Duncan

An important question about Vampire: Bloodlines

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This is the game I am playing right now. And I have to delay my question by explaining that a very large part of me is embarrassed to be playing this game. I am really not into the whole vampire goth sex fantasy nightclub scene or whatever this is. I'm playing this because it's supposed to be pretty good, and gamers don't have a lot of room to be discriminating about story.

This is my question: doesn't the main menu music sound exactly like Massive Attack's Angel? Like, lawsuit close?

I think if we get this rolling we could take down Troika for good. Troika, now there's a company that's had a free ride for far too long.

(Also, it might be telling that this is the most interesting part of the game to me so far.)

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Troika's been dead for a while. I liked their games, though. In fact, I'm even in one of their games. I even contributed a feature suggestions that was implemented.

Another fact: I got a Christmas card from Troika!

(there, that's my entire connection to the business. Sorry, biz.)

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This is the game I am playing right now.

Oddly enough I finally tried to get into playing Bloodlines last week, too. But the sheer number of bugs in the game's presentation are too distracting for me, so I'm not persevering with it.

This is my question: doesn't the main menu music sound exactly like Massive Attack's Angel? Like, lawsuit close?

Not that I noticed, no.

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Anyway, did you try using the unofficial patches that are being released even as we speak?

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Yeah, Troika are gone. Penny Arcade pointed out how this might not be a bad thing if their talented members can find a home where games are made with fewer bugs.

I was interested in Bloodlines during it's devlopment, but decided against buying it when I heard about the bugs and how incredibly clumsy the combat and 3D interaction is. Considering that it's the Source Engine that isn't very forgivable. Now, if they had the Bloodlines story but with combat akin to Dark Messiah, that would have been something...

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I stopped playing Bloodlines not because of the bugs, but because it was all just so clunky. Combat, movement, just general interaction felt so off to me that I couldn't get into the game at all. I tried it twice, and both times I couldn't get more than an hour into it.

Which is too bad. I loved the first Vampire: The Masquerade RPG from Nilihilistic.

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I realize I should have done this from the beginning: this is the Bloodlines theme.

I stopped playing Bloodlines not because of the bugs, but because it was all just so clunky. Combat, movement, just general interaction felt so off to me that I couldn't get into the game at all. I tried it twice, and both times I couldn't get more than an hour into it.

Yeah, unfortunately this is all the case.

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I can't speak for the game itself, I just remember hearing it was dated as soon as it came out, due to limitations on the use of the engine by Valve.

But you're absolutely right about the theme-song/Massive Attack similarities. The two are even in virtually the same key.

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Which is too bad. I loved the first Vampire: The Masquerade RPG from Nilihilistic.

Okay, now it's getting to weird. I found the first Masquerade game had nice graphics and vampires but not much more. The story, while it had good basic approaches (the different locations, the different times), was sense- and pointless. Now the second game is even with its bugs (as said before, the unofficial patch should solve a lot of them - I encountered nothing serious) by far the better game. Twisted, dark, strange characters, some very disturbing, adult quests, rare dialogue and story stand against sub-source graphics (quite good nonetheless) and the at the beginning troublesome controls.

Everyone is entitled to his opinion (even if they are wrong), but this is a game you should force yourself to get over the first stony hours, because its worth it and fun and the death of Troika, while not unjustified still itches sometimes and people making jokes about that are evil and stupid and have bad breath.

[just try it with the unofficial patch, give it some hours and if you then still don’t like it, you are allowed to]

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[just try it with the unofficial patch, give it some hours and if you then still don’t like it, you are allowed to]

I already did!

...although admittedly, there have been a few more unofficial patches since the last time I tried.

I'm not sure *why* I really liked the first Vampire game. I played it before they added a real save system...I just got around it by walking back to my last checkpoint whenever I wanted to save (enemies didn't respawn, so that wasn't a big deal to me).

At the time, I thought it was atmospheric, and enjoyed the plot. But I don't know if I'd still feel that way.

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I battled through Bloodlines about the time it was released, I used only the official 1.2 patch. The game sure was buggy as hell, but I still enjoyed playing it.

It became rather boring and repeating game at the end, but still it could've been a classic without the bugs.

I haven't yet tried it with the unofficial patches, I should someday perhaps.

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I actually assumed they'd licensed 'Angel' and taken the vocals out.

Massive Attack must live off the royalties of that song, it's used everywhere!

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I'm a year late, but Bloodlines was going on steam for $20 and I was bored. A bargain. And damn am I glad I did get it, because I'm halfway through my second palythrough now and still loving it.

The community is still going strong, so there are two sets of fan-made patches to choose from. I chose the "Unofficial patch 4.5", and from what I can tell most of the bugs have been dealt with and it even gives you the option of re-enabling some stuff that was cut from the game at the last moment, which has been restored by the mod-makers.

At first I did find the combat clunky and horrible, but what became evident as I played through is that this is a result of your noob stats. As you increase your rating in a given style of fighting the combat becomes much more fun and manageable (perhaps not the best design decision with which to hook new players, but it's not a fault of the engine per se). The game also implements a pretty decent stealth system (lacking only corpse interactions), which together with the great dialogue makes a very rounded game.

The strongest area, as any review will tell you, is the dialogue and characters. It's also occasionally very funny. Playing as an insane Malkavian, I've had conversations with street signs ("No, you stop!"), heard whispering voices in my head telling me who to trust, and convinced someone to give me information based on the fact that "I am a fierce dinosaur. Rawwwr!".

I advise all FPS/RPG crossover fans to play it. The emo vampirism isn't too prevalent and is even lampooned on several ocasions. Play it soon before it starts to look too old.

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Saw it on Steam for $20, bought it. Rock Band arrived the next day. Still haven't played. Now I suddenly remember I have it. I'll have to give it a go this weekend.

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Re. the original question:

Although most sites don't include the track 'Angel' in the credits, wikipedia lists it as an uncredited track, and this site says:

The music in this game reflects its gothic theme and features music from artist such as Massive Attack, Collide, and Lacuna Coil. Music posters from these groups are scattered throughout the game world as well.

I'm still of the opinion that it's so close, it must be a licensed non-vocal version.

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Gonna start this today. Where can I find a copy of the unofficial patch that fixes all the crap? Google is leading me to a bunch of dead links.

 

EDIT: Nevermind, this Steam thread has some good links. Though one of the patches is on an "Adult Games" site, so hopefully it doesn't* restore sexy gothsex mini-games in addition to basic functionality.

 

*Does.

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Duncan, after six years are you still embarrassed to have played this game? Or have you just stopped visiting Idle Thumbs altogether out of shame?

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Ok, so I found the patch but getting this game to play on Windows is a nightmare. I tried about a dozen workarounds for an hour last night, couldn't get it to start. Don't buy this game on Steam. Super disappointing.

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I didn't have any problems that I can remember once I got the fan patches. What issues are you seeing?

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First it was telling me that I had less than 15 MB of memory, then it couldn't find Steam. I found a Steam thread about it with several people offering different workarounds, but none of them worked.

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Were you running steam as an admin? Less that 15mb of memory makes me think that it doesn't have disk access.

 

Edit: Yes, I realize that running Steam as an admin is a dumb solution, but I'm used to it because I play a lot of old games through Steam that don't cooperate very well with Windows file security.

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Yeah, that was one of the solutions I tried. Ran Steam as admin, ran Vampires as admin, adjusted compatibility, disabled something-or-other settings (I am not really too computer savvy), nothing. I'm sure there IS a solution, and I bet people who are more used to PC gaming and adjusting stuff to play old games would not see this as a huge problem but someone like me, whose already not entirely sure how to even install patches, a game like this on Steam feels like a trick. 

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