Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines

Spoilers!

So, this game I’ve played a few times now and thought that I should share it with you all.

This game is basically eat or be eaten, sort of like a survival of the fittest and all that,
It starts with the player (you can choose male or female) being a newly bitten vampire and is facing judgement for being ‘sired’ wrongly. The ‘sire’ gets killed but you get spared for some reason and from there you are pulled into a web of lies, plots and power battles between vampires of different ranks/clans and later on werewolves among others.

The game is filled with lots of ways to do things, like sneak or just go head on. You can even stand from afar and blast those poor people open by ‘disciplines’ or other things. ‘Disciplines’ being a sort of magic in this game that certain vampires use. Different clans uses different ‘disciplines’.

You have to keep a look out on your blood levels as well, if it ventures too far down, you’ll are most likely go into a frenzy and kill anything that is close to get that blood back, and that will violate your Masquerade and if you’re giving into the beast and kills humans, you lose humanity points as well. The less humanity/ masquerade points you have, you’ll soon get hunted for too much violation and even killed.

I played as a female Malkavian and loved every second of it. The dialog options with both mortals and vampires, the chances to talk with the tv, the radio and even street lights was a really nice twist to the game, I also read that the Malkavians heard voices of warning in their head whenever danger was near but, sadly, I never heard that. The dialog options over all varies a lot as well due to if the player is charismatic, intimidating or having ‘disciplines’ that would let you probe inside their heads.

The story takes you on an unforgettable journey around a few different places on the look out for a certain object that many vampires desire. From clubs to a prosthetic makers dark place, to the top of a wealthy tower as well as down to an abandoned hospitals basement, that’s the lair of some creepy things.
I played the game ‘vanilla’ and never got around to testing the mods and patches there is for this game. Maybe I should sometime in the future.

One level in the game that is really worth mentioning is the haunted house that the main story leads you to. That is one scary place to be in and so well done. I can’t count how many times I’ve jumped from being startled in that place and how I’ve not wanted to in there. I’ve tried to do anything to slip past it, but it’s needed to continue.

I love the game, and feel that it is really a worth game to play, it’s a little bit linear in the main story as you move to new places thanks to the storyline, but you can go fix different armors (especially fun ones when being Malkavian), get weapons like guns or swords or just use your fists and explore what that place have to offer, and what people to kill or not at the moment. You can also just go to a club and dance for a while before continuing on. The graphics are really awesome and the voices are nice as well.

The game ends in different way depending on how you played it and how you chose to go with in the end, I chose the Camarilla and LaCroix, it was …fun.