Post by Iyouboushi on Nov 20, 2004 2:54:14 GMT -6
This game is amazing. So much, in fact, that I thought I should post my own little review here.
First off let me tell you that people are having severe problems installing and running this game. Apparently the company who made the game thought they'd be smart and add all sorts of anti-piracy tricks. However, these "tricks" are conflicting with legit copies. I, myself, had one hfil of a time getting it installed. Getting it to run again was another huge problem. But finally I got it to install and I was off to create my vampire.
For those who don't know, Vampire the Masquerade is a vampire paper-and-pen RPG by Whitewolf. It's been around for ages (probably not as long as D&D, but close). It's set in modern day and basically there's 7 vampire clans (I can't name them all) who have to adhere to certain rules. This game takes that and makes an RPG that might rival Knights of the Old Republic in size and quality.
When you start the game you get to pick whether or not you're male or female. You also get to pick which one of the seven clans you wish to be a member of. If you can't decide you can select another way of creating your character where the game will ask you a series of questions and put you into the clan that matches your answers best. For me I already knew which clan I wanted to be--Toreador. They're the closest to humans and are considered the best looking. Plus the male Toreador model had red hair (how ironic). After picking which clan and gender you want to play as you then get to configure your character sheet--your stats and skills/abilities. Once you decide how you want to assign your starting points you then accept and get ready for the ride of your life.
Your char is converted into a vampire one night in a hotel. Moments later a raid happens and you're captured. You're brought to a huge auditorium where the Camarilla "Prince" of Los Angeles (the Camarilla makes up of all the 7 clans) declares that many a vamps have asked him for permission to create a fledgling but your sire had not asked for permission. The punishment is death. After all, he has to keep order and can't have everyone going around creating new vamps whenever they felt like it. Your sire is beheaded before your eyes (though they censored the actual beheading in my version, I hear there's versions where they don't). Now you're left wondering if you shall fall under the same fate.
But wait, the Prince is in a generous mood. He declares that you may live as long as you are willing to learn the ways and rules of the Camarilla. Also, he informs you, you must prove yourself to him. You will be going to Santa Monica for your first task. As soon as you leave that area you're introduced to Jack, who will teach you the ropes (if you choose to go through the tutorial). Afterwhich you're ready to start your mission.
Anyway, getting away from the story (which is indeed very deep, though I briefly just summorized what I've seen thus far) the actual gameplay is crazy. It reminds me of Knights of the Old Republic. You can talk to a great deal of the people you meet. Each will have their own voice which is lip synched to their face (well, as long as you don't lag.. which I sometimes do to my old comp). The dialogs you have with characters is heavilly dependent on what skills you have. For example, my Toreador has a high suduction and persuasion score. So I might be able to talk my way out of situations (or seduce people) that other characters wouldn't be able to.
It's also very open ended. There's no "wrong" way to play your char as long as you obey the rules of the Masquerade (preventing the humans from figureing out that you're a vampire--five mistakes on this and the game is over). If you want to play your char as a straight-forward "tell me or else" type of guy you can. Or you could play as I've been doing, a man who likes to charm his way through situations and seduce people into giving him information. It's all up to you.
The cities themselves (though I've only seen one I can assume it's the same for all) feel like actual cities except for one minor regard. That is that there's no cars. There's a ton of people walking around, including cops who WILL go after you if you do something illegal, but no cars to be seen. I imagine that with so many people walking around that adding cars would be overkill to people's machines.
The people, as I've mentioned, seem like real people. With a lot of dialog (that may change depending on your skills) and lip synching it feels like they're really talking to you. The graphics for them are pretty good too, especially coming from me (I've got a video card that can just barely play the game).
There's also a lot of little fun things in there. It kind of reminds me of Grand Theft Auto sometimes. For example, in your first haven (your inn room, basically) there's a radio that you can listen to. The radio has a dj that talks then goes to commercials, like a real radio station. So far my favorite radio commercial is for "Friggen Chicken" ("This is cat right? Are you feeding me cat?!") There's also a TV station but I didn't watch it long enough to find out everything about it. I also noticed (and laughed at) that your email that can be checked with the laptop in the room will receive spam. It just adds a level of realisim to the game.
Now the downside of it: the game is buggy and laggy on my machine. I'm pretty sure that most of it is due to my low video card and low amount of RAM (I just barely have enough at 384 MB). Also a thing that drives me up the wall is the loading times. It takes a very, very long time to load the main "hub" (the main street that connects to all the other buildings). Some buildings also take awhile to load. It's annoying when you have to go through several buildings to complete one mission and each time you enter or exit a building you have to wait 5 minutes for the area to load. Also, the combat system is weird. I want to say it's bad, but I think it's more of the fact that I just suck at it and thus can't blame the system. I'm still getting used to it.
Another downside is the lack of customization with your character. You get your choice of one model per gender per clan (so two per clan). That's it. You can't change the hair colors or anything else. You CAN get new clothing later on in the game, but it's fairly limited (I think someone worked out that there's 70 pieces of equipment in the entire game for all 7 clans, or 10 pieces of equipment per clan, so 5 per gender). I kind of wish there had been more. Then again, my char already has red hair. I can't ask for much more.
Overall, this game is awesome. The fact that it's a full open RPG that has so many different ways to approach a single problem with a decent storyline (so far anyway) makes it quite-possibly the best RPG I've played all year (not that I play that many to begin with).
I would say "run out and check it out immedately" but the problem of getting it installed and running right makes me say "hold off on it for awhile" until they've released a patch or two to fix some of the major bugs. Even then, you have to have a machine that matches mine in graphics card and RAM (and it'd be better if you had a BETTER machine than mine) before you even think about attempting to play this game.
I'll be posting my stories that I've had in this game in this topic. I would post pictures but I obviously can't (since keenspace is dead and I've got nowhere else to host them). If I find a way to post them I will. For now, stories will do.
First off let me tell you that people are having severe problems installing and running this game. Apparently the company who made the game thought they'd be smart and add all sorts of anti-piracy tricks. However, these "tricks" are conflicting with legit copies. I, myself, had one hfil of a time getting it installed. Getting it to run again was another huge problem. But finally I got it to install and I was off to create my vampire.
For those who don't know, Vampire the Masquerade is a vampire paper-and-pen RPG by Whitewolf. It's been around for ages (probably not as long as D&D, but close). It's set in modern day and basically there's 7 vampire clans (I can't name them all) who have to adhere to certain rules. This game takes that and makes an RPG that might rival Knights of the Old Republic in size and quality.
When you start the game you get to pick whether or not you're male or female. You also get to pick which one of the seven clans you wish to be a member of. If you can't decide you can select another way of creating your character where the game will ask you a series of questions and put you into the clan that matches your answers best. For me I already knew which clan I wanted to be--Toreador. They're the closest to humans and are considered the best looking. Plus the male Toreador model had red hair (how ironic). After picking which clan and gender you want to play as you then get to configure your character sheet--your stats and skills/abilities. Once you decide how you want to assign your starting points you then accept and get ready for the ride of your life.
Your char is converted into a vampire one night in a hotel. Moments later a raid happens and you're captured. You're brought to a huge auditorium where the Camarilla "Prince" of Los Angeles (the Camarilla makes up of all the 7 clans) declares that many a vamps have asked him for permission to create a fledgling but your sire had not asked for permission. The punishment is death. After all, he has to keep order and can't have everyone going around creating new vamps whenever they felt like it. Your sire is beheaded before your eyes (though they censored the actual beheading in my version, I hear there's versions where they don't). Now you're left wondering if you shall fall under the same fate.
But wait, the Prince is in a generous mood. He declares that you may live as long as you are willing to learn the ways and rules of the Camarilla. Also, he informs you, you must prove yourself to him. You will be going to Santa Monica for your first task. As soon as you leave that area you're introduced to Jack, who will teach you the ropes (if you choose to go through the tutorial). Afterwhich you're ready to start your mission.
Anyway, getting away from the story (which is indeed very deep, though I briefly just summorized what I've seen thus far) the actual gameplay is crazy. It reminds me of Knights of the Old Republic. You can talk to a great deal of the people you meet. Each will have their own voice which is lip synched to their face (well, as long as you don't lag.. which I sometimes do to my old comp). The dialogs you have with characters is heavilly dependent on what skills you have. For example, my Toreador has a high suduction and persuasion score. So I might be able to talk my way out of situations (or seduce people) that other characters wouldn't be able to.
It's also very open ended. There's no "wrong" way to play your char as long as you obey the rules of the Masquerade (preventing the humans from figureing out that you're a vampire--five mistakes on this and the game is over). If you want to play your char as a straight-forward "tell me or else" type of guy you can. Or you could play as I've been doing, a man who likes to charm his way through situations and seduce people into giving him information. It's all up to you.
The cities themselves (though I've only seen one I can assume it's the same for all) feel like actual cities except for one minor regard. That is that there's no cars. There's a ton of people walking around, including cops who WILL go after you if you do something illegal, but no cars to be seen. I imagine that with so many people walking around that adding cars would be overkill to people's machines.
The people, as I've mentioned, seem like real people. With a lot of dialog (that may change depending on your skills) and lip synching it feels like they're really talking to you. The graphics for them are pretty good too, especially coming from me (I've got a video card that can just barely play the game).
There's also a lot of little fun things in there. It kind of reminds me of Grand Theft Auto sometimes. For example, in your first haven (your inn room, basically) there's a radio that you can listen to. The radio has a dj that talks then goes to commercials, like a real radio station. So far my favorite radio commercial is for "Friggen Chicken" ("This is cat right? Are you feeding me cat?!") There's also a TV station but I didn't watch it long enough to find out everything about it. I also noticed (and laughed at) that your email that can be checked with the laptop in the room will receive spam. It just adds a level of realisim to the game.
Now the downside of it: the game is buggy and laggy on my machine. I'm pretty sure that most of it is due to my low video card and low amount of RAM (I just barely have enough at 384 MB). Also a thing that drives me up the wall is the loading times. It takes a very, very long time to load the main "hub" (the main street that connects to all the other buildings). Some buildings also take awhile to load. It's annoying when you have to go through several buildings to complete one mission and each time you enter or exit a building you have to wait 5 minutes for the area to load. Also, the combat system is weird. I want to say it's bad, but I think it's more of the fact that I just suck at it and thus can't blame the system. I'm still getting used to it.
Another downside is the lack of customization with your character. You get your choice of one model per gender per clan (so two per clan). That's it. You can't change the hair colors or anything else. You CAN get new clothing later on in the game, but it's fairly limited (I think someone worked out that there's 70 pieces of equipment in the entire game for all 7 clans, or 10 pieces of equipment per clan, so 5 per gender). I kind of wish there had been more. Then again, my char already has red hair. I can't ask for much more.
Overall, this game is awesome. The fact that it's a full open RPG that has so many different ways to approach a single problem with a decent storyline (so far anyway) makes it quite-possibly the best RPG I've played all year (not that I play that many to begin with).
I would say "run out and check it out immedately" but the problem of getting it installed and running right makes me say "hold off on it for awhile" until they've released a patch or two to fix some of the major bugs. Even then, you have to have a machine that matches mine in graphics card and RAM (and it'd be better if you had a BETTER machine than mine) before you even think about attempting to play this game.
I'll be posting my stories that I've had in this game in this topic. I would post pictures but I obviously can't (since keenspace is dead and I've got nowhere else to host them). If I find a way to post them I will. For now, stories will do.