Bloody good game!

This is the sequel to "Vampire: The Masquerade" and it was built on the "Half-Life 2" 3-D game engine. It's an RPG (Role-Playing Game) with all the action game elements built right in! You play a newly "embraced" vampire in the Los Angeles area who must choose a destiny among the three most powerful vampire societies. There are 7 clans to choose from and each has its own set of unique skills, talents, and spells.

What does all that mean? Well, you get quests to adventure through, each of which provide experience points upon completion, which you spend on developing character attributes. One of the first quests is to retrieve an amulet from a haunted hotel in order to help purge the spirit. You show up in this dark place and objects are thrown at you, a phantasm runs past you screaming, and the words "GET OUT" appear scratched into the wall right before you! That one scared the hell out of me! Another quest is to find two men who disappeared. It turns out later they have been abducted by a mad surgeon who saws parts off them for fun. This game is dark and made with a diabolical sense of humor. It's fun as hell!

Quests can be completed in a variety of ways. For example, there are dozens of NPCs (Non-player characters) and each of them has information or items which you will need. To get what you want; would you rather (A) Pay them for it?, (B) Persuade them to give it up?, or (C) Kill them and take what you need? It's up to you!

Here's how it plays: It's in the first-person shooter (FPS) perspective. You start in dingy apartment in Santa Monica where you have a computer, a refrigerator full of clinical blood-bags (yummy!), and an envelope with some cash. You check your email and are directed to talk to a man named Mercurio. You go outside onto the street and see fully rendered 3-D characters walking around. Important people will have dialogue with you. But feel free to consider everyone a walking blood-bag ready for drinking. Blood is spent by casting spells like Obfuscate (which makes you invisible), Spectral Wolf (which summons a spirit wolf from the ether to maul someone), or Protean (which makes you grow horrific claws so you can tear people up). These disciplines look sweet and are necessary since you'll be fighting other vampires, humans, zombies, and other monstrosities throughout the game.

Dialogue is interesting because when you engage someone to speak you are always offered a multiple-choice group of responses. NPCs speak with perfectly lip-synced (voice acted) speech, which really helps immerse you in their world. The characters respond differently depending on what you say to them. If you have stats with high Appearance and Seduction, you can manipulate characters of the opposite sex. If you have a high Intimidate score, you can frighten weaker characters into doing your will (revealing information, giving you money, etc.) If you have high Persuasion, you can smooth-talk most any character into helping you complete your quest. These special dialogue options appear in different colors.

Now to the most important part: the violence. When you engage in combat, the game switches to a behind-you camera perspective where you can see your whole body in as well as all your surroundings. Fight enemies hand-to-hand, with a weapon, use vampire spells, or in any combination! In addition to your many talents, skills, and dark spells which you have at your disposal, you can also go to the local gun dealer and purchase some hardware. They range from a tire iron to a flame thrower. Why do you need these if you're a vampire? Because if you spend all your blood using your supernatural abilities, the monsters you're fighting aren't just going to stop biting you! Pull out your .357 Magnum and blow some holes in them! You can be the undead Dirty Harry!

Each character you encounter is different and you'll have to figure out how you can make them help you. The soundtrack is creepy Gothic, and there's some Trance music in each nightclub you visit. Those songs come with the game on a separate CD.

The storyline is sweet, voice-acting is superb, graphics are great, etc. I know I am gushing over this game but the fact is that I am currently re-playing it for the third time (each time in a different clan) because it's still the best game of its kind! There are 5 different endings to this game! Oh, it's an "M" rated game, by the way. Lots of adult language, sexual material, violence. Did I mention that I love this friggin' game?

The only drawback to the game is that you need a powerful PC to play it. Don't buy it unless you have a 3D add-on card, plenty of RAM, and about 1400 MB free on your hard-drive AFTER you have installed the game. I play it on a Pentium 4, 80 GB hard drive, 512 MB RAM, and an ATI RADEON 9250 PCI 3D add-on card.