Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

"What could have been (and can been if a patch is released)"

Graphics - 9/10 - Based on the half life 2 engine, most of the graphics in the game are quite amazing. And if you have a powerful system and can bump the AA and resolution up, they are better than quite amazing. :) Some animations are quite weird though, like the walking animations of pedestrians. And face-to-face conversatsions could have been handled better in my opinion.

Sound 6/10 - Gunshot sound effects are pretty good, footstep sound is AWFUL, rest of sound effects are around average. Game has problems with 5.1 and EAX and surround sound, thus the lower score.

Music 10/10 - Awesome music. Asylum music blew me away. Even with 5.1 problems, the music score is still one of the best ingame scores Ive heard in a long time.

Gameplay 5/10 - What really ruins the game. Combat is pretty lame, boring and repititive. Story starts off good, then runs into the stupid X->Y->Z chain of quests (ie to fulfill X's quest, gotta do Y's quest, but to fulfill Y's quest gotta do Z's quest, argh I hate that). The beginning quests are quite good and unique with multiple endings, then after those, the game drags on. Totally horrid AI, can have two guards talking to one another, you sneak up and off one of them, and the other just stands there and acts like nothing happened. And oh yeah, sneaking is WAY too powerful.

Story 7/10 - First half of game is 10/10, last half is 4/10. Dialogue is pretty neat (and mature) for most of the game, and if you play one certain clan, dialgoue can be quite funny. And whats up with the endings? 20 seconds for each? Come on.

Fun Factor 7/10 - Again, during the first half of the game, game was one of the best Ive played it a long time, then it just draggggged on. Had lots of fun getting persuasion stats up, thus introducting new dialogue choices. The monoaty of the last half of the game ruins some of the fun though.

Conclusion - A good game, looks like it was severely rushed (even though theyve stated its been ready for 2 months? yeah right) for the xmas season. Last half of game is not nearly as polished as first half. NEEDS A PATCH BAD, many crash to desktop areas, and other problems (5.1, and the annoying keyboard lag problem, and massive memory leaks). Please Troika, dont let this be another Temple of E. Evil!

If a patch is released, this could easily be a 8/10, but no higher unless they redo the 2nd half of the game. :-)

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/05/04