Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption

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Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00002SU5A
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: June 7, 2000
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (102 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #12,872 in Video Games (See Bestsellers in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Platform: PC

Amazon.com Review

Want to live forever? Get a taste for what it's like with Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption, the first computer role-playing game based on the tremendously popular dice-and-paper and live-action RPG from White Wolf Game Studio. Die-hard fans will grumble a bit at some of the translation concessions from book to hard drive. The vampiric disciplines in particular are less flexible and occasionally more hassle than they're worth--sure, you can turn into a wolf, but you can't return to your natural form until the time limit expires. Still, these limitations don't interfere with the gameplay, which is fast moving, challenging, and genuinely creepy. Graphics and sounds are well designed, and along with the plot they evoke the mood of gothic horror that has made Vampire so popular.

The single-player mode locks you into the story line of Christof, a medieval crusader who blunders into immortality at the fangs of an ancient Brujah vampire. Christof's damnation and search for redemption lead him from the Prague of the Dark Ages to modern New York City. Multiplayer options include local area network and Internet play as well as the ability to create and run your own stories for other players. The manual is beautiful and helpful, a rare combination. Clearly, the designers took their cue from White Wolf, as evidenced by the clarity of text and carefully chosen illustrations. Though Redemption is well worth playing, gamers should be warned that the save-game feature is irritating and often beyond the player's control and that the installation requires at least 720 MB (and up to 1.3 GB!). Despite these flaws, the game is still wicked fun and merits plenty of praise. --Rob Lightner

Pros:

• Fantastic graphics and sound
• Rich online storytelling options
• Perfectly captures the mood and settings of Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Dark Ages

Cons:

• Enormous installation size
• Irritating save-game feature
• Not strictly faithful to original White Wolf rules

Product Description

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

98 of 110 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Beatiful but bad AI, unbalanced gameplay, & lousy saves, June 12, 2000

By	Christopher Jantze (San Anselmo, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am a huge fan of vampire fiction in any form and also enjoy a good RPG. So I was ecstatic when I heard about Vampire being translated from the pen-and-paper sources to the computer. And Vampire is an amazing looking game that I really wanted to like. Unfortunately some bad design choices and poor features prevented it from happening.

I'll start with the good points. The graphics are stunningly amazing. The animation of the characters is fluid and weapons are superbly done. The lighting greatly enhances the dark and sinister atmosphere. I kept going in many places because I wanted to see what area I would visit next. The camera control is also very smooth and easy to manipulate with the mouse. The gameplay is actually fun for the first bit of the game while you are adventuring by yourself and with one other party member. The source material and the manual add a lot to this game. Wandering around towns and seeing people milling about made it feel alive. And it was always oh so fun to feed upon someone to refill your blood level.

The RPG system is also great. There are several positive and detrimenatl traits for the characters. A certain level of blood must be maintained to use the disciplines (spells/skills) and to keep your character from succombing to frenzy. Experience points can be distributed among such traits as strength, dexterity, intelligence, willpower and several others. Very nicely done indeed.

Here is where I have to get in to the demerits of this game. First off, the voice acting is not very good; but it's not the worst I've heard either. And the sequences of dialogue are long and boring. The characters simply stand in place and wave their hands about. NPC interaction is left to a few choices which really have little baring on the outcome of the game. Nothing as rich and detailed as Planescape: Torment.

The combat, while fun and reminiscent of Diablo, only keeps its spark for the first part of the game. Most of it consists of clicking on an enemy and waiting until you've hit them enough times for them to die. A big flaw that becomes noticable during the first few levels is that the enemies wait until you are in range before they attack. They will simply stand idle as you slaughter others in the same room! As the game progresses you will gain party members, and will bemoan similarly incompetant AI. I equipped one with a bow and laughed in disbelief as he continuously fired in to a wall when he should have moved a couple steps to the side before doing so. Also, you can control the other members of your party in combat, but the main character will stop fighting while you are doing so! Aaahhhh! Add to this that you can go through entire areas and clean up with little to no problem, but then come across certain areas that will be nigh impossible to pass. Both enemies and your fellow party members will get hung up on walls, doors and other obstacles in the room.

And here we come to the worst sin of the game, the save system. Saving is automatically handled when you transition between levels are areas. The only other way to save is to be in your haven or safe area. One can get there by using the Walk the Abyss discipline (aka spell/skill). But it takes a while before you have one of these in a given area. So we are left hacking our way back through areas and levels already completed. I found myself abusing the autosave feature by running back and forth between levels to save. But what if more than one person is playing the game as is the case on my computer? It's pretty much tough luck. This is a computer game, not a console. The game should have been balanced so that players could save anywhere at anytime.

The multiplayer sounds enticing with the ability for one person to take control of the NPCs and monsters. But if the gameplay is similar to the single-player then I can't see it being much better.

With great graphics, a rich source material and so much potential. It makes me sad to not be able to like this game. This takes me back to Revenant, another game with a lot of potential but came up flacid. Maybe the patches will fix the problems, I certainly hope so. But much has to be done for the AI to make this game worthy.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Could have been a contender ..., June 29, 2000

By A Customer

Pros:

-great storyline, kept me wanting to learn more and to progress throughout the story. Well-written. -the most beautiful graphics I've seen in a game to date. Shadows! Great, great lighting. -Great adaptation from the pen and paper game.

Cons: - BAD, BAD save game problem. Cannot save at will, must use save points. I downloaded a fix that some person made, allowing me to save everytime I equipped with a torch or a flashlight. And the designers will release a patch that fixes this problem. HOWEVER, it should never have been released like this. - Horrible party AI. Your team members are SO stupid. It's party the problem of the game engine. Most of the time your party will get stuck, and won't help you as you're being attacked by Monster X, Y, or Z. Narrow corridors are enough to cause screaming fits, what with all the stupid AI problems. - Ranged weapons are useless. The stupid party members can't use them right. They either shoot you or they are shooting through a wall. It's very rare, very very rare that they actually hit the enemies. I gave up and equipped everyone with swords. This applies to Dark Ages and Modern weapons. - Little role-playing choices. You have a few dialogue choices that you can make, and some affect your humanity, but overall, the storyline is very rigid.

Vampire is another case of a game being released two weeks too soon. I would have rather waited for those few weeks, than deal with all the problems (that will be fixed in a patch, presumably).

My ideal game? Take the worlds of darkness, and a vampire background, and use the Deus Ex model. I'm not too interested in the Deus Ex story, but the gameplay is superior.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Currently, my favorite PC game of all time., June 21, 2000

By	Alec Head (carmel,ca) - See all my reviews

I know there are people who gripe about the AI and the pathfinding. I also know that there are those who bitch and moan about the save feature. True, a feature in which you may save anywhere would have been nice, but Nihilistic chose NOT to do that for technical reasons(i do not know whether to believe that or accept it as an excuse). And plus, whenever you walk into a new area, the game saves it for you. But I digress. In short, Vampire is an absolute masterpiece. The sound is absolutely astounding(consisting of "real" orchestrated tracks and VERY well-done voice overs(Goth Chick Serena makes little noises when she's sucking blood! Hehe! I'm such a perv! ), The interface is simple and easy to use, the graphics are among the best I've seen for ANY RPG, and the story is enthralling and immersive. I've read countless reviews stating that this is a terribly flawed game filled with bugs, ect. ect. Which leads to believe that there are many, many people of whom many do not like this style of gaming(which very well could be the case), or, Blizzard has each of these people in their pockets(which also very well could be the case). But please, if you don't like the game, simply don't play it. Because I guarantee you that no one who enjoys playing will give the slightest crap whether you like it or not. I'd be too enthralled in the game to care(and also because everyone has their own opinions). A patch is in the works to correct all of the "mistakes" as well.

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