Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines....
Just for the hell of it I'm now writing an entry all about this game...
This is a Vampire based action RPG game that I had for years but only recently got around to actually completing. There are lots of people on the internet now who have an appreciation for this game and you can count me amongs them. All the screenshots below where taken on my Mac via a WINE (cider) based wrapper.
Some of what helped me get into this game is quite a few of the mods floating around for it which you can replace some of the included skins for different\better ones. In my opinion a game like this needs choices when it comes to things like outfits and such.
This screenshot is one of those custom skins taken from a part where I rescued a fellow vampire who was being held captive.
This is how you see it most of the time though in-game:
Here's another skin:
This skin I thought was a lot better than the default Bruja skin I thought. I was using enb series modification which added some bloom to the image but it was too slow to play so I stopped using it but even without enb series it looks similar.
I really like when games give you your own place which gains items when you do stuff in the game. VTMB didn't have tons of stuff you could add to your Lair but it did have some posters that could be added which was pretty cool.. you start off with a basic run down apartment like this...
Then later you get the opportunity of getting a more swanky apartment such as this:
While I'm on the subject of that apartment I remembered playing part of the game before and I remembered Heather. Heather is someone you meet during the beginning of the game in the hospital who you have the opportunity to save by turning her into a "Ghoul" in the VMTB world a Ghoul is someone who has been given Vampre blood to drink and with it gets some vampire power but is not a vampire.
The way you think of a ghoul though is mostly a matter of perspective. Some people saw her as a mere slave. The way I saw her was more of a room mate\friend. A vampire is just as dependent on their ghoul as the ghoul is on them since this is the person who takes care of the vampire during the day while they sleep.
I found her very endearing in her devotion and felt bad for accepting the student loan she offered up to me when she offered to drop out of college so she could help me. On the one hand it was like yeah I know it's just a game but on the other hand I was thinking like she shouldn't do that since if she kept on with college she could have lots more money to help. But this game doesn't give a lot of choices when it comes to her it's either accept her stuff or have her leave for good. It would have also been handy if she would have done stuff like stock the fridge with blood packs from the blood bank every so often or procure me other useful items.
You can have her change her appearance but I prefer her original look (as pictured above) better as it's the most endearing in my eyes. You can have her change to a goth look but it's all runny mascera and overdone like a badly done fan skin who thinks something looks cool but isn't. Thankfully you can easily have her change back to her original look if you see that other look and change your mind.
There's at least one time when she surprised me by bringing home someone for me to feed on. Unfortunately apart from the above there isn't much more character development for her. At some point it really is the best thing to let her go before a certain part of the game happens. Although you can only avoid it by having foreknowledge about it so I guess it may be more powerful to not know and whatever happens, happens. But I k new so I broke up with her before hand which was heartbreaking but it was for the best.
I missed her after having her leave like even just having her there to greet me whenever I went back to the apartment.
After her you meet a girl in chinatown named Yuki who you help to hunt a demon who killed her family. She carries around a highlander sword which was a treat for me because I like that movie and I have the sword on a rack on my wall.
I thought she was really cute and such but wasn't terribly handy in combat. I did like helping her out with her fish monster demon though. There's supposed to be a mod that lets you sire either her or heather to turn them into vampires by permission of the vampire prince and have a vampire party (party in the RPG sense where it's a group of characters who travel alongside yours).
I haven't installed it yet though and it doesn't seem like it's been updated in a while or even compatible with the latest unofficial patches for the game either. But that would have been cool for a couple of reasons. They would be able to keep character company for longer and they would be better during combat... Yuki was fairly useless during the part she helps you in the game but probably would be more effective as a vampire. Although heather's role of caretaker during the day is a useful one that would be a loss if removed. ;)
*edit* It looks like the clan quest mod are working on integrating the "companion" mod that lets you sire to being vampires & keep companions such as Heather & Yuki into the clan quest mod after all... I need to keep an eye out for that and I'll probably want to start a fresh character when it comes out. *edit*
I really liked the way some of the areas looked like this one doctor's house you have to go to partway through the game.
Smiling Jack was a memorable character he sort of made me think of Danny Trejo in a way:
I also liked how you could dance at some of the clubs:
I thought this vampire looked kind of like John Travolta.... I think that's funny.
All in all this game was a very memorable experience but I did have to get past a rather tedious warehouse mission in the first section of the game which I didn't like and the combat in general was pretty rubbish but the rest of the game made up for it. There's a group of people remaking the game with valve's more recent version of the engine it runs on but the original is still good to play if you like Action RPG's as long as you apply the more recent patches and also a mod or two perhaps.. I have the clan quest mod applied to mine here.
In a way in terms of content it's also still pretty competitive\comparable to more modern games like Assassin's Creed. It holds up pretty well when you get past the bugs and the rubbish combat.
I also really like the ending song for it.
This is a Vampire based action RPG game that I had for years but only recently got around to actually completing. There are lots of people on the internet now who have an appreciation for this game and you can count me amongs them. All the screenshots below where taken on my Mac via a WINE (cider) based wrapper.
Some of what helped me get into this game is quite a few of the mods floating around for it which you can replace some of the included skins for different\better ones. In my opinion a game like this needs choices when it comes to things like outfits and such.
This screenshot is one of those custom skins taken from a part where I rescued a fellow vampire who was being held captive.
This is how you see it most of the time though in-game:
Here's another skin:
This skin I thought was a lot better than the default Bruja skin I thought. I was using enb series modification which added some bloom to the image but it was too slow to play so I stopped using it but even without enb series it looks similar.
I really like when games give you your own place which gains items when you do stuff in the game. VTMB didn't have tons of stuff you could add to your Lair but it did have some posters that could be added which was pretty cool.. you start off with a basic run down apartment like this...
Then later you get the opportunity of getting a more swanky apartment such as this:
While I'm on the subject of that apartment I remembered playing part of the game before and I remembered Heather. Heather is someone you meet during the beginning of the game in the hospital who you have the opportunity to save by turning her into a "Ghoul" in the VMTB world a Ghoul is someone who has been given Vampre blood to drink and with it gets some vampire power but is not a vampire.
The way you think of a ghoul though is mostly a matter of perspective. Some people saw her as a mere slave. The way I saw her was more of a room mate\friend. A vampire is just as dependent on their ghoul as the ghoul is on them since this is the person who takes care of the vampire during the day while they sleep.
I found her very endearing in her devotion and felt bad for accepting the student loan she offered up to me when she offered to drop out of college so she could help me. On the one hand it was like yeah I know it's just a game but on the other hand I was thinking like she shouldn't do that since if she kept on with college she could have lots more money to help. But this game doesn't give a lot of choices when it comes to her it's either accept her stuff or have her leave for good. It would have also been handy if she would have done stuff like stock the fridge with blood packs from the blood bank every so often or procure me other useful items.
You can have her change her appearance but I prefer her original look (as pictured above) better as it's the most endearing in my eyes. You can have her change to a goth look but it's all runny mascera and overdone like a badly done fan skin who thinks something looks cool but isn't. Thankfully you can easily have her change back to her original look if you see that other look and change your mind.
There's at least one time when she surprised me by bringing home someone for me to feed on. Unfortunately apart from the above there isn't much more character development for her. At some point it really is the best thing to let her go before a certain part of the game happens. Although you can only avoid it by having foreknowledge about it so I guess it may be more powerful to not know and whatever happens, happens. But I k new so I broke up with her before hand which was heartbreaking but it was for the best.
I missed her after having her leave like even just having her there to greet me whenever I went back to the apartment.
After her you meet a girl in chinatown named Yuki who you help to hunt a demon who killed her family. She carries around a highlander sword which was a treat for me because I like that movie and I have the sword on a rack on my wall.
I thought she was really cute and such but wasn't terribly handy in combat. I did like helping her out with her fish monster demon though. There's supposed to be a mod that lets you sire either her or heather to turn them into vampires by permission of the vampire prince and have a vampire party (party in the RPG sense where it's a group of characters who travel alongside yours).
I haven't installed it yet though and it doesn't seem like it's been updated in a while or even compatible with the latest unofficial patches for the game either. But that would have been cool for a couple of reasons. They would be able to keep character company for longer and they would be better during combat... Yuki was fairly useless during the part she helps you in the game but probably would be more effective as a vampire. Although heather's role of caretaker during the day is a useful one that would be a loss if removed. ;)
*edit* It looks like the clan quest mod are working on integrating the "companion" mod that lets you sire to being vampires & keep companions such as Heather & Yuki into the clan quest mod after all... I need to keep an eye out for that and I'll probably want to start a fresh character when it comes out. *edit*
I really liked the way some of the areas looked like this one doctor's house you have to go to partway through the game.
Smiling Jack was a memorable character he sort of made me think of Danny Trejo in a way:
I also liked how you could dance at some of the clubs:
I thought this vampire looked kind of like John Travolta.... I think that's funny.
All in all this game was a very memorable experience but I did have to get past a rather tedious warehouse mission in the first section of the game which I didn't like and the combat in general was pretty rubbish but the rest of the game made up for it. There's a group of people remaking the game with valve's more recent version of the engine it runs on but the original is still good to play if you like Action RPG's as long as you apply the more recent patches and also a mod or two perhaps.. I have the clan quest mod applied to mine here.
In a way in terms of content it's also still pretty competitive\comparable to more modern games like Assassin's Creed. It holds up pretty well when you get past the bugs and the rubbish combat.
I also really like the ending song for it.
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