Bloodlines has some rough spots, but there's enough gothic goodness here for vampire fans to sink their teeth into.
User Rating: 7.4 | Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines PC
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines has gotten a considerable amount of attention over the course of its development, due in no small part to the fact that it is the first game to license the Source engine developed by Valve for Half-Life 2. And the technology behind the game is definitely solid and versatile. However, the game's attempts to combine first-person shooter gameplay with some role-playing elements leaves each element feeling a little unpolished and unsatisfying. Still, there's enough gothic goodness here that anyone with a particular interest in the subject matter should find Bloodlines enjoyable. The thought of being a vampire certainly has its allure. You get to live forever and wear really cool outfits. But in the world of Bloodlines, there are some things about it that really suck, too. As the game begins, you're spending a wild night with someone you met at a club who demonstrates for you what sharp teeth they have by plunging them into your neck. The next thing you know, you're being ushered into vampire society, which is in the midst of some pretty fierce political struggle right now. A group known as the Camarilla has claimed dominion over all vampires and enforces the Masquerade, the idea that vampires should blend in with human society and not do anything obviously vampiric or otherwise supernatural in the presence of regular people. Violating the Masquerade by sinking your fangs into someone or using one of your powers where others can see you will make your life more difficult, and five Masquerade violations means it's all over. Not all vampires support the Camarilla's aims, though, and over the course of the game you'll participate in the ideological battle between those vampires who seek to blend in, and those who would rather dominate mankind. It adds up to an interesting trek through a well-developed vampire subculture populated by all manner of colorful characters. When the game begins, you create your character. You have to choose one of seven clans for your vampire to belong to. Each clan has its advantages and disadvantages and its unique combination of three disciplines, which are the equivalent of magic spells. (Using disciplines costs blood, so you'll need to feed from time to time on humans, or rats! Yum!) You can determine your clan affiliation either by simply choosing the clan you wish to belong to, or letting the game assign you a clan based on your answers to a series of rather goofy hypothetical questions. Then you're given a few points to distribute throughout your various attributes (strength, charisma, intelligence and so forth), abilities (things like firearms, stealth, and, of course, finance!), and the aforementioned disciplines. You can dictate how each point is spent yourself, or turn on the increasingly standard autolevel function and let the computer spend your points however it sees fit. Then you're set loose into Los Angeles. The game's L.A., aside from the occasional landmark, bears little resemblance to the actual city, and is instead a kind of gothic alternate L.A. in which skyscrapers are adorned by gargoyles, ghosts haunt the ruins of once grand hotels, and every other thug carries around a tire iron. Your travels will begin in Santa Monica, and eventually take you through downtown L.A., Hollywood, and Chinatown. Each area is also divided up into three different types of zones: the four urban hubs where you'll probably be spending most of your time are called Masquerade zones; you can feed or use your powers there but will violate the Masquerade if you're seen doing it. In combat zones, you can do whatever you want without violating the Masquerade, and in Elysium zones, which are usually areas in which you interact with important characters, the game simply doesn't let you equip weapons or use disciplines. And speaking of interacting with characters, doing so is one of the more interesting aspects of the game, mainly because the characters you speak to tend to look great and be very expressive with their faces and body language. The performances given by the characters you meet aren't as incredible or as seamlessly integrated into the flow of the game as those in the game the Source engine was originally developed for, but they're still impressive. You'll interact with characters through a dialogue interface which usually offers up options both kind and cruel, and your choices can have an effect on how your future interactions with that character play out. Sometimes you'll have a few options that result in the same response, as if the game is trying to trick you into thinking that you have more control over the way things progress than you actually do; nevertheless, there are enough options available that you can develop friendly or hostile relationships with just about any character you choose. You also have some freedom when it comes to how you tackle many of the game's quests. Typically you can go in with guns blazing, or attempt a more stealthy approach, crawling through shadows and silently killing enemies; on occasion, you can also try to talk your way through a situation. There's no way around combat sometimes, though, and unfortunately, despite the fact that the technology behind the game was developed for a truly outstanding first-person shooter, the combat in this game leaves a little something to be desired. There is a nice little array of vampire powers available in the game and they work well enough, provided you've got enough blood stored up to use them. Depending on your clan affiliation, you might be able to do things like summon animals to attack your foes, move at super-speed, or make your enemies violently ill, which are all helpful in combat situations. Firearms, however, don't work quite so well. Strangely, shooting an enemy in the leg does as much damage as shooting them in the head. You're probably better off getting in close and using a melee weapon. You can perform different combo moves depending on which direction you're moving at the moment of your attack, but the control for melee combat just isn't precise enough or responsive enough for it to be truly satisfying. The behavior of other characters can also sometimes make combat a bit less engaging than it should be. Because you automatically heal from any wounds you suffer, it's a viable strategy to bust into a room full of baddies, do as much damage as you can, and then scurry back into the previous room to wait around and heal up for a bit. Sometimes enemies will give chase, sometimes they won't, but typically it's not that hard to find a place to hide and recover. Humans can also wildly overreact to things you do, as when our attempt to crawl past the desk at a health clinic resulted in a security guard whipping out his gun and opening fire and the police pulling up outside. Strangely, innocent people caught in the crossfire of your battles will sometimes just stand there as bullets hit them and their blood gets spattered on the wall. A few non-combat-oriented aspects of the game also don't feel like they got the attention they deserved and can break the illusion of the gameworld. Some of the most unfortunate examples of this are the ubiquitous computers you'll come across and use. The game is clearly set in the present, so the fact that every computer runs on a very basic text interface just doesn't fly. A little more effort here to make the look and feel of the computers more believable would have gone a long way. It's also worth noting that each of the dance clubs you enter must be among the most dead in Los Angeles; instead of dance floors packed with creatures of the night getting their groove on, you'll see only a few brave souls shaking their stuff in otherwise mostly vacant rooms. (This might have something to do with the fact that the DJ at each club only plays one song all night long.) And perhaps the biggest difference between the game's L.A. and the real thing is that the roads in the game are completely devoid of cars, which just seems silly. Bloodlines looks really great. The game has an effective sense of style and its vision of a gothic Los Angeles is rather compelling. Light reflects off of surfaces in a naturalistic way and character models are detailed and very expressive. In the sound department, things are okay, though they don't measure up to the visuals. The voice acting is, for the most part, quite good; it can sometimes be a bit over the top but that's just fine considering the heightened style of the game as a whole. However, enemies will sometimes repeat the same lines too frequently. The incidental music is decent but not memorable, and the licensed music in the game all fits the tone of the game very well, but when the denizens of a club are dancing to the same song all night, that indicates that there just isn't enough of it. Also, the sound effects don't always fit the onscreen action very well. You might hear a constantly looping effect of an intense shootout taking place outside the warehouse you're in, for instance, but, upon leaving the warehouse, not see evidence that such a large battle took place, or you might notice that the sound of your footsteps isn't quite synchronized with your footfalls or sounds considerably heavier or lighter than it looks. Also, while Bloodlines runs very smoothly most of the time, we did encounter some occasional stutters in sound that froze the game up momentarily. Bloodlines offers numerous optional quests, so those players who wish to race through it can probably do so in twenty hours or so while those who prefer to seek out every little detail may find that the experience lasts them considerably longer. Some quests are little more than busywork but some of them, such as one that leads you on a creepy investigation of a haunted old hotel, are really engrossing. There's also considerable replay value for those who wish to experiment with different powers and dialogue options or try different approaches to some of the game's quests. There are numerous endings as well, though a save near the end of the game will allow you to access them without playing through the entire game again. As an action game, Bloodlines doesn't quite hold up. The combat is a bit too clunky, and the behavior of your enemies just isn't sophisticated enough. It works a bit better as a role-playing game, but this element takes a back seat much of the time and has a few rough spots of its own. Still, if the thought of experiencing the life of a modern day vampire appeals to you, Bloodlines just might be worth sinking your teeth into. 
