Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption

"This would make a better action game"

Given the genre of ''Action/RPG'' would give the game a more action oriented gameplay with a more RPG environment. As I go along I will point out how this game would make a better, fully action game.

Story 8/10: I'll start with this since this is one of the best aspects of this game. Well you are Christoff, a warrior for the town of Prague. You fall in love with a nun Anezca. (Already weird eh?) So you go off to fight a monster in a cave. After doing that vampires of the Brujah clan in that area take notice of you and bite you. You are now a Brujah and Anezca leaves to find a cure for your curse. This then leads to you chasing her for half the game. What is neat, though, is all the clans which you do battle with. Plus you meet new people and some cool plot twist.

Control 9/10: This is one of the main factors for it to be action. It's the same RPG control for the PC in which you click to move somewhere. The attacking is hack and slash. Holding the attack button on an enemy will continue to attack it while holding shift and then attacking will do a powerful attack. The game would have been much cooler if you could actually move your person rather than clicking and to be able to just press and button to attack any time rather than targeting a monster and having to be within the range to attack. I'd say the control that I'm thinking of would be like the Zelda games. The bad thing about the control is things that get in the way. Usually it's your allies. They either get in the way to move somewhere or when you are trying to attack you keep clicking on them rather than the enemy.

Music&SFX 10/10: Awesome! I love almost every tune! From the soothing medieval music the up beat modern music. It's all good and brings out the mood of the game.

Graphics 10/10: Really depending on your video card. I have one that has been in my PC since I got it and the graphics are great. Frame rate has never really slowed much until my 9 year old brother put twenty commoners into a town on multiplayer. I don't really like Christoff's face much. It looks too weird. Other than that a lot of people can look the same but that's typical for any game.

Gameplay 5/10: As explained before, you click on the enemy to attack. As it sound, it can get old. In dungeons the enemies range from about three different things. You battle the same things over and over and nothing takes much strategy to kill. Your other allies have their own AI. Their AI is terrible. You may not want them to enter a room and draw all the enemies attention to you but they do and you have to save their hide. Plus they tend to use magic that is irrelevant to use and get in the way. Think about this game like Zelda and without your allies. Blood is also and issue. In dungeons they don't supply you with enough and you run out fast. 80% of the time you play this game your blood will never be full. This game would be cool as an action game. It might be hard to use magic but I hardly use any magic.

Multiplayer 7/10: At first this is the coolest thing after you learn the tedious story telling controls. After you learn them they are easy. Story telling is like playing with toys. You can put anything anywhere. But being the story teller gets old. So you decide to play someone else'. Well if you are lucky to find a game it's really boring and is much more satisfying to play the real game.

Overall 8/10: This game is great to waste some time on especially multiplayer. The game probably could have been brought out more fully if it were action.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/07/01, Updated 10/07/01