There are almost always multiple ways to successfully tackle an assignment you could of course simply wade into a frenetic bloodbath and take out everything that moves with bared fangs and blazing guns, but unlike so many other RPGs experience is never awarded for killing enemies. That said, your character's incredible potential for violence doesn't mean you have to mindlessly squander it on every last peon, not in a game conceived by the lead designers of Fallout. Don't care much for shooting or spells? Specializing in brawling can be even more effective against undying horrors than emptying a Glock into them, not to mention a physically adept character's ability to snatch gangbangers in the midst of combat and refill her health via a quick mouthful of arterial spray. The seven vampiric clans you can choose to descend from not only feature unique appearances for both male and female fledglings but each offer their own combination of supernatural powers ranging from the elegant Toreador's superhuman speed and savage Gangrel's ability to rend flesh asunder in the form of a monstrous beast to the Malkavian incapacitating entire hit squads in the blink of an eye by offering them a glimpse into her own diseased psyche. To a certain extent Bloodlines itself is in disguise at a cursory glance it may resemble a first-person shooter, and indeed runs on Half-Life 2's Source engine, but this is very much an RPG of extraordinary depth – that just happens to frequently involve blowing away mortals and monsters alike with a pump-action shotgun. Keeping up appearances in front of the cattle and all that they have nuclear missiles instead of holy water and boomerangs these days.
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These aren't the sorts of vampires who constantly whine about their lost humanity or take annoying teenage princesses to the prom, either we're talking about hard-drinking and even harder-dying undead anarchists packing UZIs who'd just as soon rip your head off and use it to shoot hoops in the dirty, haunted streets of downtown Los Angeles, except that kind of thing always gets the elders' velvety cloaks in a bunch. It's seemingly impossible to so much as turn over a rock in Bloodlines without encountering more pasty-faced neck biters that you can shake a sharpened stake at, but there's otherwise very little about this game that sucks. Relentless foes of finely figured virgins and cantankerous, crucifix wielding Dutchmen. We're talking about hard-drinking and even harder-dying undead anarchists packing UZIs who'd just as soon rip your head off and use it to shoot hoops in the dirty, haunted streets of downtown Los Angeles, except that kind of thing always gets the elders' velvety cloaks in a bunch."Īnimate corpses who rise from their coffins by night in search of precious blood. "These aren't the sorts of vampires who constantly whine about their lost humanity or take annoying teenage princesses to the prom. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (PC) review