This game Sucks. I loved it.

Ok. So. Been a while. How's everybody been? Hear that shit about Palin? Crazy, huh?

So a large part of why nobody's seen me (at least over the past week) is this lovely little pile of crack-cocaine known as Vampire: The Masquerade. This is a game that came out about 5 years ago, and is now available on Steam for 20 bucks.

Not surprisingly, the game is about vampires. Being adapted from a tabletop game about being a bloodsucker, Masquerade features voice and writing talent that easily meets or beats any game I've ever played. Brace yourselves for blasphemy, children: This might have been better than KOTOR.

Depending on your character build, fights can be won through various means, including stealth, magic, guns, swords, bare fists, claws, shapeshifting into a monster, or by running away like a little girl (a tactic I employed judiciously against an 8 foot werewolf). These things are done well enough to make the combat sequences fun, but in true RPG fashion, it all takes a back seat to the game's story.

The game begins with your vampire character being "embraced" into the ranks of the vampire, and the first few seconds of your new vampire life see both you and your vampire sire staked through the heart (which apparently only paralyzes a vampire) by the vampire police and brought to vampire trial. Did I mention this game had vampires?

Your creation was a violation of what the vampire community calls the Masquerade. The Masquerade is the code of conduct that vampires follow to keep their existence a secret. Traditional law demands the death of both you and your sire, but if that happened there wouldn't be a game so you are given a chance to join the vampiric community. That community, you'll quickly learn, is like the Senate, Congress, and High School all rolled into one, with people stabbing one another in the back left and right as they desperately try to claw their way to the top of the social circle.

The vampire world is one rife with political intrigue, where everyone has an agenda. There are no good guys and there are no friends; there are only people whose goals happen to align with yours. Throughout the game, you have the feeling that you are a pawn in somebody else's chess game, and that no matter what you do you'll be playing into somebody's hands. The story unfolds in a manner quite similar to KOTOR, with a heavy emphasis on dialogue and socializing as a part of the gameplay. There are surprisingly few points in the game where you actually have to do any serious fighting, and while it's almost always an option to just shoot/punch/bite your way through, it can be just as rewarding to talk or sneak past a situation. Some of the largest fights in the game can be sidestepped altogether with the proper application of charisma (or mind control) and a few picked locks.

Also like KOTOR, the game features a moral choice system, but for once it's not the proverbial "Mother Theresa or Baby Eating" choice between good and evil. As I said, there are no good guys, and that includes you, but there are varying degrees of evil. Certain actions, such as murdering an innocent unarmed person, will cause you to distance yourself from what's left of your human soul. This is more of a practical matter than an ethical one, as without that human soul, the demon that animates you can take over, and control your actions. The Masquerade is a double entendre here, because it also refers to the fact that vampires aren't just trying to fool the human race, but also themselves. By clinging to that humanity, you cling to your self control. Rejecting that humanity can cause you to frenzy. Frenzying comes with a marked increase in power, at the cost of any say as to how that power is to be used. You are almost definitely sure to find yourself violating the Masquerade, which will make you an enemy of the vampire and human worlds. Revealing yourself too often will draw the attention of Hunters.

The game will also penalize you for clinging too much to that human nature. Aside from the humanity mechanic, which can be managed easily enough without having to pass up good opportunities (such as stealing a wounded man's wallet) there is no reward or reason for playing the good guy.

The game does have multiple endings, but you're degree of good/evilness does not affect which ending you'll get. In fact, the endings are largely based on choices you make at the very end, but if you haven't politically schmoozed the right people some of those choices might not be available to you. This fact is meant to encourage you to engage in a little political intrigue of your own, as it pays to try and play both sides of a given conflict; if both sides think you're working for them, then you can delay making an actual choice on which (if any) to side with until you have more information.

For a game that is nearly half a decade old, more than a little buggy, and received almost not publicity when it did come out, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines was a blast. It delivered about 2 hours per dollar I spent on it, and I fully intend to play it through again at some point.

One note: To run this game, it is highly recommended that you find Wesp's Unofficial Patch version 6.3 (released about a month ago, how's that for a dedicated community!) and install it in the steamapps/common/Masquerade folder. It fixes a number of issues, and improves gameplay considerably. It also gets the game to work on Vista.