Review Some stupid site posts a crappy Bloodlines review

[Spazmo]

Tags: Troika Games; Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Our very own <a href=http://rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=113>review</a> of Troika's Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is now ready for public consumption. Follow the link to read some jackass calling himself "Spazmo" blather on too damn long about the game.

 

[Whipporowill]

That "Spazmo" guy sure is a dick, isn't he?

 

[Spazmo]

The guy's a friggin' moron who probably needs help tying his own shoelaces.

 

[Jinxed]

Nice work.

BTW, get rid of that awful anal add from the front page if you can.

 

[dojoteef]

Pretty good review that hit major points regarding the game, though you might want to run the spell checker on it. I found a couple mistakes. Not a big deal, so I guess it's up to you if you care enough or not.

 

[suibhne]

More than any other, this review captured my sense of disappointment with Troika. Much of the game is genuinely great, and they pull off the setting with aplomb, but it's marred by stupid technical glitches and junior-high-school late-game design choices. They desperately need to evolve beyond these problems, to incorporate a much more ambitious testing and revision cycle.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

BTW, get rid of that awful anal add from the front page if you can.

I was just about to make my own little rant about that. I'll just add to your request with one of my own though.

Anyways, on topic, it's definitely one of the better reviews of the game out there. And, while it does have it's problems, it's still a damn fine RPG. I just hope that they can somehow fix up some of the end game quests. Possibly even rig some of the main quests with multiple solutions. I don't see that happening in a patch though. Possibly an expansion pack that fixes that and adds another campaign? That would be cool.

Yeah, I dream big. So sue me.

Edit: Damn. I missed celebrating my 2000th post. Ah well. Yay for me and all that rot. Woooo. You go, boy. Something like that.

 

[Volourn]

It's what I thoguht it be.

Great role-playing, good story, awesome atmopshere.

Crappy combat, ok characetr creation system, evil bugs (but seemingly not as bad as TOEE).

I'll buy it tomorrow.

Good little review.

 

[Jinxed]

crappy combat

Depends on what your cup of tea is. By general standards it's not bad at all. On par with any FPS or 3rd person perspective action RPG.

Though I much prefer ranged because I feel how my stats work for me a lot more.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

One of the big things that makes combat crappy IMHO is that I set up my left arrow and right arrow for sidestepping rather than turning. I use the mouse to steer. Because of that, the right and left combo stuff for melee and unarmed are totally lost in my config.

This also happens with the dialogue speed up key being the same as the jump key. If you move the jump key around, you'll have to use that to skip dialogue. Kinda lame.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

One of the big things that makes combat crappy IMHO is that I set up my left arrow and right arrow for sidestepping rather than turning. I use the mouse to steer. Because of that, the right and left combo stuff for melee and unarmed are totally lost in my config.

I'm left handed, so I tend to use the numpad alot in games. I have numpad 4 and 6 set up for sidestepping. The other day I decided to experiment in a fight and hit 4 plus attack, got a left combo. 6 plus attack netted me a right combo. So, I really don't know what to tell you there, as the sidestep keys I remapped appear to give me those combos. Also, for dialogue, the number keys will work for skipping it as well. And I don't mean the numpad keys but the standard ones. I've never seen more than six options in a dialogue, so I always just use 0 to skip through. That way I don't accidentally make a choice I didn't want to.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I dont see what's so crappy about the review, though I admit i only read the last paragraph due to time constraints. It's a decent enough review, and it points out some of the less enjoyable flaws of bloodlines.

 

[dipdipdip]

Yeah, I agree! What-sa-matta you, EH..1

 

[Old Scratch]

One of the big things that makes combat crappy IMHO is that I set up my left arrow and right arrow for sidestepping rather than turning. I use the mouse to steer. Because of that, the right and left combo stuff for melee and unarmed are totally lost in my config.

I think that's how I have it too. I never use keys for turning, but you should've still been able to use those keys for combo attacks right? Unless I'm an idiot and played the whole game without using left and right combos.

As for the review, seemed good to me. Touched on most of the negatives, and the conclusion was right on the money. I thought the ambient sounds and music were exceptional though, and maybe it's just that I got used to it, but the extra sound option (forget what it's called) was just fine in my book.

 

[Ortchel]

http://rpgcodex.com/images/content/vamp006.jpg
Rex?

 

[Eclecticist]

He deals in herbal remedies.

 

[Sol Invictus]

If only I wore an eyepatch.

 

[Sol Invictus]

The fancy graphics of Source do make something of an appearance, though. Particularly with the faces and their animations, Bloodlines looks pretty good. It's not quite on par with Half Life 2 or other games that are graphically very flashy, but it's easy on the eyes nonetheless. The downside to this is that the game has some serious performance issues. Load times can be a real pain, especially since you'll be travelling between areas a lot in the game. Also, the game just runs pretty slow in general, on most any computer. The game also fails to provide sufficient graphical options to allow the player to better fine tune performance vs. graphical quality.

Concerning this: the game's slowdowns have nothing to do with the graphical quality. I've had DX8 and DX9 shaders disabled to see if it would improve the performance, but nothing happened. Playing the game on a lower resolution, turning the mipmapping all the way down, reducing the draw distance, disabling AA and AF and using Bilinear filtering doesn't improve the performance of the game, either.

Some people have run into issues with the Miles Sound System, as well. The game uses an older version of the Miles Sound System that causes intermittent crashes. Replacing the MSS32.dll file in the Bloodlines directory from the one from Half Life 2's seems to solve this problem.

The sound in Bloodlines is generally pretty good. The voice acting is quite good, an enormous improvement from Temple of Elemental Evil's *ahem* less than stellar voiceover work. This is quite fortunate for gamers given that every character in the game is fully voiced. The ambient music is largely unremarkable and somewhat forgettable, though some tracks seem to echo the soundtrack from Fallout. The game also makes a big deal about featuring a dozen or so songs from "popular" gothy bands that are played in the various clubs and bars in the game, but these aren't really anything too remarkable either. The worst thing about the sound is that turning on advanced audio features not only sounds terrible, giving NPC voices an entirely inappropriate echo even in small rooms, it also causes a huge performance hit.

The music in the bars is generally too loud and plays over the voices of the NPCs. The fact that there's no separate slider for music in the game means you'll have to turn subtitles on unless you replace the mp3s altogether. Environmental Audio doesn't work in Bloodlines, and as you said causes a huge performance hit. The voices echo from the left to right channels - and the center and back channels refuse to play properly.

 

[LlamaGod]

I got the game to run really well on my crappy system, virtual memory settings, windowed mode, using r_3dsky 0 in the console, heapsize and using DX8 shaders. It runs totally perfect now, heh.

 

[Surlent]

The review is okay and luckily manages to avoid all those bad vamp jokes.

But (in no offense) the opening and the end words leave a picture of the reviewer as old gramps whose best days are behind him with Fallout. Not many isometric turnbased nonlinear PA games around these days....

Fallout, the game that got it all right,

In any case, it is a good game that probably should be played by fans of RPGs, fans of action games and fans of Vampire: The Masquerade, but we're still waiting for the next big game, the real successor to Fallout, and Troika has yet to prove they're the people we should be looking to in order to get it.

Someone could interpret that as hint to Fallout 3 made by Bethesda.

 

[Jinxed]

[The music in the bars is generally too loud and plays over the voices of the NPCs. The fact that there's no separate slider for music in the game means you'll have to turn subtitles on unless you replace the mp3s altogether. Environmental Audio doesn't work in Bloodlines, and as you said causes a huge performance hit. The voices echo from the left to right channels - and the center and back channels refuse to play properly.

Strange, it always tones down the music for me when I enter dialog. The only time it didn't happen was with Jeanette when she gave me the gallery quest.

The game would benefit from a seperate sound and music slider though.

 

[Eclecticist]

Good review Spazmo. Lots of errors and questionable sentence structures, but overall I like the way it came out. You write like one of those passionate wild scientists scribbling formulae on a blackboard. Also, overall, I think you got the gist of the game across quite well.

 

[Lomer]

One more excelent Spazmo's review . This man just has it . I may disagree with some of his points (such as his conclusions about Troika's degradation since Fallout), but they are backed up very well.

It's what I thoguht it be.

Great role-playing, good story, awesome atmopshere.

Crappy combat, ok characetr creation system, evil bugs (but seemingly not as bad as TOEE).

I'll buy it tomorrow.

I am afraid that the combat will easily ruin this game for you. If you didn't like the combat in Gothic 2 (I hope you have switched off the combat controls of Gothic 1, otherwise it is simply abyssmal), there is no way for you to enjoy this one. You will probably quit it soon after opening of the Hollywood hub. So, from your point of view, you are going to buy only a half game tomorrow. I hope you see what I mean - I love this game very much, but it really requires some affinity to FPS type combat (which I have).

On the other hand, if you were able to survive the Firewine Dungeon, fighting the respawning hordes in BL will be a piece of cake .

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

If you didn't like the combat in Gothic 2 (I hope you have switched off the combat controls of Gothic 1, otherwise it is simply abyssmal), there is no way for you to enjoy this one.

Actually, I hated the Gothic series combat engine as well, but love the combat in Bloodlines. Sure the respawning might be abyssmal to others, but the controls for combat are WAY more simple than Gothic 1 & 2 were. More arcade-ish than anything. The only thing Bloodlines melee combat has in common with Gothic is the third person view and the fact you get to swing a weapon.

 

[Volourn]

"I am afraid that the combat will easily ruin this game for you."

Let's hope not. I don't really want to start whining about another Troika game in about 6 hours. I'm all whined out... or not.


"On the other hand, if you were able to survive the Firewine Dungeon, fighting the respawning hordes in BL will be a piece of cake."

Heh. the thing is i enjoyed Bgs' combat so the respawns weren't a game ruining experience. if I land up enjopying BL's combat I'll shake my head at the respawns but I won't mind them too much. If I hate the combat, I'll need to buy a new monitor. :twisted:


"Actually, I hated the Gothic series combat engine as well, but love the combat in Bloodlines."

If this isn't true I will hold you responsible and demand your address and unlike others I will show up and one of us will have a black eye. i won't say which one of us (depends how big and tough you are compared to me); but one of us will have bragging rights physically. :D