Despite being almost nine months old, Activision's Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines is a PC game title worthy of attention. This title is of the role-playing genre, but has much in common with action/adventure titles such as Grand Theft Auto. It is apparently based closely on a pen-and-paper role playing game, and has a predecessor, Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption which was released four years prior.
In Bloodlines, you play an initiate vampire. The vampire who made you a vampire, termed your sire, was your lover at the time. This otherwise anonymous person is executed in the prologue by the acting prince. Rather than execute you as well, the prince decides to send you to Santa Monica.
Bloodlines has an open, immersive 3D environment most resembling a first person shooter game. It has both first-person and overhead views, but switches to overhead view for combat. The world is extremely detailed and visually amazing. The outdoor hub areas are large, but not nearly as large as those of the Grand Theft Auto games. Areas are not seamlessly connected, and a load screen is shown when transitioning between them.
Like ">Grand Theft Auto, the environment of Bloodlines has a concept of laws and justice. The numerous peaceful public areas are patroled by police. Observed criminal acts result in police pursuits. Unlike Grand Theft Auto, there is no concept of being captured: the player is either "wasted" or the police give up. The vampire society also enforces a code of behavior in public areas, referred to as The Masquerade. Five masquerade violations end the game, but fewer will attract attention of witch hunters. Masquerade violations can be redeemed by certain side quests.
The combat system in Bloodlines sports both melee and ranged weapons. Weapons and ammunition may be purchased from a shop or acquired by defeating enemies. Several melee and martial art attacks are possible, depending on which direction the player is moving or looking. Guns are handled much like Half Life 2: they have a clip capacity and must be reloaded, a short amount of time spent aiming improves accuracy, and overall accuracy depends on the player's ranged weapon ability.
Bloodlines includes an element of sneaking and stealth. The player may enter a crouched position, in which he or she may go unnoticed by enemies. In the crouched position, an illumination indicator is displayed, along with a detection index of 0-100. An enemy looking in the direction of the player will never notice the player if the detection index is 0, but becomes increasingly likely to notice the player as it increases to 100. While crouched, the player may also execute lethal sneak attacks.
Like most RPGs, magic and supernatural abilities are a facet of Bloodlines. Supernatural abilities can be used, e.g., to enhance the player's vision with Auspex, to directly attack enemies with Blood Strike, or to incapacitate enemies with Trance. The player's supernatural capacity comes in the form of a blood gauge, where each act costs some number of "points", and points are regained by ... drinking blood! Refilling the blood gauge is one of the more entertaining aspects of the game, as it can be done by cornering victims in dark alleys, negotiating with corrupt blood bank employees, or grabbing enemies and sucking their blood in combat. Players with a low blood gauge are not only unable to perform supernatural acts, but are vulnerable to becoming frenzied, where the player becomes uncontrollable and proceeds to attack random innocents.
The quest system in Bloodlines guides gameplay. Like Neverwinter Nights and so many other role-playing games, quests are listed in detail as they are discovered, including the most recent progress made on each. The player usually receives experience points for completing quests, which can be spent increasing stats and abilities.
Bloodlines is touted as having been created using Valve's Source game engine. Many details of the game environment are very similar to Half Life 2. The character face modeling and animation is top-notch, just like HL2. The free object physics and "grab" operate nearly identical to HL2, although I have not found any ad-hoc levers or such impressive uses of physics in Bloodlines. The game has cursory, but impressive optical effects, such as water surfaces, and the uneven windows in the starting room. Also in common with Half Life 2 is the non-seamless transitioning between game areas, and paging activity that worsens over time. Bloodlines seems to leak memory. With high quality textures enabled, the frequent, page file related pauses make it unplayable on a low-end system with only 512MB of memory, after about four hours at least. To its credit, Bloodlines does not share HL2's intrusive, spyware-like Steam system, and transitions between areas, rather than manifesting as annoying pauses, appear intentionally discontinuous.
Overall, Bloodlines seems deserving of an impressive 4.5/5.
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