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Friday Flashback: VtM: Bloodlines

Instead of delving into the depths of 8-bit consoles and DOS-era PC games, this week we're hopping back a mere six years, to 2004. The game is Troika's Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, a brilliant first-person RPG that lets players experience Vampire: The Masquerade first-hand, through Deus Ex-style RPG and action elements.

Like most good stories involving soulless bloodsuckers, Bloodlines takes place in Los Angeles. You're a freshly transformed vampire dropped into the middle of undead intrigue revolving around the discovery of a sarcophagus that could contain one of the oldest and most powerful vampires in the world. Like all good Vampire: The Masquerade campaigns, Bloodlines' story is moody, bleak, and violent.

The action is very similar to Deus Ex. Stealth and strategy is highly rewarded, and if you try to fight through everything with guns blazing you'll quickly be torn to little vampire bits. There's a huge selection of guns and melee weapons, and a skill system lets you decide just how you want to play through the game. The system is based directly on Vampire: The Masquerade, and you can get different traits and abilities depending on the clan you choose. You can magically drain blood from victims as a Tremere, become invisible as a Malkavian, or summon animals as a Gangrel.

While the game's main story is fairly interesting, the tangents are the real gems of the experience. Bloodlines is filled with brilliant moments of creepiness and drama. You explore a remarkably atmospheric haunted hotel, do favors for two aristocratic sisters with a bizarre secret, and deal with a friend from your "old" life. The game is especially entertaining if you play through it as a Malkavian, the "crazy" vampire clan. Your dialogue options change, turning you into a rambling madman. Also, you can have conversations with TVs and stop signs.

The voice acting is surprisingly good, with such greats as Phil LaMarr and John DiMaggio (yes, Bender) contributing to the game. Other notable voice actors in the game include Andy Milder (Dean Hodes on Weeds), Jim Ward (who provided voices on Wolverine and the X-Men, Ben 10, and The Fairly Oddparents), and Dee Bradley Baker (Klaus on American Dad, the Clone Troopers on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and a buttload of characters on other cartoons).

If you'd like to give Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines a try, you can download it for $20 on Steam or Direct2Drive. Just make sure you download the unofficial patch for the game. It fixes tons of bugs and adds a few features left out of the final version.