Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines

Game reviews 126 Page 5 of 6 Published by

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Graphics and Sound
What will have attracted many people to Bloodlines is its use of Valves Source engine that so gloriously powers Half Life 2. Please take this piece of advice! DONT buy this game purely on the merits of Source. You will be disappointed.
This is a half finished implementation of one of the best engines around and you can see it. Facial animations, while present, are no where near as smooth as in HL2, and seem to vary from character to character, some looking downright clunky, while others looking above average. Nowhere do they reach the possibilities provided by the graphics engine. The game is full of bugs. For example, in one shoot out, I opened a door, just for it to reveal a pain of glass covering the door way.

My PC crashed to desktop more than once, including at the end of the Leopold level where it is actually impossible to continue without some console tweaks. There is now a patch out, so please download this first. It fixes many of these bugs, but with HL2 being delayed for so long, it makes u wonder exactly what Troika were up to during that time. The biggest disappointment though has to be the terrible physics. There is no consistency. You can walk into one room, and chairs will be glued to the floor, walk into another, and you can pick them up at will. Objects have no real feeling of mass or weight, and the way you interact with them (with an on screen hand like cursor) is badly thought out when compared with the way you can freely pick and move things around in HL2. Had I played this game before HL2, maybe these issues would not have been so glaringly obvious, and maybe it is unfair to compare it with one of the best FPS games around, but you do feel a little cheated after seeing the full capabilities of the engine. Despite all this, Bloodlines does look visually stunning.

The neon lights of buildings and elaborate interiors are all beautiful. The City streets are very well realised but could have done with a bit more interaction both between and with NPCs rather than them wandering around aimlessly waiting to be fed on. An odd passing car would have been nice to see as well. In terms of performance, you would expect a game based on the source engine to run extremely well. However, I had problems even on a 6800GT, with outdoor levels grinding to 25fps in some places. This is strange, and must be put down to (another) game bug, which will hopefully be fixed at some point. Because of this, it is very difficult to use any level of AA and AF, for risk of the game grinding to a halt. Interior areas are a different matter though, and all ran silky smooth, on par with HL2 at 1280x1024 with all in game settings on full. The sound in Bloodlines is fantastic.

The sound track is great, and changes according to setting. The eeriness of the sound on some levels can create feelings of tension and apprehension, adding to the whole gameplay experience. Music in Nightclubs is equally good, adding to the portrayal of Nightlife in LA. The backing music for each of the four sections of the City again conjures up a certain mood. Every weapon sounds as it should, and objects smash, or blow up with the expected aural reverberations.

Copyright 2005 Guru3D.com
Downtown

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