New game based on the HL Source Engine. It's a sequel to a reasonably good game where you play a new born vampire as a sort of First-Person-Role-Play-Game.
Set in LA you join a world of Vampires split into 13 clans and grouped into two rival factions. The clan you choose to become decides how the game plays for you. For example if you choose the Toreador Clan you become a physically weak but beautiful and mesmerising vampire. On the other hand should you choose to be a Nosferatu then you are so hideous you can't show your face in public, but to counter that you have the power to make yourself almost invisible and sneak everywhere. Other Clans give other unique powers.
It plays a lot like Deus Ex and all dialogue is voice acted rather than text based. The story is, so far, quite interesting and there are some really well developed characters.
On the other hand the source engine hasn't been used as well as it might. It's got good graphics but doesn't look anything like HL2. And some of the cut scenes are a bit buggy.
I'm not sure what sort of score it will get in the reviews, but I'm having fun with it so far. If you've got £30.00 going spare you could do worse.
8/10
Horrifyingly bug-filled, but when you learn to live with the bugs it's a very engrossing affair. Much better than Redemption was.
Kind of regretting my character choice though (male Toreador), as it's probably the ugliest player model of the bunch.
If you are refering to bugs in the cut scenes then sadly that's down to UK sensors. They demanded cuts even though the thing is an 18 certificate :angry: Sadly cutting these scenes at the very last minute didn't work too well and they seem very dis-jointed.
Other than that and a couple of random crashes I didn't notice any bugs?
No, I'm referring to:
* Desktop crashes
* Failure to load the game grashes
* Strange animation bugs
* Ragdoll issues (in particular with ladies' skirts ending up stuck out to the side at 90 degrees)
* People popping up from nowhere right in front of your eyes
* Holes in the maps
And probably a whole bunch more. Most of them you can live with though.
Loving this game, I'm playing a Male Brujah, very handy with a fire axe ;)
I dont think the Source engine is being especially stretched though, some of the graphics look very plain :/ But the voice acting is awesome, and there's enough depth there to keep you playing for weeks.
Top game :)
This game was almost hit and miss for me. It is entirely bug riddled, as mentioned above, it has painful loading times and the source engine is performing about as well has a dead rat. I really can't understand how they make smaller, less detailed environments on the source engine that perform a hundred times worse than Half-Life 2.
Putting behind my bitter whining, it truely is an excellent game, if you can endure the poor system performance, miscellaneous animation and map glitches, long loading times and apparent lack of care from Troika in any way shape or form. Infact, it is actually so much of a good game i would recommend it dispite it's numerous flaws.
To be honest, i was never a big fan of Redemption. It seemed to entirely miss the mark with me. It was not quite RPG enough, but not quite hack'n'slash enough either, and generally i overlooked it after a half hour's play, but Bloodlines has smacked me around the head and made me take notice. The world is gritty, the quests are numerous and the gameplay is diverse enough to keep you hanging on.
It's got stealth elements, it has multiple solutions to any one task and for once "magic" users haven't been given the shaft. I don't think i've ever enjoyed playing an RPG as a magic user, but Bloodlines has actually made it not suck, and made "blood magic" users pretty powerful, against the right foe.
Probably one of my favourite features is that the characters aren't shy about letting slip the odd bit of swearing here and there. It'd seem pretty ridiculous without it, really. "Oh darn you! That smarts!" It's a dark world, an adult game, and for once, some language that doesn't make us all think "why the hell didn't he just say f***?" (ironic censorship).
And without a doubt, my absolute favourite thing, play the game as a Malkavian. They're crazy, absolutely crazy, and their dialogue reflects it perfectly. I've had more than a few laughs at it all and it leaves you wondering what the hell you mean when you say "Where is the house of warez, oh nasty dude?"
In a perfect world, this game would be free from bugs and not quite so much a chore to play, but if you get stuck in and really try to see pass the mass of errors, there really is a great game underneath.
Agreed completly. This proves beyond all arguement that the one single most important element in any computer game is 'gameplay' Without it you have nothing and with it you can forgive a game almost anything. I've finally come to the conclusion that this game, for all it's faults is better than HL2. There's more immersion, more interaction and more depth here than in Valves offering. Had they exploited the HL2 engine better, not had to hack chunks of it out for our moronic censors, and been better coders this would be a really superb game.
QuoteOriginally posted by smilodon@Dec 13 2004, 03:13 PM
Agreed completly. This proves beyond all arguement that the one single most important element in any computer game is 'gameplay' Without it you have nothing and with it you can forgive a game almost anything. I've finally come to the conclusion that this game, for all it's faults is better than HL2. There's more immersion, more interaction and more depth here than in Valves offering. Had they exploited the HL2 engine better, not had to hack chunks of it out for our moronic censors, and been better coders this would be a really superb game.
[post=71824]Quoted post[/post]
I couldn't say if it's better than Half-Life 2, more immersive, yes, more diverse, yes, but i _really_ like Half-Life 2. :)
And as to gameplay being the most important thing, yeah, that's the product of being brought up on a Spectrum ZX 128K +2. :)