Review: Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines

This one has been a long time coming.  My friend got this for me around Christmas time and I told him I would review it as soon as I beat it.  Which is a deal I actually have ongoing.  If there is a game you would like me to review and I do own it, you can request it and I'll get right on doing so.  If I don't own it, you can send it my way and I shall drop what I'm currently playing for fun to get through it for a review.  But anyway on to Bloodlines.

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (here on out referred to as Bloodlines) is a marvelous RPG from Troika Games, published by Activision.  Based off of the World of Darkness Live Action Roleplay and tabletop system, Bloodlines has you playing as a vampire in the World of Darkness universe.  The whole idea of the World of Darkness system is that you get to play as the things that go bump in the night, you are the monster and loving it.

The Tremere clan.  Blood sorcerers. 

As far as character creation goes, Bloodlines gives you plenty of options.  There are seven "clans", or races, of vampire that you can choose from.  Each has it's own strengths and weaknesses and special abilities that they can employ.  Nosferatu are sneaky and physically powerful and can gain more blood from animals than other clans can, however they are physically disfigured and therefore cannot improve their looks or have any skill in seduction.  Tremere have special access to blood magic.  Toreadors are socialites and are amazing at talking their way through situations.  Malkavians are plain crazy and are one of the most interesting clans to play (apparently there is literally a point where you can talk to a stop sign).  However if you don't know anything about any of them and just want to dive right into the game, there is an option to take a personality test that will generate a character based on your answers. The amount of replay value that this system provides is incredible.  Each clan is completely unique in terms of how they play and the experience you will have by playing as them.  In addition to gameplay mechanics being different for each, characters in the story will respond differently to your character depending on what clan you play as.

 Which brings us around to the story.  The story is fantastic.  It's engaging, rich, and actually makes you think about what you say to various NPCs.  There is a lot of politics going on in Bloodlines between the clans, and if you want to stay ahead you need to be careful about what you say and to who you say it.  Dialogue and your actions throughout the game will change the ending, but only in the sense of what options are available to you.  Otherwise it is still a push button to choose ending, which honestly is fine for this game.

Vampires DO NOT like fire.

So the story is good, what about the gameplay?  Gameplay is great.  The game can be played in first or third person, though sometimes it forces you into one or the other, namely first person when using a gun or other ranged weapon and third when using a melee weapon.  Honestly what I love the most about this game's gameplay is the fact that there is so much variety to it.  One level you may be busting in and knocking heads together and defending a location, another level may play out like a survival horror experience.  Then you're on to an investigation to track down a serial killer, then you need to manipulate someone into doing what your quest giver wants, then you may be off to steal an artifact without being noticed and without killing anyone.  This game is all over the map in terms of mission types.  But the great part is that it does all of them very well.  The variety does not affect the quality of each experience.  In addition, there is no set way to do each mission.  You could stealth your way through, talk your way through, even just bust in and start shooting.  It's up to you on how to do it, and the game will reward you for going the extra mile and finding creative ways to do missions and completing side objectives.  This adds even further replay value to the experience, testing out all the different ways you could go about doing a mission.

Blood sorcery is fun.  

In more specific terms of gameplay, most of the mechanics work really well in bloodlines.  Sneaking can actually be effective and the HUD provides a meter that tells you how likely you are to be spotted if you haven't been already.  Powers are fun and effective, having everything from mind control, to invisibility, to summoning spectral animals, to supernatural strength, to animal forms, even blood magic.  Everything has a purpose and everything works well, and as your powers and stats increase you really feel the change and the power growing.  Which brings me to character advancement.  Bloodlines uses a point buy system instead of the traditional level up system of most RPGs.  Each mission will give you experience points which you can then spend on improving stats, skills, or special powers.  You can also spend these points whenever you like, so if you encounter a challenge that you need more sneak for, or maybe need to be stronger, or more persuasive, or you just can't afford that new gun you want and need some more bartering, or can't quite open that lock, you can spend some points that you have lying around to get you past the challenge.  In addition to this we have the blood system.  Everything in Bloodlines revolves around blood.  You need blood to fuel your powers and you need blood to quickly recover health.  You can get blood by drinking from blood packs or directly feeding on humans or rats (though rats are not very effective, unless you're a nosferatu).  To feed on someone you can grab them, sink your fangs in, and have at it.  But if you want to do it this way you have to be very careful that you do it when no one else is around.  There is a system in place called the masquerade system.  If you are seen doing vampiric things outside of a combat zone, such as feeding or using obvious powers, you will violate the masquerade.  Each time you violate the masquerade, the world becomes a bit more dangerous.  Hunters will start coming after you and such which is a bad time for all involved.  You can get masquerade violations back by doing certain quests.  If you're in a combat zone, you're not at risk of violating the masquerade ever so go nuts.  However, if you really need blood and have a high enough seduction, you can seduce people to feed on them.  There is a good reason for all this feeding outside of the fact that you need blood for your powers.  If your blood drops to really low points, you risk going into a frenzy.  When you're frenzied, you lose control of your character entirely and an AI takes over that will fight and attempt to feed at all costs.  As it should sound, frenzy is really bad.  But you can avoid it by having a high humanity.  Humanity reduces the risk of frenzy, and the lower your humanity the greater the risk of frenzy.  You can get humanity from certain quests where you do "good" things for people, but you can lose humanity by killing people outside of combat zones and doing other "bad" things.  It sounds like a lot to keep track of, but it is relatively easy to do so and adds up to a very unique and enjoyable experience.

However, while this game may be excellent, there are some aspects that are not so excellent.  The main thing is combat.  The combat is...well lets just say it's pretty bad.  The gunplay is loose and iffy.  It doesn't really have a satisfying punch to it and gunfights turn out to be either you popping up out of cover to fire off a single shot, hope you hit, and drop back down before you get return fire to the face, or running backwards trying to fruitlessly hit an annoyingly fast melee combatant who will drop your health like a rock if he gets within striking distance.  Melee combat isn't much better.  If you're in melee combat you're already right up in an enemy's face, giving them an easy target to go for.  If you're going for ranged opponents they will just keep running away and unloading into you, making your health drop quite significantly before you can get a hit in.  The best you can hope for is to knock them over as part of your three hit combo and keep wailing on them and chaining knockdowns together.  In addition, the melee combat does not have much variety.  It pretty much boils down to mashing the attack button and hoping you can knock your opponent over.  The developers tried to mix it up by saying that you do different stuff if you hold down a movement key while doing your attacks, but they just feel like animation variations on the same three hit combo.  Overall, combat pretty much just boils down to exploiting the system as much as possible.

All in all, this game is amazing.  I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes RPGs or the World of Darkness as a tabletop/LARP.  Actually, I would recommend this game to just about everyone, it has a little something for all gamers.  The only people I could think to not recommend this to would be to people who would get impatient with the less than stellar combat and might give up easily from some of the problems this can cause.

As always, thanks for reading!  Leave a comment on your way out and if you'd like me to review a game or discuss a topic let me know in the comments!

Gamer out.