way without using 1st person view. Ideas however are not always as it is. The movement, a major gripe, is flawed and buggy. In combat your character stutters around easily and you will experience lagging and a clumsy combat. Oh and this is a RPG game, guns won't hurt a fly until you are really really good with the skill fireamrs. Realistic, no but so aren't vampires.

So the action part isn't all that, how about the RPG elements? Well pretty true to the VTM license the game will make most Vampire players feel at home and the system is the right one, though with some changes to make it fit the computer genre. All in all pretty good, but this is a rushed job and the things cut out to make the deadline is noticable. You can choose among Gangre, Brujah, Toreador, Malkavian, Nosferatu and Ventrue clan and only male/female version. Thats it, thats the customisation, clan, gender and some few points to put into skills and abilities. Each clan has three abilities that makes them special. It was supposed to have a background choce that would mean smething for your character.

After selecting your character you are brought into the game setting and plot with a very long, none scipable intromovie that is choppy, re edited cause German people are not alowed to see beheadings in 18+ games and you have a really bad feeling! (I must say that the first run gave me a out of synch monitor and after visiting below mentioned forums I got that bug fixed) DANTE! You should alwaysmake a player be able to skip intro scenes, logo movies in the start of the games! Bad form! I am not intrested to see it every time I start a new game, it is not that good, heck, it is one of the worst scripted peace of crap I have seen in a game! *Pewie* Unfortunately this contines on and on, the scripted movies with ingame motor is just really horrid. The characters in the game and the setting is however far from horrid. Here Troika showed what they do well. Atmosphere, setting love for the game feeling. Oh Troika, Troika, if you only could have had some decent programmers, a decent publishing house (and don't spew the same ol same ol on me, Sacred is published by a small publishing house, Nival is a small Russian game developer, you don't have to let Satan publish your games and count all the money! DANTE!) you might actually be alive with a game that was simply superb! Thats it. I won't ruine your experience by playing the game cause it is what the game is. Here you will not be sad for giving this game a go cause there are so many details and good things in the stories and setting you will only feel bad towards the end, but that are several hours up ahead (apart from tweaking the damn game so you can play it!) that you won't be to sad. The saddest thing is that you will constantly have the sad melanchly feeling that this game could have been oh so much more. :(

http://www.vampirebloodlines.com/ Official site, don't waste time visiting Activision, I mean when have they ever had something of value for gamers??
http://www.vampireheaven.com/vheaven/board/index.php A good forum for help, you will need it!
http://www.planetvampire.com/ Another forum with alot of information regarding bugs, tweaking etc.
http://www.gamershell.com/news/23777.html Get the unofficial patch and thank all the Vampire's out there that Dan Upright cared so much about this game!

-Wolfgir-