Immerse your self a truly involving story about Kindred and Kine society, and the things that go bump in the night.
You play a newly embraced (sired by a vampire, ie: bitten) fledgling vampire in modern day California. Embraced by an unknown woman, seemingly without reason, you’re thrust into a dark new underworld. You begin your ‘un-life’ in urban Santa Monica where the Camarilla, an organization of influential and powerful Kindred formed to uphold and protect the Masquerade plan to exterminate you. A mysterious third party steps in and saves you at the last moment, fighting for your “life”. You are then dumped into your new existence without having the faintest clue about vampires or their society and rules, or where you came from. The biggest question haunting you is “Why? Why was this done to me?” Soon after your release from certain death you leave the auditorium, stepping out into the alley where a rough around the edges Kindred takes it upon himself to introduce you to the basics of playing the game in a sort of tutorial. He also clues you in on some background information on what vampires truly are and do, and their various factions and clans. Even if you haven’t played a vampire game or indeed, any of White Wolf’s RPGs, you will find this game easy to pick up and understand if you are willing to listen to the very believable voice acting by almost every NPC. The game does an excellent job of explaining in memorable terms the history of Vampirism, about the generations that started with Cain, the first vampire and how they split off from the third generation (Cain being the first) into 13 clans, each having their own strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies.
You begin by choosing a name, gender, clan, and distributing your blood points (experience points) into your character sheet. Your sheet is almost a carbon copy of the real pen and paper sheet; however it is much more user friendly, eradicating the need for erasers and white out. They have also streamlined a few annoyances that affected the pen and paper versions, where you had to look up certain feats to see which attributes affect them. Now when you hover your mouse over any particular stat or feat, it will highlight which feat it affects or which stat(s) the feat requires, respectively. This makes it much easier to determine where you need to put your points to improve in areas you are lacking. For example if you can’t pick the lock on a certain door, hover your mouse over the lock picking feat, and it will highlight the dexterity attribute as one way to improve your lock picking, logical right? Alternatively you can just let the game distribute your points automatically, which I chose not to do, because I like to have control over my character, this is why we play RPGs after all.
Bloodlines has done something almost all PC RPGs haven’t, put the role playing back in. From the outset, every choice you make, every interaction with another person, makes a difference in what happens. For example a Malkavian, known for being stark raving mad, would not interact well with society, where a Toreador, known for being elegant, sophisticated and beautiful would slip through Kine (human) society effortlessly. Every clan has its differences and strengths, however the only truly “different” Kindred clan, would be the Nosferatu. Playing as a Nosferatu your appearance is truly horrible, even to most other Kindred, forcing you to stay in the shadows, and travel via the sewers. Troika has integrated the sewers as a viable and necessary way to play for a Nosferatu; however I would imagine it would be more difficult, and therefore I don’t recommend Nosferatu to a first time player. Bloodlines delves into the interactions between the three main Kindred factions, and you get caught up right in the middle of it all. The Camarilla, ever watchful of the Masquerade, and the Sabbat, reveling in their own vampirism, aren’t afraid of telling people what they are, they demand respect for it instead. This naturally causes a problem for the Camarilla and thus the Masquerade. The third faction would be the Anarchs. The Anarchs don’t respect the Camarilla, but they do respect the Masquerade. They do so because they are smart enough to realize it is keeping them safe, unlike the Sabbat who don’t care if they suffer Final Death (the death of a Kindred). Each city is ruled by a Prince who is a powerful enough vampire to hold sway over a city. The Prince’s job is to uphold the Masquerade and make sure the Kine go about their happy lives, much like “Men in Black”, only without the aliens. The intricacy of the social and political interactions going on in this game, and indeed in Vampire the Masquerade as a whole are legion, and far too numerous to go into the detail I would like. However, I will note that the added complexity denotes realism, and it truly is an immersive world where you can forget your own life for a few hours. Graphically, Bloodlines is great, it is also the first game to use Valve’s SOURCE engine, best known for Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike SOURCE. While the engine wasn’t nearly used to its potential, or even in some ways good, the graphics are still great, most notably the facial features of NPCs talking to you. The source engine has amazing facial effects, so good you can almost forget it’s a game, which is helped by the great voice acting. The environments are very detailed and believable, however some areas are amazing and some are a bit lacking. The game at first feels a little claustrophobic due to limitations on the area you can explore, however the areas are so packed with details and things to do and mysteries to uncover, you hardly notice. As well, you quickly open up new areas, and even new cities, each with their own distinct flavor areas and people. The sound in Bloodlines is quite good, and lends to the overall immersion as sound should. The apartment you begin in is above the local Santa Monica pawn shop, with your radio playing as “Deb of the Night” the radio host talks in her sultry voice to her callers, radio commercials play, and best of all the callers and commercials have relevance to the game. Actual people in the game call in, things change as you advance in the game, the television news channel also highlights the events that are going on in the city, that you have a direct connection too. These are both affected by your actions. You will also see the occasional newspaper also headlining the latest goings on. The game play is my only real complaint. I found the initial tutorial lacking in combat practice, also your disciplines (think of them as spells, and your blood as mana or magic power.) aren’t very accessible during combat, you have to reconfigure hotkeys or get used to scrolling with your mouse wheel and hitting space to activate them every few seconds. The controls are a bit sloppy and the frame rate can drop dramatically with a lot going on at once. Even on a fast system you are forced not to confront too many adversaries at a time, three is a challenge and five will bog you down. The combat itself is flawed, for example it can take two or three shots from a 12 gauge shotgun at close range to kill a human in a tee-shirt. And on the subject of guns, if you haven’t spent points in marksmanship your crosshair takes precious seconds to “tighten” into an “accurate” shot. I say “accurate” because with a 6 shot revolver, you would be lucky to get 3 into an enemy at 15 yards, and it generally takes 4 or 5 to kill one, so forget shooting multiple enemies standing close together. Other Kindred are a whole different ballgame, guns are almost useless, bladed weapons are far more effective. Most of the game I used my knife and a couple disciplines to help out. The jumping is also not perfect, and sometimes collision detection is bad. But after all this is an RPG, not a first person shooter, and I have absolutely no complaints in that respect.
In conclusion, Bloodlines takes PC RPG playing to a new level, and I hope other games follow suit, especially White Wolf’s other game, Werewolf the Apocalypse. The role playing elements make this game a favorite of mine in the short time I’ve played it. I’m possibly half way through and already I’ve put many hours into it and I’m not even close to bored, which is more than I can say for most games. Redemption gave us a taste, Bloodlines lets us gorge ourselves. If you like Vampire the Masquerade, if you enjoy RPGs, go buy this game, once you get past the small complaints, you will love it. Note: this game does depict strong graphic violence, some disturbing themes, strong language, and strong sexual themes, it is not a game for young kids, be aware of this before you play it or buy it for your child. That being said, enjoy!