Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines marks Activision's second computer game based off of White Wolf's popular pen and paper role-playing game. Developed by Troika, Bloodlines seeks to step up the traditional role-playing experience through use of Valve's Half-Life 2 Source engine, and bears very little similarity to Redemption, developed by Nihistic in 2000.

The player takes on the role of a newly created vampire, one that was illegally "embraced" according the laws set forth by the vampire clans. The set of rules and traditions, known as The Masquerade, keeps the ancient society of blood-drinking immortals secret from the mortal world. The Masquerade is taken very seriously, especially in this age of camera-phones and street surveillance, so punishment for breaking it is severe, leading to final death. However, while your sire was beheaded, you were given the unique chance to prove yourself as neophyte and choose your allegiances. Oh yeah, and the end of the world is coming.

Although the graphics in Bloodlines are very nice, they don't match the same visuals that Half-Life 2 has. Although the opening screen allows you to select a clan, gender, and use allotted points to customize your character's different attributes, there is no way to change the look of your character outside of his or her clothes during the course of playing. The night environments look well built, with glowing lights, rainy alleys, sewers, and lots of shadows. Unfortunately, despite the nice look, there is no way to overcome the limited feel of these areas. Everywhere from Santa Monica, where the player first starts, to Downtown L.A., to Hollywood, is limited to just a few under-populated blocks to explore.

The facial expressions, courtesy of the Source engine, look amazing. Our only wish is that the hair, which often looked like glued on wigs, matched the quality of the faces. However, the player quickly learns to overlook this flaw, especially when the dynamic conversation component, which changes according to the character's gender, clan, abilities, and decisions immerse the character into a sense of roleplay like never before. The character's attributes contribute to certain "feats." High persuasion skill will contribute to a vampiric persuasiveness that will allow players to sweet-talk their way through almost any situation to get what they need. These feats will appear in special colors and fonts to separate them from standard conversation choices. Different characters will respond differently to certain feats, depending on what clan and gender you play. For example, some people might not respond well to the intimidation feat, and some male NPC's don't react well to the seduction feat from a man the way a woman might when a female character tries the same feat.

Characters will also have access to a selection of vampire disciplines, including celerity (super speed), invisibility, seeing auras through walls, and offensive abilities like instant death or causing enemies to vomit blood. The character's clan determines the available powers, and experience points either expand these abilities or make them more powerful.

Players also have to keep track of their level of humanity and Masquerade points. Feeding and using overt vampire powers in public will break the Masquerade, leading to punishments and catching the attention of vampire hunters. Losing too much humanity by killing innocent people will increase the character's chance of losing control to the beast within and start to frenzy, attacking anything nearby. Luckily, both attributes can be redeemed either through specific choices, tasks, or use of experience points.

L.A.'s supernatural underground is filled with huge cast of characters and personalities, including the sadistic and deranged, all of whom are voiced very well. The main storyline, with its multiple endings, will take a while to get through, but the side quests add a great deal of flavor to the overall feel of the game. Nothing seems unusually tacked on, and almost all of them provide valuable experience points to expand the different attributes. Some of the quests are put together very creatively and wonderfully capture the sense of the supernatural and how vampire society lives. There is even a part of the game where the player has to find a way through a haunted mansion, which is sure to keep the player on edge. The story of Bloodlines had to be practically rewritten to accommodate using the Malkavian clan, who are all insane but have the remarkable ability to see into the future. Their font and conversation choices are completely unique. If the player pays enough attention, they can see within their own words what the future might hold.

While the choices the player makes significantly changes gameplay, the firearms ability is almost completely useless. It's a given that guns don't hurt vampires very much, although enough bullets are bound to give any character final death. However, things become rather ridiculous when normal humans can withstand a shotgun blast from point-blank range. Bloodlines allows characters to choose between first and third-person modes, and shooting from first-person makes the game easier, but no matter how many points are put into the firearms skill, you never seem to be very good at handling a gun. Uzis always seem to shoot out of control, even with a high gun and strength skill. Using bladed weapons is the best route, considering characters can use blades to strike multiple enemies at once, and it is the best way to harm other vampires. All the guns are pretty standard too, with none that are geared to specifically harm vampires, like phosphorescent bullets, which are actually mentioned in the loading screens. No sign of the famous Buffy the Vampire Slayer stake guns to slow down the undead masses, but there is a very effective flamethrower. The opponent AI isn't the best around. Often, they will choose to stand in one spot and continue shooting, giving the player a chance to completely recover, rather than move to get a better shot. Other times they will dash out blindly instead of seeking cover.

Combat is generally unavoidable. There are specific scenes that absolutely require it, even when the player is using a character from the Toreador clan, which is made up of artists who specialize in using persuasion to get their way instead of brute strength. Combat doesn't feel as smooth as it should in a game like this. It is too easy to overshoot a mark when moving at super speeds. The mouse wheel and bracket keys only let the players cycle through disciplines when the use of direct key commands would have made the game significantly easier. Not to mention, there is no way to set a preferred weapon. Pressing the "1" or "2" keys respectively pull up the first weapons on the list, which are usually the weakest. So, the player has to use the F-keys to move through a list in order to get what they want to use.

AI issues are among a host of minor annoyances that fill this game and ruin an otherwise fantastic roleplaying experience. The most prominent problems are graphics glitches such as flashing texture maps and collision problems that may cause characters to get stuck trying to walk under some tree branches. The cut scenes could have been a little cleaner. There was one point where an NPC came out of enclosed space to talk to our character, then teleported back to his room while continuing to talk to us through the wall. There are cab scenes where the character is still standing sideways inside of it, with his or her head and legs going right through the vehicle. There is one scene that looks like an obvious setup, where the player can shoot a piece of wood and cause a boulder to come down and crush a few guards. Well, it didn't quite work out that way. The boulder fell, but the guards were still standing tall, and were actually holding the boulder up with their heads while shooting.

Yet, even with the glitches and gameplay issues taken into consideration, Bloodlines is a very compelling game. It's worth it to replay the game a few times using different clan options to see how everything works out. It's also fun to toy with the different means of solving problems, whether you prefer traditional investigative skills, sneaking, non-stop violence, or computer hacking - all of which you have plenty of opportunities for. While the glitches can break the roleplaying experience, they don't completely ruin it. In fact, the fantastic facial expressions and impressive conversation engine is enough to make up for game's shortcomings. The graphics and gameplay issues ultimately amount to a number of minor nuisances, which sadly don't appear as though they could have been that hard to fix. Despite this, however, Bloodlines is a roleplaying experience that should usher in a new sense of immersion into environment and character. This is the first of its kind, and it seems like things will only get better from here. For all those who have been dying to become a creature of the night, Bloodlines is definitely the right game.

Our Final ScoreGood

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