Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

"Graphical bugs and Bug issues are all thats stopping this from a perfect game..."

Intro: Vampire The Masquerade is more than just a game. It seems more like a whole book. Anyone who has purchased the original Vampire Masquerade will have seen the huge booklet included with the game going into great detail about the history of vampires and the clans. This game carries on the storyline and from the beginning you get little clues and insights into the vampire history that makes it seem almost believable.

Graphics: 9/10
Pros: The graphics are based on the Half-Life 2 engine so obviously they are going to be first class. If you have seen any videos or trailers of the game you will see the notable similarities with the Half-Life 2 graphics e.g. shiny walls and excellent lighting effects. Also every time you speak to a person it zooms onto the face and you can see all the detailed facial expressions and the way the eyes move which is very impressive.

Cons: The only cons with these Graphics are that you need a very powerful computer to run them smoothly. I played this game on a 2.6 Ghz AMD processor with a 128 MB Graphics card and it still took around 30-40 seconds to load a level and jitters a little when the level first starts. The only fault the company could have here is the graphics seem very buggy at times which could be to fault with my computer speed.

Sound/Music: 9/10
Pros: Everyone in the game speaks every piece of dialogue and with the facial expressions it makes it seem as though they are all actually saying the words. Also the music in the nightclub and the sounds in the haunted hotel are outstanding. I actually had to turn the sound down in the haunted hotel because the suspense sounds and the sounds of the girl speaking frightened me so much.

Cons: The speech can jitter and get stuck on certain words as the game decides to load the remaining section of the speech midway through the dialogue, this can get quite annoying.

Gameplay: 8/10
Pros: The RPG/FPS mixture of gameplay works very well. You can interact with so many objects in the game and they move with unbelievable physics which are courtesy of the Half-Life 2 engine. Also the stealth section of the game is outstanding for example you may have to lure an unsuspecting victim into a dark alley or wait for him to need to relieve himself then sneak up behind him and bite his neck, draining his blood. If any other human spots you doing this they will go crazy and you will get a bad mark against your name which adds more to the realism sense of this game.

Cons: The game has many bugs and is very linear. An RPG such as this should not be as linear as the area you have to explore before you advance in doing many missions is relatively small, this should not be the case in RPG's where you should be able to freely roam everywhere exploring as you go. The bugs in this game can get quite annoying, which an advanced graphic system and engine you can expect the game to have slight jerks every now and then and to run slowly but because my computer specifications are quite far above the minimum needed and the jerks and graphic errors are quite frequent i can't imagine how bad they would be on a lesser system. A word of advice don't run this game unless you have at least a Pentium 4 processor or a processor of speed around 1.7/2.5 area a processor in excess of 3Ghz could probably run the game very smoothly unless the bugs are bad programming.

Replay Value: 8/10
Pros: There is so much to collect in this game that you may have missed some missions and want to get every XP point or you may have missed valuable items e.g. the lockpick for free in the tutorial. Also the fact there are so many clans and male or female characters may mean you will want to play the game again as another clan or sex or trying another combination of feats selected at the start.

Cons: The storyline is very linear and apart from the extra missions and alternative missions if you play the game again you will have to do all the missions over again, which can get very tedious.

Overall: 9/10
Pros: The graphics are stunning, the sounds amazing and the storyline and amount of detail put into the game is breathtaking. If you have played the first vampire game or like films like Blade or Underworld this will be the perfect game for you.

Cons: The game is buggy at times and requires a very fast computer to play reasonably smoothly. Other than that the game is solid and there's just the fact its quite linear that stops the game from getting 10/10.

If they ever bring out a patch that fixes the graphical errors and loading time issues ect... then this game will get a 10/10 as this is the main reason i have not given it perfect marks.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/13/04