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[Hangedman]

I'm brawling my way through as a Gangrel. The plus patch destroys unarmed, so I just went with the regular 7.9, and it's actually made it nice and challenging. Enemies block and deflect and battles take some thought.

(Aside, wesp is out of his mind making the plus patch unarmed what it was. What he basically did was make disciplines free and last forever, but make unarmed combat nigh-on-impossible even with them on. I can see the idea, but it was horribly executed.)

Burning through the quests though. I know the first two hubs way too well.

Just tore through Boris, Kanker and Jezebel downtown. The last one (can't remember his name) is annoying as hell to fight as hand to hand. No plan yet.
Have had to come up with some creative blood sources though, which has made the game more interesting. Not relying on seduction this run. Bluffing and fighting nonstop. Been more gripping than previous runs.
Not looking forward to the Elizabeth Dane; It's kind of slow.

Also, this game needs more Beckett.

EDIT: Also, a warning (not a spoiler!) - if you feed on Venus, she'll never recover from the stupor and you'll never be able to resolve anything involving her. Guess they missed that one.

[Alevice]

Talked to the girls in Asylum yet? I'm pretty sure gender is irrelevant for that... can't remember.

?

Yeah, it's all really corny (including the backstory you uncover) but it's effective for some reason. Not gonna lie, I put the quest off until today afternoon because I didn't want to do it at night.

Haha, i did it at night, but made certain I was playing with a third person view.

That said, the second half of that quest seemed out of silent hill, and while I love silent hill, i think it wasnt implemented as well.

[Derek]

Just played through the first mission as a male Toreador. My unarmed fighting ability is like a 5 so I punched everyone at the beachhouse to death.

Pretty fun so far. I'm impressed with the faces/facial animation.

[Blademasterbobo]

yeah, the quality of the facial animation is pretty surprising. the biker dude's beard weirds me out, though. it's like he hairsprays half of it till it can no longer move, while the inner beard is allowed to roam free and do as it pleases.

[C.A. Sinner]

yeah the facial animation still looks great. i played some deus ex human revolution the other day and wondered why everyone in that gam looks like a fucking mannequin when bloodlines' level of expressiveness was possible in 2004 (with an unfinished engine no less).

it also helps that the dialog is generally really well written and acted (by vidgam standards).

[PaleFox]

Troika was a great game company in general; they made Temple of Elemental Evil, too, which I enjoyed.


Most of VTMB's issues can be blamed on two companies: Activision and Valve. You see, Activision forced them to actually move up the finish date an entire year, from 2005 to 2004, meaning that the last part of the game had to be rushed together and many bugs and features were left unaddressed. This was basically to get the game out the door and stop Activision's involvement with the game -- they provided zero post-release support, and basically cut budgets constantly. Valve, however, refused to let them publish the game at this earlier date, because it would then predate HL2, which used the source engine and was supposed to debut it upon release. So the game developers were forced to rush a game for no reason and then not release it.

The 1.2 patch was made on their own time after they'd all basically been fired, and Troika dissolved not long after.


When you get to the last third of the game (and also just dealing with some unbalanced talents and disciplines) you can really see how the game was supposed to have an entire year more of development and polish. Had it done so, it probably would have sold much better, instead of coming out broken and buggy at the same time as HL2, one of the most anticipated games of the last decade.

[Derek]

Yeah, the development sounds awful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade_%E2%80%93_Bloodlines#Development_and_sales

yeah the facial animation still looks great. i played some deus ex human revolution the other day and wondered why everyone in that gam looks like a fucking mannequin when bloodlines' level of expressiveness was possible in 2004 (with an unfinished engine no less).

it also helps that the dialog is generally really well written and acted (by vidgam standards).

I think people generally speak highly of Deus Ex: HR because they want so badly for there to be a good sequel to the original DX. I was disappointed by my first five hours with the game, and I'm not sure I'll be able to muster the willpower to get back into it. Especially since I know I'll be funneled into boss fights that were designed by another company. The whole game feels contrived, though.

Vampire's doing a good job so far, though. The opening cutscene is well-made, and I like how they drop you into the middle of the city afterwards and let you explore some.

[C.A. Sinner]

I think HR is OK as a whole (it has none of the character of the original but at least it gets the core concepts mostly right) but I was talking specifically about the facial animation which is stiff as hell. I was wondering why so few newer gams do facial animation as well as an unfinished game released in 2004 and using HR as an example.

[Derek]

Part of it is how exaggerated the models are in Vampire. It almost crosses into the realm of cartoon at points:



Gives the animators much more freedom to exaggerate, which our eyes respond positively to. All the characters in DX:HR have these tight, plasticky faces, so I'm not surprised the resulting animations are stiff.

It's like comparing the original Total Recall with the remake:



 

[C.A. Sinner]

arnold has the best face <3 (representin 4 austria yo)

yeah bloodlines is totally cartoony and it works great

[Derek]

BTW, how often do you guys save in these games? And when does Vampire auto-save?

I usually save pretty often (rotating between 3-4 save games) because I like to try things a few times to see how everything works.

[TeeGee]

I just hit the quicksave button whenever I can. I think it creates a separate save file each time, which is pretty annoying.

Finished most of Santa Monica subquests today. It felt great to be able to chose dialogue options that exist for simple roleplaying purposes and not some binary morality system. Quite refreshing. Had my fun scaring the shit out of the guys at the beach house and then feeding on them one by one.

I have to admit it's more glitchy than I remembered, though. Controls feel bad or weird at times, combat feels clunky, the animations sometimes seem to skip weirdly, and the interface looks and works as if it was unfinished. I think I'm less forgiving than I used to be, as I don't recall such issues. 

[dustin]

So I just answered all the questions at the start of the game to choose my race/stats.  I'm playing a Gangrel.  I have no idea about this system so that seemed like the way to go.  I think it picked a good character for me, and I'm having fun roleplaying it.

Just played up until the beach house, which was super easy, I just walked in and killed everyone basically, lots of fun though, I really feel like a vampire.

One thing that is killing me is the load times... I hate load times in games and since I'm wandering around a lot it makes me not want to enter doors as I'm afraid I'll have to wait.

[Hangedman]

I like the stacked Quicksaves: lets me jump back to any point instead of accidentally screwing myself over.

Yeah, the patches fixed a lot of the cutscene bugs but didn't get rid of them all. Things skip about, and etc. And some combat is clunkier than others. The patches make melee/unarmed harder and enemies counter more, which can mean a lot of rebounding and not much actual fighting. Remember that pressing different directions in hand-to-hand combat switches up your attack patterns.

Also: some patches change the interface to be clearer but uglier, so maybe that has something to do with it.

Load times don't seem as bad to me as they used to be. Maybe I'm just used to them?


Just beat the Mansion. Possibly even better than the Ocean House. Love it. Love that style.

[allen]

I have to admit it's more glitchy than I remembered, though. Controls feel bad or weird at times, combat feels clunky, the animations sometimes seem to skip weirdly, and the interface looks and works as if it was unfinished. I think I'm less forgiving than I used to be, as I don't recall such issues. 

I tried playing it, but I just can't get past all these issues. The controls and interface just rape my patience. I want to play a game, not wrestle with clunky controls and the terrible UI and poor performance.

Played around 4 hours and realized I wasn't having any fun. Didn't find the story, setting, or gameplay interesting at all. I couldn't engage someone in conversation without rolling my eyes at how bad the dialog (especially my character's) was.

Was kinda disappointed after all I've heard about it. ehhh.