Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=517https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3155GAMEPLAY The combat in Deus Ex is heavily reliant on the skills chosen at the beginning of the game, as they affect both weapon damage and accuracy. In other words, your twitch skills from Half-life won’t help you in Deus Ex if you put all your skill points toward swimming, if JC is a bad shot, you are a bad shot. I am quite certain that this will upset a great deal of people (those who play shooters) but I quite like it, I guess that owes a lot to my favoring of the RPG genre in general. In addition stealth seems to be favored over running and gunning, and this is impressed upon you with your choice of weapons in the early game. In addition to your pistol and riot prod you are offered a choice of a sniper rifle, a tranquilizer crossbow, and a GEP gun (rocket launcher). None of these offer a whole lot of room for gun slinging in that early stage. I mean, I guess you could blow a few baddies to giblets with your three rockets but that is hardly an appropriate use of force. Deus Ex also structures its dialogues in an RPG fashion with its use of conversation trees multiple outcomes, some of which can only become available through the actions of the player. The game actually encourages and rewards exploring the environment with goodies such as ammo and experience points. An example of one of Deus Ex’s possibility for variable dialogue comes at the very beginning of the game on Liberty Island. JC is asked to find and capture a terrorist leader who has claimed the remnants of the Statue of Liberty for himself his merry little band of secessionists. Throughout the level the brass informs JC that he is to capture the leader alive so they can lock him up and perform enhanced interrogation techniques on him or something. In any case, if you ignore this advice and gun him down anyway you’ll return to HQ to find your boss is pissed and that you’ve moved down a pay grade. Not a novel concept, I admit, but it’s something not often seen in shooters, and sure beats Bioshock’s “intense moral dilemmas.” DESIGN Deus Ex is a game that revels in its atmosphere. Everything is grimey and the entire game takes place at night (not ‘a’ night, but ‘at’ night) which sets the tone quite well. From when you first step onto Liberty Island you get the idea that something is dreadfully wrong. The Statue of Liberty, the once pristine symbol of American freedom, lays in ruins, a testament to dark times. In fact, every aspect of the setting of Deus Ex is in some way run down. The only places that look colorful or mesmerizing are the lairs of the devious plutocrats who scheme to control the planet. They grow as the world dies, they are vampiric, they are parasites. The game makes creative use of cutscenes in that it does so sparingly. There are only four cinematics in the game, one for the beginning and one for each of the games three endings. They represent the introduction of all of the problems and conversely the resolution. There is no need for them in the game’s middle, which is where the gameplay tells the story. In a way, it allows for a great deal of freedom that would not otherwise be allowed. At any given moment, the player is in control of JC Denton, and that creates a supremely immersive experience. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Thu, 06 Mar 2008 02:36:09.)Thu, 06 Mar 2008 02:29:12 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3155&iddiary=5920https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3155SUMMARY Deus Ex is a FPS RPG made by company Ion Storm. The game revolves around the main character JC Denton and has a plot that draws heavily upon espionage and conspiracies. The main character is upgraded throughout the game with skills purchased via experience points and “augmentations” which give the player additional powers. GAMEPLAY The character creation system takes place before anything even gets moving and basically involves choosing the protagonist’s real name, (although his code name, JC Denton, which everyone calls him by, is set in stone), his appearance (basically his skin and hair color), and skills. The skills are the real meat of this section and include things like swimming and first aid, all manner of weaponry (low tech to heavy), and computer use. Now secure in the knowledge that Agent JC Denton had an apt grasp of spreadsheets I thrust him into the world. Deus Ex opens with a narration issuing from what are clearly members of some sort of shadow government conspiracy bent on world domination. I can tell because they have a massive sculpture in their lobby of a stone hand gripping the world in its mineral embrace. Oh, and they casually talk about how they’ve engineered a plague and are selectively choosing who gets the cure. This opening cinematic makes use of a lot of fancy camera angles and creative use of zooming in addition to presenting the core plot. The only problem is that the game’s limited graphics coupled with in-engine cutscenes results in a somewhat and entirely unintentional campy beginning. Which is a shame.Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:58:55 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=3155&iddiary=5865https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2870GAMEPLAY If you have ever played a Japanese RPG the combat in Final Fantasy won’t surprise you. Everyone lines up, taking turns assaulting each other with weapons or magic. A particularly annoying part about combat in Final Fantasy is that you choose everyone’s actions at once, regardless of when they’ll attack. So if I have Lao and Shiv attack the same wolf and Lao defeats the wolf before Shiv’s turn, then Shiv will proceed to swing his rapier vainly at the air where the wolf once stood rather than focus his efforts on another, living enemy. Oh, and for veterans of the Final Fantasy series, yes, even in the original do your characters dance every time they defeat a batch of enemies. Upon reaching the ruined castle where Garland made his base I proceeded to loot the place of everything that wasn’t nailed down. After stowing away the loot (a cap, a potion, and a… cabin?) I finally came face to face with princess thief. He greeted me by asserting that this was in actuality his princess and that I was grossly mistaken in my liberation attempts. He then informed me that his only recourse was to initiate my collapse. I then refuted his argument with violence. As his wretched form lay twisted on the ground he could only accept that mine was the sounder argument. After speaking with the king he gave me a lute and sent me on my way. After all of this the opening credits began to roll… Oy. DESIGN All right, I realize that I have been bashing what is perhaps the single most important RPG released in the past two decades that doesn’t have “Dragon” in the title, but cut me some slack. The game set the stage on some level for virtually every electronic RPG released in the past twenty years. Without Final Fantasy we might never have some of the most memorable scenes in video gaming history (most of which were NOT in the original Final Fantasy). I understand that the game was a milestone and superb for its time, but the end all be all RPG? No, not by a long shot. In my three hours of play time, I had yet to encounter a single character that had, at any given time, more than two or three sentences of dialogue. Sometimes, that is ALL the dialogue they had. I didn’t encounter anyone I could say I would identify with/love/hate/etc. and the only memorable characters (Garland and a pirate captain named Bikke) stayed in my mind because of their absurdity. They were, quite literally, jokes (and in Final Fantasy’s defense, pretty funny ones). Although I must cut the game some slack, it kept me entertained, if only because I’m a fan of the RPG genre, for the nostalgia value, and *ahem* historical context. If you like RPGs, you’ll like Final Fantasy, you’ll have played better and you won’t hold it in any high regard, but you’ll like it. The game distinguished itself in the late eighties and early nineties because concepts which are now at worse cliché and at best standardized were new and innovative at that time. I am thankful that such a thing as the original Final Fantasy existed, but I would not afford it anymore praise than that.Thu, 21 Feb 2008 02:31:40 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2870&iddiary=5419https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2870SUMMARY Final Fantasy is an NES RPG by Square Soft (now Square Enix) created in 1987 and released stateside in 1990. The game’s protagonists are four heroes who each have different abilities and are chosen by the player at the beginning of the game. The game has an in depth story that spans several hours of play time. Gaining levels and money is done through random encounters and boss battles. GAMEPLAY You read that right, I’m playing Final Fantasy. Not Final Fantasy VII, or X or XI or XII, no, I’m playing the original game that started the series long ago when Reagan was president and MC Hammer was an up and coming celebrity with the world ahead of him. Now I should clarify that I am not playing the re-released or reedited version of the game with CG cut scenes and shiny graphics. I am playing the old NES version, so you can’t fault me for giving it a decent shot. Knowing this, I’ll have to ask you to bear with me when I say that it shows its age. After being shown the storyline involving light and orbs or something (easy, these are the jokes!) I am presented with the ability to customize my party of four rag-tag heroes eager to prove themselves in the ring of honor or some such thing. Anyway, I went with a party of Lao the wandering martial artist (fine, Black Belt!) and his compatriots, Shiv the Thief, Izix the Black Mage, and Eevi the White Mage. At which point Lao suddenly appeared in a field just south of a castle town. I wasn’t given any pretense of what to do, so I decided to move in the direction of civilization. Cornelia, the town, is your usual fantasy genre shopping mall. You’ve got your weapon shop, armor shop, Inn, item shop (where they sell things that are not weapons or armor), and your (black and white) spell shops. The inhabitants just had one thing to say and were happy to repeat it as many times as I liked. As it turns out, Cornelia’s King was in the market for Light Warriors, lucky me that I had four on me. So after a quick jaunt to the castle I found my way to the king who, like everyone I had met thus far, only had one thing to say. Lo and behold, he lost his daughter, the princess (obviously), to some ex-knight named Garland and needed me to rectify the situation.Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:51:51 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2870&iddiary=5362https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2544Sacrifice GAMEPLAY So, about that Gnomish civil war… I may or may not have used unnecessary force. Well, it was going well at first; I was plunging deeply into the heart of the war torn gnome kingdom, effortlessly pacifying or conscripting the warring gnomes. This continued right up until I came upon the warcamp of Thestor, the gnome who dared to usurp the monarchy and start a war that pitted mythological fae creature against mythological fae creature. The battle was glorious albeit swift and the rebel was killed in the melee. Apparently assassination was not exactly what Peresephone aiming for when she sent me on this mission of peace. After the god of death decided to take time out of his busy schedule to personally commend my handling of the situation I realized that I had erred, and erred greatly. My next mission got me into the real meat of the game as in it involved my first real battle with another wizard. I had decided to make the best of a bad situation and do a mission for my new friend, Charnel, the aforementioned jovial god of death. I can’t help but feel very wrong when the deity whose portfolio includes slaughter, pestilence, death, and strife is more fun to be around than the lady who is supposed to protect nature and safeguard the weak! Whatever, that’s politics, so apparently Charnel wants me to take back some real estate from a squatter wizard, and open some sort of demonic portal to horrors incomprehensible. Which leads me to describe why removing wizards is no easy feat. All wizards have altars venerating their chosen deity, in this case mine is to Charnel and my enemy, Abraxus, has one supporting Stratos, the god of (hot) air. If either of us is killed we’ll simply regenerate at our altar to go wizarding once more. The only way to prevent this is to desecrate the wizard’s altar by sacrificing one of your minions there in an elaborate ritual performed by the ever useful “sac doctors.” You can then grant your spell slinging foe a final death so long as they don’t interrupt the ongoing ritual. If this sounds extremely difficult, that’s because it is supposed to be. Just as other strategy games want you to raze all the buildings of your foes, Sacrifice requires that you desecrate your opponent’s altar. The game really does earn its name in this regard. DESIGN Sacrifice is a game like no other. In trying to be both an RPG and a strategy it manages to blend both genres seamlessly together and creates and experience I have yet to see replicated. Other games that have attempted this merging have split players into the differing roles of strategist or hero, Sacrifice requires players to be both. If you plan poorly your summoned troops will collapse under the magical onslaught of your foes and if you take too long to plan then your wizardly rivals will overwhelm you. That eight years have passed without a game even so much as attempting what Shiny had done in 2000 is a testament to Sacrifice’s innovativeness. In addition to having ingenious gameplay, the plot of the single player campaign (like any strategy game worth its salt, Sacrifice also has multiplayer) is truly inspired. The characters are all beautifully well written and voice acted and few games have offered such a cornucopia of memorable quotes. There were times during gameplay were I honestly felt for the characters onscreen, something unheard of for me outside of Bioware games and Metal Gear Solid much less a strategy. That the game can manage all this and still juggle the freeform level system and multiple endings is something short of miraculous. I’m only disappointed that the game was such a commercial flop and so few people have actually experienced the enjoyment I got from it during my five some playthroughs.Sat, 09 Feb 2008 02:30:05 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2544&iddiary=4852https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2544Sacrifice SUMMARY Sacrifice is a computer game produced by Shiny in 2000. The game is a combination of a 3D real time strategy and an action RPG. The player navigates a wizard across a battlefield, summoning creatures to form powerful armies. The game is freeform and has several different endings depending on alliances and betrayals performed during the course of the game. The plot is complex and revolves around the machinations of five competing gods and their minions. GAMEPLAY When I wrote my log on Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines, I referred to it as, “a lesser known game.” Well, I can safely say that if VtMB is “lesser known,” then Sacrifice is damn missing link. Created by Shiny Entertainment in their younger days, before they started churning out crap like The Matrix, they produced a quaint little real time strategy called Sacrifice. I say quaint with only the greatest sense of respect, as the Sacrifice team clearly did the most with what appears to have been a very small budget. The graphics are quite decrepit when compared to the games of today, yet they still retain some of their charm. The cutscenes are would be laughable were it not for the engaging story and excellent voice acting. The game begins as the main character, a grey skinned wizard named Eldred (Although his name can be changed at the beginning of the game), begins telling the story that begins the game. Apparently Eldred got involved in some bad things back on his home world and traversed the boundaries of space and time to escape a dire fate. Well his journey finally ends in “The Ethereal Realm,” which is some kind of Olympus like place where gods gather and fraternize among themselves. After pleading with the manifold deities they reveal themselves to be combative bunch of twits as they begin calling each other names or announcing their superiority. After the argument dies down, our protagonist is left to choose which god he will follow. At least for the first mission anyway. That’s because Sacrifice is pretty freeform and for a while you serve as basically a wizardly mercenary, taking odd jobs from the gods themselves. Well, I chose to ally myself with the deity Persephone who appears to be the goddess of nature and zealotry. She constantly goes on about fighting iniquity and bringing down the vile heretics who dare defile the natural order. In any case, it appears she needs a good wizard to end some sort of civil war being fought among the gnomes over who should be the gnome king. Well, despite my personal beliefs on intervention, I agreed to go help pacify things, I mean, I *am* a mercenary after all, I’m not exactly in the position to question moral decisions. In any case, after being plopped into the battlefields of Pelanon I get a feel for the game’s mechanics. This ain’t no ordinary strategy game, I can’t see a barracks or town center anywhere. Rather, I directly control Eldred and summon my forces with arcane magics. In addition I can run around and cast other wizardly spells such as firing magic missles (though they aren't called that) or healing my minions. More spells are gained every time your wizard levels up and are determined by whichever god you happen to be venerating at that particular time. The only resource is souls (in addition to the HP and mana of your wizard) which are needed for any form of creature summoning. I am given a few souls to start with and some critters to control, but in order to get more I need to go to war. When an enemy is killed their soul hovers above their body but is essentially useless because they follow a heathen god (ie the one who isn’t backing you) so they need to be “purified.” This is done by summoning a *ahem* “sac doctor” who performs the ritual necessary to harvest it. So there you have it, soul warfare. (This entry has been edited2 times. It was last edited on Sat, 09 Feb 2008 02:04:29.)Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:23:17 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2544&iddiary=4789https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2258GAMEPLAY Alright then, my second go with Kirby got me as far as the Fourth World. And no, that isn’t a reference to any sort of regional socio-economic measurement system. Rather, Dreamland appears to have provinces very much similar to those in Mario’s homeland of the Mushroom Kingdom. You have your Forest land, your magical kingdoms, subterranean areas, and airships. Which makes me wonder, Kirby’s world can have all this crazy crap in it because it’s Dreamland and, I assume, consists of people’s dreams, whereas the Mushroom Kingd- oh, yeah, I guess that one makes sense, too. So apparently King Dedede, for all his apparent regal malevolence, is an equal opportunity employer. The bosses you fight include, but are not limited to, a rollerskating artist whose paintings literally “come alive,” a sapient tree, a walrus, a beetle, the sun and the moon, and an alarm clock. I was particularly fond of dispatching the last of that list, and I think many of my fellows with early classes will agree that alarm clocks deserve nothing more than our collective scorn and rage. It was also nice that each mini-boss offered a nifty, rare power-up for Kirby. Among them is the ability to pile drive enemies, which is more fun than it should be. DESIGN The thing that amazed me most about the game was how good it looked. When I loaded up an NES game from the early nineties I did not expect what I saw. Kirby’s Adventure is wonderfully animated and quite colorful. The game graphics-wise is very much on par with Super Mario 4 for the Super Nintendo. Granted, today, that’s like saying, “This abacus is very much on par with the Apple IIe,” the achievement is still quite evident. That an 8-bit game can make me chuckle at its (intentional) silliness is a testament to how well it has aged. Of course Kirby’s defining mechanic is his ability to absorb the powers of the enemies he eats. Having only one power at a time also adds some elements of strategy in that you need to save powers gained from rare or boss enemies. The powers are quite noticeable although some are somewhat useless (turning into a ball) or redundant (Should I use ice breath or ice aura?). Still many are very nice to have around and affect areas in meaningful ways. In one instance I used Kirby’s fire breath to ignite a fuse to a nearby cannon which he could then leap into to be launched far into the Stratosphere. Which as any veteran of Mario knows is where all the best stuff is located. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Sat, 26 Jan 2008 14:47:18.)Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:32:58 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2258&iddiary=4335https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2258Kirby’s Adventure SUMMARY Kirby’s Adventure is a platformer for the Nintendo Entertainment System circa 1993. Game mechanics include the capability of jumping, hovering, inhaling enemies and stealing their powers, and exhaling enemies. As usual for games of the era it is divided up via levels although there is a lobby area to rest between adventures in Dreamland. The game centers on Kirby foiling the machinations of the birdlike King Dedede and his plot to destroy Dreamland. GAMEPLAY On Thursday, I had the profound honor of seeing the beginnings of a now famous face in Nintendo history, Kirby. For those of you unfamiliar with the character, Kirby is a small, pink, spheroid with two stubby fingerless arms, two red toeless feet, and an ever-smiling face with large, puppy dog eyes. But for most of us gamers, however, that’s all we know of the little guy, other than that he sucks. Not to slight Kirby or his games, but he literally inhales his enemies, consumes their powers, and vomits them out as high speed projectiles. The entire process is actually cuter than it sounds. So all is not well in Dreamland, in fact there are no dreams in Dreamland, thereby negating the existence of such a place as Dreamland. It does indeed appear that the avian monarch, King Dedede, has stolen the sacred Star Rod and shattered it into seven pieces for which are no doubt devious purposes. So it falls on Kirby, in all his round, vacuumous glory, to bring an end to such a dastardly villain and restore peace to sleepers everywhere. The game is very much a platformer in that there are platforms involved. These platforms, however, are entirely cosmetic in nature. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they provide a number of uses in the Dreamland economic structure. But Kirby scoffs at such terrestrial objects with cool disdain – that is if Kirby did scoff at things rather than be a pink bubble of pure optimism. No, for Kirby is capable of flight and happily soars over such obstacles, only touching down for the errant power-up or to teach some upstart “boss,” what small, pink, round men are really made of. Fluff, I imagine. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Sat, 26 Jan 2008 03:12:29.)Sat, 26 Jan 2008 01:53:56 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2258&iddiary=4282https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1740GAMEPLAY Here we are again for more vampire shenanigans. So following the tutorial level I am sent to Santa Monica to help out my new prince with some undead chores. Thing is, there are so many side attractions and folks running around that I think I’ll go ahead and let Mr. LaCroix sit on his thumb for awhile. Truly, just walking out of the 0-star apartment (oh, haven, excuse me) the brass provided for me, I was immediately presented with the opportunity to accost some poor fellow, that wandered into the wrong part of town, for his money and Rolex. The game play itself is not terribly complicated and has combat reminiscent of Bioshock (or maybe Bioshock has combat reminiscent of Bloodlines?) if you trade plasmids for vampire powers and Eve for blood (which you have to periodically drain from any human who happens to be walking home alone) and add more of a focus on melee combat. The conversation tree structure would be familiar to anyone who played RPGs like the Baldur’s Gate series or the Neverwinter Nights series only it is completely voice acted down to the last random peon like Oblivion, so on some levels it manages to trump all three in that regard. The quests I mentioned earlier are quite different from the usual RPG fare, if only because it’d be hard to justify running around forests, killing monsters in Southern California, vampires or not. In all seriousness, the quests are quite intriguing, well written, and really demonstrate why this game deserves its M rating. I realized this around the point when I was ambushed by a mad prostheses specialist who was clutching a severed arm by its protruding humerus and wielding it as a macabre club. My counterattack of course consisted of repeatedly making him vomit up great gouts of his own blood. When the battle ended I took the severed arm as a grim trophy that I had finally made it in the world. And that’s just the beginning! Did I mention that this is a game where you have to periodically stalk people into alleys and make them unwitting blood donors so you can heal your wounds and power your abilities? DESIGN Bloodlines is a scary game. There is a profound sense of unease that permeates everything you get yourself into. This is because it doesn’t take place in the Southern California that I know and love, rather it is in a corrupted and, dare I say, gothic version of my home state. Santa Monica is a set of slums lit up only by the vampire-run night club where unspeakable acts are performed in the dark. Los Angeles is dominated by towering edifices with gargoyles (both the inanimate kind and the animate kind) staring down from their perches. Hollywood is a land of broken dreams and lechery, so it’s more or less the same as in real life. As for Chinatown, well, “forget it, Jake, its Chinatown.” What Bloodlines accomplishes in spookiness is hurt by how rushed the game feels at times. The load times are long and plentiful, and you occasionally find graphical laziness as the ‘seams’ between different parts of characters can be seen at times. As I mentioned in the earlier entry, the animations range from amazing to comically inept. Where many of the faces are superbly animated and in sync with dialog, people frequently move around in either a twitchy or ham-handed manner. This disparity is especially evident is some of the cut scenes. Thankfully most of the problems are graphical in nature, so at the very least you can console yourself with the other aspects of the game that mostly run smoothly. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Mon, 14 Jan 2008 03:31:16.)Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:50:47 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1740&iddiary=3478https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1740Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines SUMMARY Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines is an action role-playing game with elements of horror as well. The game centers on a player created character that has just been turned into a vampire. The game is built to emulate the rules and setting of the White Wolf Inc. pen and paper game Vampire: the Masquerade. As the player navigates the politics of vampire society and performs quests in an around the LA area, they gain experience points to purchase more vampiric as well mundane abilities. The game demonstrates moderate open-endedness when compared to other RPGs, more so than Bioshock but less than Oblivion. GAMEPLAY On Saturday night I began playing Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines, a lesser known action RPG that suffers from an overly cumbersome name. Truly it is a thing composed of the stitched together titles of the games of ages past and animated by forces best left unexplained. So I think from now on I’ll go ahead and refer to it as VtMB or Bloodlines depending on my mood. The interesting thing about this particular title is that its creators, the now defunct Troika Games, managed get Valve’s permission to create the game with the now consecrated Source engine. It’s hard to tell at points; however, due to the vast differences between the two games and the fact that Troika didn’t have the time or money Valve had access to when they were making HL2. As may have become instantly clear to you upon seeing the first word of VtMB’s monstrous title, the game is about vampires. And not the kind that live in castles and scare helpless Romanian peasants, but ones that live among us and ruthlessly enforce their secret existence with an arcane spectrum of laws collectively called the Masquerade, a coda that begs to be italicized. There are also several different kinds of vampires with all sorts of crazy powers like summoning wolves, telepathy, or making people vomit blood. After some thought, I eventually settled on a Tremere due to their being renown as the most intellectual of the bunch and therefore more capable of remembering not to go sunbathing, also they do the whole making people spew blood thing, which is awesome. Oh, and I named him Emmanuel Salazar, which is comparatively awesome. In addition to the vampire “class” choice there was also the array of skills and power options, many of which differed depending on which bloodsucker you chose. These included things ranging from firearms to intimidation to brawling to scholarship, so there is a great deal of room for experimentation. So after the character creation the newly created Emmanuel is thrust into the cutthroat world of vampire politics. After a rather brief PG-13 sex scene in which my character is bitten by his partner who, horror of horrors, is actually one of the undead. But before Mr. Salazar is able to so much as ask whether or not this means he’s technically a necrophiliac the vampire Special Forces kidnap both his vampiric consort and him. Without spoiling much more, I’ll go ahead and say that a great deal of vampires are then introduced including their “prince” Sebestian LaCroix who did an excellent job of making me immediately dislike him. He is seriously a combination of every bad stereotype of a politician, lawyer, and aristocrat and these are all evident within the first five minutes of the game. This brings me to the subject of the voice acting - it’s stellar! I have yet to encounter a character whose dialog was not delivered expertly. Even though the vampire leader made me hate him, he did so because that was the idea. The graphics were also something to marvel upon. The facial textures and character models look like they would fit in perfectly in Half-life 2 (except for one fellow whose long hair and beard are rather shoddily done) if Half-life 2 had vampires in addition to all manner of alien and robot. The unfortunate part of the game’s look is the hit-or-miss animations. Why does my character look like a scarecrow when he walks and a marionette when he runs? Thankfully, though, I don’t have to look at that unless I’m in the over-the-shoulder view, and I mostly prefer first person perspective. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Sun, 13 Jan 2008 23:36:28.)Sun, 13 Jan 2008 23:33:12 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1740&iddiary=3460