Review: Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption

Reviewed By: Kirk Hiner

Review Date: November 16, 2001

Genre: Adventure/RPG

Format: CD

Developer: Nihilistic Software

Original Publisher:White Wolf Publishing, Activision

Macintosh Port: Varcon Systems, Inc.

Macintosh Publisher: MacSoft

System Requirements: 300MHz PowerPC, Mac OS 8.6, 128MB RAM, 756MB hard disk space, Rage 128 video card with 8MB VRAM

Network Feature: Yes

3D Support: OpenGL

Mac OS X Compatible: No

Retail Price: $44.99

Availability: Out Now

Rating: M for Mature

I'm going to get lynched, I know it. But before everyone storms my apartment with clubs and torches and pitchforks, understand this up front; vampires bore me.

It's true. Aside from Bram Stoker's novel and the occasional episode of Buffy (although she rarely fights vampires, I've noticed), vampires move me about as much as a bologna sandwich. In fact, less, if the sandwich has pickles. So keep that in mind as I proceed to explain why MacSoft's Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption was not worth the wait.

When I told fellow reviewer Bill Stiteler that I was going to pan this game, he began to write his letter of resignation from Applelinks, unwilling to work with me any longer. I could only convince him to stay on by promising I wouldn't say Vampire: the Masquerade - Redemption is based on the popular pen and paper RPG. Bill would like for me to point out to everyone that no RPG'er worth his weight in ten sided dice uses a pen. It's a pencil and paper game.

There, Bill, now get back to work on Zork.

So okay, Vampire is based on a game that's been around a while and therefore has countless variations and back story to sum up in one computer version. The result is a mess of myth and melodrama that makes Dark Shadows look like Will & Grace. You've got nearly fifteen clans of vampires running around, and no one really gets along. I guess it's not entirely unlike the maffia, only instead of using guns to kill each other they use...oh, wait. They do use guns to kill each other. Never mind.

Caught up in all of this is a devout Christian named Christof. See how they make it easy for us? I wonder why none of the vampires are named Vampira? Christof spends his days crusading and killing in the name of the God, because the current trend in teaching history is to lead us all to believe that up until perhaps 1945, all Christians did was kill people in the name of God. Christof is wounded in battle and taken into a Convent where he meets a nun named Anezka. Despite his misgivings, Christof finds himself falling in love with her because, as we all know, nuns are hot! As if this weren't enough to test poor Christof's fate, he's quickly turned into a vampire by...someone. I'm not sure who actually did the deed, but I'll get to that in a bit.

Now, with no blood, no soul, and no chance for the loving, Christof spurns his faith and begins a vampiric journey that will last 800 years and take him to Prague, Vienna, London and New York. Anezka, equally smitten by Christof, goes on her own crusade to save the lad's soul. It used to be so easy to get women back in medieval times; just save them from a demon or two and they're yours for life. But enough of the story. If I were to focus on that, we'd be here for a couple lifetimes ourselves. If you're into vampire mythology, everything save for George Hamilton's portrayal in Love at First Bite is in here. It's big, it's deep, and it's extremely convoluted. Just when you think they can't possibly bring in yet another subplot, they bring in three.

Before I go further, I will say that this game contains the most exquisitely designed level maps I've ever seen, hands down. Running through it was, if not like visiting the real locales in the appropriate period, at least like visiting the movie sets of a Tim Burton or Hughes brothers film. All advances in computer game graphics could stop right here and I'd be just fine. The sets are both wondrous and oppressive, and at times could be downright creepy. From this point on, whenever I think of vampires, I'm going to be picturing this game, which is good because I previously pictured Martin Kemp from Spandau Ballet.

Whatever I'm thinking of, I know this much is true; I don't believe in omens, but it's been forever since I've been stuck in what I like to call "disk swapping hell" on installation. When installing the game on my 867MHz G4, disk one would eject and ask for disk two. Behind that, another window would open asking for disk one. I'd put in disk two, but it wouldn't take. Okay, try again, this time putting disk one back in. This would get rid of the first window, but then the system would lock up, wondering what happened to disk two. No wonder vampires live so long. It takes them forever to get anything done.

Okay, a couple disk images later, and the game's running. The first thing I did after booting up and watching the opening movie (if you've seen more than ten minutes of any vampire flick, you've seen the opening movie of this game), I started to dig around in the options. Let's see...set that screen resolution to 1280x1024. Bad idea. Keeping that resolution at this setting when quitting would cause the system to lock up every single time. So okay, if I have to reset the resolution when quitting, so be it. No big deal.

Now, the camera is to be controlled with the number pad, while the character is controlled with the mouse. No good for right handers, as we have to reach all the way across our body with the left hand to control the camera. So, remap the keys to ASDW. Nope. Not allowed. No doubt some law of that pesky Followers of Set clan. But all right, I'll slide everything around to prevent carpal tunnel. Let's just play the game.

But first, more cut scenes. And more cut scenes. And more cut scenes. Never before have I spent so much time watching a game. And what's more, most of the movies aren't that interesting. They're mostly full of straight-on shots of people talking, no movement aside from swaying arms. It was like an entire play of soliloquies, all delivered with the emotion of a bad history listen, which is pretty much what they are. Actually, that's not true about the delivery. Two forms of acting were used throughout this game; under and over, depending upon how angry the character was supposed to be. We're also treated to wonderful phrases such as, "Thine heart is cleft in twain." Ah, ye olde English, alas, thy hardly spake thee!

My favorite bit about the movies, though, is that they transcend death itself. One of the characters I was controlling died in a battle, but I decided to go forth anyway. I felt bad about it, but only until he magically returned in the next cut scene to tell/warn me about something! Back to the action, and he's dead. Then comes the next cut scene, and there he is again! Talk about fair-weather friends.

Oh, and hey...did they purposely make Prince Brandl look like David Bowie? May as well bring in Catherine Deneuve, too, and the rest of the cast of The Hunger.

And speaking of movies, Oakland Raider fans will appreciate this Heidi moment. In the cut scene were Christof is "embraced" by the Brujah Clan (i.e. turned into a vampire), my screen went black. I could hear what was going on, but I couldn't see a thing. After the deed was done, the picture came back. Self censorship, perhaps? Was it not meant for human eyes to see?

Of course, there's plenty of blood sucking to come. People suck your blood, you suck there's, it's important to keep a healthy supply when you're a vampire. You'll need blood to use your disciplines which provide you with special abilities and protection from attack. Acquiring and using these disciplines is not unlike learning and casting spells in fantasy RPGs. And trust me, you'd better get good at this if you want to survive long. And actually, the act of sucking blood is quite interesting because apparently men always sound barbaric when they do it, while women always sound orgasmic. Go figure.

The problem with using the disciplines is that the GUI of Vampire is about as fluid as a concrete coffin. The camera control is ridiculous, and selecting a character in battle was extremely frustrating. When you've got four characters being attacked by four werewolves, it proved nearly impossible to get characters positioned properly or healed. Luckily the only skill required in battle is that of getting your disciplines set. Fighting is just a matter of clicking on the character you want to hit. Of course, that's provided you can reach the enemy. The characters you aren't controlling are as dumb as a bucket of burnt toast, and you'll often find yourself trapped behind them as they contemplate their fangs. Be prepared to do a lot of shuffling to get where you need to be.

Another oddity; the enemies would often talk trash to me even as I was sucking their blood down to the last drop. Cocky sons of Cane.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption also excels in its multiplayer capabilities. RPG'ers will thrill at the ability to create their own stories and locales, then become the "storyteller" for multiplayer action with up to eight players. This feature has led to dozens of Vampire websites and communities of enthusiastic fans, so I'm assuming the stories created by users have been much better than the one included with the game. Or maybe there are just more vampire wannabes out there than I suspected. I suppose that, if it weren't for the blood thing and the immortality thing and the no daylight thing, I could go for it too.

Still, it's odd what drives a game. Fact of the matter is that the graphics in this game are so cool that I trudged through it furiously because I was so eager to see what Vienna, London and New York looked like. I couldn't have cared less about Christof and his love pangs, I wanted him to shut up about Anezka and just hurry up and get to London. His struggle to retain his humanity was also heavily overplayed and grew tiresome after the first fifteen times he whined about it. You do get to decide which path he takes, but the choices between good and evil are so cut and dry that they reach far into tedium.

Remember, though, that vampires, by definition, bore me. And although I didn't like the game, I don't consider it a waste of my time to have played through it, mainly because of the visuals. I'm the guy, after all, who still argues that Batman Returns and even Highlander 2, despite their ludicrous stories, were somewhat entertaining if only because they were fun to look at.

If you're crazy about vampires, then the depth, replayability and sheer ambitiousness of this game will make it worth your time and (probably) money. Of, if you have a great system you'd like to show off to your friends, Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption can probably replace Deus Ex and Unreal Tournament for that "wow factor." If, however, you just enjoy a good RPG with some nice action, a coherent story, and characters you can actually care about, it'd probably be best to look elsewhere and leave the vampire stories to...uh...Jim Carrey?

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