Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

[Orolinwe]

I was thinking of getting this game. It's made by Troika (Arcanum) and uses the Half-Life 2 engine. I've heard it's a pretty sick underworld type game with tons of choices and good story etc.

But I also heard it was very buggy (published by Activision too, go figure). I was wondering if anyone has played it, how you liked it, etc?? Also wanted to know if it's been patched decently before I decide to buy.

[Sidus Preclarum]

I've played it, enjoyed it greatly, but it indeed is very buggy
HL2 engine makes very nice, but the drawback is rather longish loading times btween zones . The greater plus brought by the engine is the characters, imho ... Animations are very lifelike .
Anyway, the sotry's great, NPCs are great too. VOice acting is simply sublime, imho. Ambiance is at turn creepy, glamourous (especially if you play a woman ... somehow a whoman character is way better at seducing chicks than a male one... lol ), melancholic, hilarious, and downright scary. The music's not half bad, and the settings are very good (incredible how Tzimisce are awful interior decorators ... eeek ... ) Somehow the cutscenes, using the game engines, look like they've been hastily put together: animations are choppy, sometimes sounds and visuals aren't synchronized, they look awfully amateurish ... Maybe this has something to do with Troika being in the process of imploding :p I didn't even bother to check if there was a patch, also partly because I was so engrossed by the story that I didn't really feel the need .
Fighting is so so ... Shooting's done in first person, and since it combines you actually aiming and RPG elements (your stat and skill) in the end it feels a bit akward ... hand to hand and melee is done in 3rd person ..; It's confuse, but fun to watch, especially if you have celerity . There's actually an almost dungeonesque part right in the middle, endless sewers corridors filled with creepy creatures, which drags to no end (better to buy loads of auto shotty ammo before that, that weapons really speeds up the stage): the game reaally could have done withour that .
As I already said, the plot's pretty good, there are some interesting twists, and there are actually 5 different endings to the game that I know of .
SInce activision dropped the price of the game (here it got slashed by like 33% the week after the release) it could be a good buy if you're able to cope with some tech problems for the sake of a great story .

[smack]

It's patched and has fans and modders and seems stable as hell to me. Too bad about Troika though :erm I don't like FPS very much but have had fun loading this up from time to time.

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

It is a good game if you can look past all the bugs.
Too bad it will never get fixed.

[Quietus]

VTMB is great! I've played it post patch and the bugs are very few. (example: enemies can spin in the air continuously if you hit them with a combo in a certain way). Now that Troika is closing, they have lowered the price for months now.

Just make sure your drivers are updated because it to me a month or so before I realized that NVidia is giving the wrong drivers! :sad I had to get the correct one from Dell. It can crawl alot without the driver update.

[Hamelkart]

Damn, wrong topic!

I apologize.

[Orolinwe]

Originally posted by Quietus@Apr 3 2005, 12:32 PM

Just make sure your drivers are updated because it to me a month or so before I realized that NVidia is giving the wrong drivers! :sad I had to get the correct one from Dell. It can crawl alot without the driver update.

What drivers are you using? I have a Dell but with an upgraded GeForce 4 Ti4200.

The game is still pretty expensive at my local Wal Mart. 40$ or more I think...

Where I live, Wal Mart is all there is, lol. :sick Guess I'll look online.

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

For 40$ then I don't recommend it.
You can always do the alternative way you know

[Sidus Preclarum]

Originally posted by Quietus@Apr 3 2005, 12:32 PM
(example: enemies can spin in the air continuously if you hit them with a combo in a certain way).

I thought that was my 1337 celerity and hand to hand skills :sad
:p
nah seriously, if you like rather mature sotrytelling, that game is a must .

[Quietus]

Originally posted by Orolinwe+Apr 3 2005, 05:49 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td> (Orolinwe &#064; Apr 3 2005, 05:49 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteBegin-Quietus@Apr 3 2005, 12:32 PM

Just make sure your drivers are updated because it to me a month or so before I realized that NVidia is giving the wrong drivers&#33; :sad I had to get the correct one from Dell. It can crawl alot without the driver update.

What drivers are you using? I have a Dell but with an upgraded GeForce 4 Ti4200.

The game is still pretty expensive at my local Wal Mart. 40&#036; or more I think...

Where I live, Wal Mart is all there is, lol. :sick Guess I&#39;ll look online.[/b][/quote]
Orolinwe,

The price should be &#036;30 and below. I have the same graphics card as yours (only mine is the laptop version). Go to Dell and get the drivers there. Mine was stuttering like crazy before I&#39;ve updated with the correct drivers.


@Sidus: lol

[Orolinwe]

I am enjoying the game but it lags ridiculously in all areas. Control locks up during battles cuz of it and in general it&#39;s a huge pain in the ******.

I tried the Dell Drivers. They had some there for GeForce4 Ti 4200 64meg. However, these drivers were whacked. I couldn&#39;t change my monitor&#39;s refresh rate, and Vampire wouldn&#39;t even start... Also the basic GUI graphics were lagging.

Not sure what to do. Using the most current Nvidia official drivers. I&#39;d like to think I missed something over at Dell and maybe got the wrong drivers or something. Can you link to the drivers you used?

[Pent uP Rage]

Yeah, this is a pretty decent game...after the patch. Too bad Troika Games is going belly up. You can thank Valve for that.(IMO) They wouldn&#39;t let Troika release it until HL2 was out even though it was finished LAST FEBRUARY. They just lost too much money by having to sit on the game for nearly a year.

[Kanaric]

This is a great game despite its bugs, reminds me of the old Deus Ex kind of except not as good (deus ex is one of the best games ever so saying that isn&#39;t bad).

[Quietus]

Originally posted by Orolinwe@Apr 9 2005, 08:20 PM
I am enjoying the game but it lags ridiculously in all areas. Control locks up during battles cuz of it and in general it&#39;s a huge pain in the ******.

I tried the Dell Drivers. They had some there for GeForce4 Ti 4200 64meg. However, these drivers were whacked. I couldn&#39;t change my monitor&#39;s refresh rate, and Vampire wouldn&#39;t even start... Also the basic GUI graphics were lagging.

Not sure what to do. Using the most current Nvidia official drivers. I&#39;d like to think I missed something over at Dell and maybe got the wrong drivers or something. Can you link to the drivers you used?

I&#39;ve used a different, official driver was well, BUT it wasn&#39;t installing at all. The correct one from Dell worked ( GeForce 4 4200 Go). You went to Dell.com and went through the selection process right? Mine was v6.14.10.6742, A06. This is what I could find for GeForce4 4200 ti (yours).

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/...00&fileid=75133

Also, have you changed your virtual memory/pagefile to 2gb? That was one of the tweaks for the game. In XP go to My Computer>properties>advanced>performance>advance>change, then set your virtual memory to 1.5x times your RAM (but people just set to 2gb).

Hope that works and come back to tell what happened.

[Orolinwe]

Thanks for following up Quietus. Those drivers are the ones I had already tried and they were rather wacky.

I guess I&#39;ll just have to get used to the choppiness... It&#39;s extremely annoying but the game is fortunately good enough to make up for it overall.

I tried the higher Virtual Mem but it didn&#39;t help much. I also used another trick from a guy who wrote some FAQs for it at GameFaqs which was to add this line -heapsize 250000, to the command line in the Shortcut.exe

That didn&#39;t help too much either unfortunately. Although the load times at least do seem to be faster because of these changes.

I don&#39;t even care about the graphics, I just want the game to be smooth. As it is now, every single trip into a hub area is an exercise in frustration.

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

There is a solution on their gamespy forum that removes the choppiness for you if you can accept no sky and 2 story buildings.

[Orolinwe]

I can accept that, lol. Don&#39;t happen to have a link do you?

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

I&#39;m trying to access the forum I found it in but it is slower then a snail.
I posted the fix in another Vampire thread on this forum.

[Orolinwe]

HOLY CRAP&#33; This game just got another patch&#33;&#33; A 15 meg one&#33;

Now I&#39;m immediately wondering, how is it that this game gets 2 patches when Troika doesn&#39;t even exist anymore and Rome can&#39;t get another patch&#33;&#33;??

WHAT KIND OF CRAZINESS IS THIS?

It&#39;s relevant because Activision published both games.

Downloading it now. I&#39;ll let ya know if it helps the lag etc.

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

Troika doesn&#39;t exist, it is not them that are releasing them.
The patches are made by fans.
But they can&#39;t fix the choppy engine.