Monday, November 11, 2013

Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines

To be honest about myself, I have never played PC games until the later 00's with games like The Sims and the other bad games like Streets of Sim City and Sim chopper, but then I go back and forth because how the systems turn friendly and unfriendly tword the audiences, especially the bloody rivalry toward Work-full Sony and bloody lazy Microsoft, especially using Sony's game-play. Look's like someone became the corporate fat-cat. No offense meant to actually cool cats... Though they fight each other like white raciest twords the black raciest. What a bloody time of politics...

Speaking of blood and blood related issues, I just recently played though Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, a Duex Ex like game with undead characters, where you play as a new-blood rookie trying to adjust of being a normal vampire...instead of a stupid one. Later, you must help the Masquerade stay masked while honing your survival skills.

I must admit I have both games and I actually prefer Bloodlines over Duex Ex because you don't have to put one eggs in one basket. You can make change your own race, make yourself into a smart ass hacker or a big ass brute -- whichever you like. However, you are stick with one image piece, so custom characters weren't revolutionized until later on in the gaming industry.

Oh, right: before playing the game, you must get the "unofficial" official patch  because the game is actually badly unfinished. You can blame action-vision, as they rushed the project out the door and even closed the developer company that developed the game.  We can tell that they where too focused on modern military shooters than just fun, creative gameplay.

There's a reason the company is in trouble...but not as much as E.A. Luckily, they formed a new company and make THE Fallout series. here's the real kicker: How come they didn't make a werewolf spin-off? They have different breeds as well as their blood-rival were-wolfs which have their own colorful back-stories.

But moving on, while the game plays like Duex Ex, you can preform Blood Magick which drains your blood that is required to living. Then you have to get more blood from humans or just go down to the rat-buffet in the sewers, which is much safer in some scenarios for couple of plot-points in the game.

However, that leads to an odd difficulty curve within the boss fights, as if you are not prepared, you tend to either die or use Mega-Man like exploits to kill the boss. And there are A LOT of bosses, so come prepare. Thankfully, there's a magick trick where you  use your blood as a boomerang to hit your target and, sometimes steal some blood from them. As much as Link uses them to steal hearts in the Zelda series. God, I hope Nintendo doesn't make him a vampire; They already made him a werewolf.

A smart move, even though it can be a issue for speed-runners, is they made the missions linear so to prevent sequence breaking for people who want to know details about the quest. Some missions are ok, but when you know all the back-story and can predict who and what, then things can get somewhat dull.

Another issue is the money system, as they are dated and, even with good bartering, has little pay-back. you can often sell the "evil" human's weapons, but you cannot stack weapons like in the fallout series, where you can carry a huge stack of weapons and sell. I know this game was made when the better-designed interface in gaming where starting to appear, but sometimes you just have to grab them all. (tm)

The last issue is the endings. Yes, there is more than one ending, but some are just a different rendition of the first one. While, yes, the main-ending makes you feel like a total bad ass, the others felt like they where rushed in the last minute. If you guys want the best ending, the only hint I can give you is do NOT trust anyone, some of the fractions aren't even truly trustworthy. While there is one or two ending that is at least different, it dose feel like it's sequel bait.

In the end, Bloodlines is the game that help those disappointed in Duex Ex: Invisible Wars and help remind people how most RPG should be. Those who like Duex Ex and want a good game with a Halloween-type setting, this is a game for you. However, this game is dark and not recommended to squeamish people who have the phobia to blood.  Seems I have more scaring to do

...Mwahahhaha!~

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