I've rarely found a game, that was so challenging to review. Despite my adoration for this game I need to write the review warts and all, so to speak as Vampire Bloodlines is the definition of a mixed bag. For all the good in this game their are large chunks of bad, so I'll just be blunt about this, if you don't enjoy RPG's you can just quit reading right now and not buy this game, if you don't enjoy games that aren't very well made when it comes to combat you can just quit reading right now as well because this game definitely is not for you. Now, if you're a fan of Role-Playing games, then this game is by all means worth looking into as it offers a whole lot. Vampire Bloodlines is the first game to liscense the source engine and as such it does look very good. However when you compare it to the real creme de la creme of graphics it just doesn't have as appealing of an aesthetic as perhaps it could have had. The game looks good, but their really isn't much that really stands out as superior and above and beyond what i'm expecting after Doom 3, Farcry and HL2 came out ahead of Vampire. That's not to say that their is nothing to like here, everything is rendered fairly competently and they do a decent job of presenting a sort of believable, quasi-realistic game world. Probably the best thing about the game's graphics is it's use of the facial animation technology that's built into the Source Engine. You're gonna be looking at a lot of faces so you'll appriciate this. However that's not to say that even this goes without problems, a few of the characters heads just look wierd. Some of the women have men's chins, some people don't look like they have a neck but rather just a floating head. These are generally reserved for a few of the insignificant characters who you won't be spending more than one or two conversations with in general but it still can get a bit wierd looking. The 3rd person animation looks really bad as well, this is especially true in combat where everything really looks like a canned animation. The Music and sound effects for this game are really forgettable and nothing really stood out here for better or for worse in my estimation. One of the game's real bright spots is the excellent and copious amounts of voice acting in the game. All the dialogue is properly voiced, not only that it was all done very well and everything just sounds great. People speak with the right pitch, pacing, and emotional feel that you're expected to get from the text. IF you're talking to a skanky schizophrenic or a powerful leader you're definitely gonna be able to tell the difference just by the sound of the character's voice. Most of the gameplay consists of first person shooting, or 3rd person brawling; however their are many situations that can be navigated around by stealth and a few of the game's classes are going to require this. It also has a very good class system that allows for several different styles of playing through the game weather you want to play as a warrior, mage, shape shifter, seductress or stealthy assasin vamp the option is there for you based on your class. Each class will have access to some exclusive powers and it really adds replay value there. This is where the game starts to loose steam however , as the action really feels awkward, with guns nearly useless compared to hand to hand or melee weapons. My first trip through i put some points in melee and some into firearms and only used guns like 2 times in the whole game. Furthermore the combat system just isn't all that deep or well feeling. It has the feeling of turn based combat without the tactical nature of it, just keep wacking on the mouse button and occasionally invoke a power with the other one. It really, really could have used a better combat system. In a few parts of the game the missions really become monotonous because their is too much combat in too short of a space, it just isn't all that much fun to mow down hordes of fairly regular guys. The Boss Fights really aren't all that much fun save perhaps one, they don't offer much of a challenge, and very few of them have any sort of trick to beating them except using your most powerful attacks on them at the proper range and pounding away until you do enough damage. Furthermore stealth isn't exactly the best handeled in the game. The game does provide you with a light meter to let you know how lit up you are but even in the dark it really doesn't feel like you're dark. Furthermore the enemies are just dumb when it comes to using stealth against them. I mean sometimes i could hide in places that no one would actually be able to hide in, like a slightly shady corner of a huge room in a museum exhibit. The game's story and universe are both pretty good if not wowingly amazing. The story revolves around some sort of possible disaster that may or may not afflict vampires. It takes place many years after the original game and introduces us to some really amazing characters. The games plot doesn't have any amazing plot twists or new ideas but the execution of how you experience it is pretty darn good. Like I mentioned before, the characters are quite interesting, and have real life to them. One of my favorite techniques is how they always subtley remind you that you're dealing with vampires, i responded yes sir once to a character and he went on about how he'd served with Napoleon. Several of the characters were real winners, Jack being my favorite of them. When it comes to the characters the reason they were so good is that the dialogue was so well written, it really has some lifelike dialgogue, somethign that's sorely missing in video games. One final note to complain about is that thise game does still suffer from some bugs. Originally it had some real show stoppers but those have been fixed with the 1.2 patch that i played the game with. I experienced 3 crashes to the desktop, some clipping issues and several of the larger areas gave my PC framerate issues. I understand it's not top of the line but with a system that has ran Doom 3, HL2 and farcry without blinking i expected to be able to run vampire better than this. Perhaps worst of all in the area of technical glitches was the fact that the load times for this game were pretty darn long, and sometimes you'll experience a few in a row and it'll be like damn that's a long time. I've got 512 megs of ram, which is double the requirement on a system that beats the numbers by some margin and it's like this. I'd hate to see what they were like on a 384 or 256 meg system. Conversely i've heard that upgrading to a gig of ram is a help for this game. Well Vampire, clearly isn't a game for everyone; but if you're a fan of RPG's, especially western ones that combine action gaming and role playing with an emphasis on role playing then Vampire is definitely worth considering. It's quality writing and interesting characters will keep you through the game.
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