Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption

I remember being a fan of the eponymous table-top RPG, and for several years I wanted to try its digital counterpart. When GOG re-released it, I quickly bought the game, but haven't find the time to play it in a while. Just did, and boy had I hoped something much better would have come from such a long wait. I only played the very beggining of the game, so maybe it gets better afterwards. But the old city of Prague is SO dull... the whole setting calls for a great deal of liberty, which you don't have at all. Most doors are closed, and the authors didn't even bother to make them feel like little more than a wall - in most games you'd have seen the door as being "locked" when you try to open it. Same goes for most of the scenery : some barrels are destroyable, most aren't, and there's very little visual clue about which are. If that's not bad enough, though most of the city has no use, it takes way too long to find its way within maze-like streets. And when you finally manage to get to the "real" game (some caves to clean from monsters... very original if you ask me) you end up cursing the third-person camera and the overal brightness of the game. That's where I stopped playing. The "Word of darkness" franchise calls for a great deal of liberty - as would any table-top RPG origin - and the result is only slightly less rail-based than The House of the Dead.

Is this game some kind of a joke? This game is so plain and boring it's nearly an insult. The first level is, of course and as we know it from all the other boring games, get in a mine / cave and clear it from enemies. Rats and some ghouls, yeah, always the same. But so poorly designed you have to use your imagination to decide what this creature could be. And BORING. Which adds to the fact the level design is so mediocre you can't even speak of a level. You just bash and mash with axes and maces ghouls and rats and it doesn't seem to get any better. Additional, the camera is constantly in the way and the HUD is so freakin huge that almost half of the screen gets wasted for it. If this is the idea how you present a game to a player, well, then have a nice day, then. Waste of money, especially my time and money.

Maybe some of the bugs have been fixed, but I bought this new and it was incredibly frustrating. It strays pretty far from the source material, the NPC's get stuck going through doors, the AI is so remarkably bad that often bad guys just a few feet away will watch you kill their friends. Really...NOT A GOOD GAME! if you want a good one, check out VAMPIRE THE MASQUERADE: BLOODLINES. that's a fun game!

If you played a master- piece called Bloodlines and wanted to taste some more Masquerade delight... skip this ...thing ... Read the story on Wikipedia and watch the cutscenes on Youtube, but dont waste your money on this pile of wasted bits... The story is a win and the idea of implementing two completely different settings is brilliant... but the gameplay... oh, the gameplay. The controls, the camera, the combat system... there are no words that can describe how bad the gameplay is... I know that most RPGs have mediocre gameplay which serves as an engine for the progresion of a usually good story... but this game is simply unplayable... Do your self a favor and stick to the Bloodlines. :)

Maps don't work or don't exist. Lumination in first quest is ZERO. Spent 1,5 hours trying to find the way in absolute darkness despite I had a freaking torch.