I take it all back

[errorcode]

so far the folks talking about bugs are playing a ripped version, so I don't know if i buy the severity of the bugs they've run into.

 

[fnordcircle]

Mine comes next week. I liked the first V:TM and hope to like this one.

 

[Volourn]

"You're free to pan the game if you want, before trying it, as I have."

I'm not gonna pan the game. i am going to vocie my concerns about the possibly poor combat and the fact that soke people are taking your 'Excellent!" comment as gospel despite no information. Not syaing you have to provide; but "Excellent!" is not a review to go by! Neither is "I don't like it!" by Otchel.

R00fles!

 

[Sol Invictus]

If the combat is possibly poor, it has the same possibility of being great.

 

[Ortchel]

Hahaha, when did I earn THAT?

I want links.

 

[Volourn]

"If the combat is possibly poor, it has the same possibility of being great."

No. If the combat is so poor and it turns out to be another Gothic 2 the game will not be good enough.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Let me tell you, it kicks the shit ouf of Gothic 2.

 

[Volourn]

We shall see..

 

[Ortchel]

The interface blows, for starters. Good luck switching from melee to ranged in a pinch if what you're looking for wasn't your last weapon used. Interactivity, such as light switches, is uneven, some switches are textures, some are models and operable and some are models but inoperable, as an example. The graphics actually aren't any good, with the exception of the character models which are excellent. My main beef with the graphical presentation is with the textures which look plain awful. Check out the "Die My Darling" poster during tutorial, which, as I stated in a thread earlier "looks like something out of Duke Nukem 3D", this kind of shoddy texture work is just bizarre and I would think unacceptable by now, especially on the goddamn Source engine.
Then of course we move on to actual gameplay. Melee combat is just a matter of hitting the left mouse button a lot while strafing or pressing forward or back till the d00ds fall over. Then glowing blue smoke highlights their dropped goods to help you spot them in case you're partially blind, or wearing sunglasses. The game world, as you've probably read, is seperated into hubs, just like Deus Ex 2, which coincidentally, Bloodlines feels a lot like. The creepiest similarity being the dance clubs which are almost carbon copies of one another, except DX2's was bigger.

Which brings us to my next point, every building is just a quest station, you enter and immediately can pinpoint who the important NPCs are, there is little exploration, as all unecessary areas are locked by magic padlocks that won't open regardless of your lockpick skill. For instance, it seems that all public restrooms have been shielded against Vampiric entrance by garlic doorknobs, also present on all but two apartments in your building. This kind of streamlining is par for the course in Bloodlines.

I can't comment on the quality or lack therof of the actual dialogue as I'm playing as a Nosferatu, I'm sure Exitium will tell you it's revolutionary or some shit though. The whole game world just feels barren and stiflingly restricted, even with all those NPCs walking around who don't do shit. Which I guess is fine for a lot people who don't like having to go far to get their quests, but you're not even offered the illusion of freedom. I guess my main problem with Bloodlines is it just doesn't feel right, there are so many little problems and oddities, like, why do the cops walk around with their guns out at all times? Why does cloth (coats, skirts, etc) flap around like it's being pulled by fishing wire in ten different directions at all times?

Admitedly I haven't gotten far in the game, so some of these points I've made are subject to change. I should note that I felt similarly about KotOR, a walled in quest farm with mediocre combat, so if you liked that, you should like this.

 

[Sol Invictus]

The interface blows, for starters. Good luck switching from melee to ranged in a pinch if what you're looking for wasn't your last weapon used.

Press F1 to select melee weapons. F2 for ranged. Noob. I don't know what's wrong with you.

Interactivity, such as light switches, is uneven, some switches are textures, some are models and operable and some are models but inoperable, as an example.

Big deal.

The graphics actually aren't any good, with the exception of the character models which are excellent.

True that, some of the textures are rather grainy and leave much to be desired but they really don't detract all that much from the ambience because overall, the game looks very well done. It would have been nice if they used higher resolution textures, that's for certain. I hope someone releases a mod (like one of the Thief 3 and DXIW mods) that replaces some of these textures. It's not difficult to do that.

Then of course we move on to actual gameplay. Melee combat is just a matter of hitting the left mouse button a lot while strafing or pressing forward or back till the d00ds fall over.

You forgot dodging with the tab button, and pulling combo moves.

Then glowing blue smoke highlights their dropped goods to help you spot them in case you're partially blind, or wearing sunglasses.

That is your 'inspect' ability. At low ranks, you won't notice these things at all. At higher ranks, more usable objects will glow. Why make a fuss? It's how it works.

The game world, as you've probably read, is seperated into hubs, just like Deus Ex 2, which coincidentally, Bloodlines feels a lot like.

Uh, that's a bad comparison considering most, if not all RPGs (except Fallout) use hubs. Baldur's Gate, for example. Deus Ex 2's hubs were laughably small and the loading times were atrocious. Bloodlines is not. It is huge, and the loading times are less than 2 seconds.

The creepiest similarity being the dance clubs which are almost carbon copies of one another, except DX2's was bigger.

DX2 is smaller everywhere else, and DX2's club was seperated into 3 areas.

Which brings us to my next point, every building is just a quest station, you enter and immediately can pinpoint who the important NPCs are, there is little exploration, as all unecessary areas are locked by magic padlocks that won't open regardless of your lockpick skill.

Um. Keycards are necessary to open some doors and in order to get them you will have to talk to the guards (if your persuasion skill is high) or find other ways to get into those rooms. Lockpicking is NOT the only way in.

rest of it

Shadap.

 

[Ortchel]

Press F1 to select melee weapons. F2 for ranged. Noob. I don't know what's wrong with you.

Yes, I know, I meant on the fly. You have to mousewheel up and down to a select specific weapon, which takes time, which isn't always a luxury in the middle of combat.

You forgot dodging with the tab button, and pulling combo moves.

That makes the combat, at best, as deep as Gothic. I'm not usually a TB supporter, but this game makes me hate real time.

That is your 'inspect' ability. At low ranks, you won't notice these things at all. At higher ranks, more usable objects will glow. Why make a fuss? It's how it works.

Yes, I know, but why not choose a more tasteful effect? Perhaps a blue outline of the model or what have you. That blue smoke shit is just ridiculous, reminds me of the big blue "THIS WAY, XBOX OWNERS" arrows in Thief 3.

Uh, that's a bad comparison considering most, if not all RPGs (except Fallout) use hubs. Baldur's Gate, for example. Deus Ex 2's hubs were laughably small and the loading times were atrocious. Bloodlines is not. It is huge, and the loading times are less than 2 seconds.

I just hate hubs I guess, I'm gonna get punched in this balls for saying this, but thats one of the reasons I loved Morrowind (and liked Fallout) so much. My main problem with Bloodlines' approach to hubs is there is no 'wilderness', no random encounters, nothing, just walled in hubs.

Um. Keycards are necessary to open some doors and in order to get them you will have to talk to the guards (if your persuasion skill is high) or find other ways to get into those rooms. Lockpicking is NOT the only way in.

Yes, I know about the keycard doors, I wasn't talking about those. As I stated earlier, wouldn't you like to be able to enter bathrooms? Maybe feed on some guy taking a leak? (There was no good way to word that sentence.)

Maybe I will feel differently once it gets patched into a completely different game, as usually happens with new releases.

/holding out for Oblivion

 

[Sol Invictus]

Yes, I know, I meant on the fly. You have to mousewheel up and down to a select specific weapon, which takes time, which isn't always a luxury in the middle of combat.

Press Alt-K to reconfigure your 1-0 quick keys.

That makes the combat, at best, as deep as Gothic. I'm not usually a TB supporter, but this game makes me hate real time.

Erm, okay.

I just hate hubs I guess, I'm gonna get punched in this balls for saying this, but thats one of the reasons I loved Morrowind (and liked Fallout) so much. My main problem with Bloodlines' approach to hubs is there is no 'wilderness', no random encounters, nothing, just walled in hubs.

It's a city, not a jungle. Random encounters like the ones in Baldur's Gate, Fallout and Torment would have been detrimental to non-combat characters like the one I'm playing, and worse still for the Nosferatu who rely on sneaking and not on combat.

 

[Ortchel]

Actually the main advantage of the stealth skill is the sneak attack, but yeah.

How does your character deal with all that mandatory combat?

 

[Sol Invictus]

When you have high speech skills you will discover that there is actually very little mandatory combat. You might not realize that, since you play a Nosferatu. You're geared for melee combat, unlike my Ventrue. I can elude most bad guys with Domination - Trance and snap their necks or feed on them until they die, if I have to.

That's the beauty of this game.

 

[plin]

Actually the main advantage of the stealth skill is the sneak attack, but yeah.

How does your character deal with all that mandatory combat?

aren't you the one who likes morrowind (or daggerfall) alot? Sounds like alot of what you're complaining about is much... much worse in the elder scroll games.

 

[Sol Invictus]

LAPTOP SCREEN PICCY

CORVEGA!

 

[errorcode]

sweet! have ya seen any other Fallout nods so far?

 

[elkston]

Kicks the shit out of Gothic 2? That's a tall order to fill my friend. I will see when I play it for the first time today.

I am not into the "Vampire" thing at all, but there are so few CRPGs to play -- I am desperate.

If anything, I am playing to get the "modern day" CRPG feel like Deus Ex had.

 

[Surlent]

IT's FPS combat, so comparing it to other FPS games would be more appropriate.

So REX; you played first Deus Ex too and liked it, right ? (Let's forget DX:IW for now)
How does Bloodlines compare to Deus Ex ?
The combat for example; arsenal, weapon accuracy and general feeling when aiming with gun ?
Are there difficulty options ?

 

[Spazmo]

That's the kind of easter egg I like to see--low key, appropriate and not jarring like the terrible FO2 ones.

 

[Ortchel]

aren't you the one who likes morrowind (or daggerfall) alot? Sounds like alot of what you're complaining about is much... much worse in the elder scroll games.

We weren't comparing them, plin. And the points I made against Bloodlines are, for the most part, exceeded by the Elder Scrolls series, so I don't see where you're going with that. TES has no confining hubs, no quest stations, and no garlic doorknobs, so as far as my specific points are concerned, with the exception of combat, TES pwns Bloodlines.

Also, it's "a lot" never 'alot', ever.

 

[Volourn]

"Uh, that's a bad comparison considering most, if not all RPGs (except Fallout) use hubs. Baldur's Gate, for example."

Huh? BG didn't use a hub.

 

[Sol Invictus]

sweet! have ya seen any other Fallout nods so far?

Might've missed some, but there's a bunch of Arcanum nods all over the place. There's this one file on that same computer that mentions how some guy is under arrest for having 80 stolen copies of a non-existent (?) console game called "Red Asphalt" and 40 copies of the PC game "Arcanum".

There's also this cute Anarch chick wearing an "Armee Troika" t-shirt. Man, I'd like to get that t-shirt. She's a Marxist.

T-SHIRT PICCY

There's even a Call of Duty pinball machine in that pub.

 

[Sol Invictus]

IT's FPS combat, so comparing it to other FPS games would be more appropriate.

So REX; you played first Deus Ex too and liked it, right ? (Let's forget DX:IW for now)
How does Bloodlines compare to Deus Ex ?
The combat for example; arsenal, weapon accuracy and general feeling when aiming with gun ?
Are there difficulty options ?

Loved Deus Ex. Bloodlines offers way more choices, with a shitload of dialogue options that are based not only on your speech abilities but also on your skills. Having a medium Hacking skill (3 or more) will allow you to bullshit your way through the Medical Clinic with techy jargon, for example.

The combat is better. Personally, I'm having fun with my Ventrue. He can cause people to commit suicide with his Domination spell. It uses Blood Points, so I sneak about casting it, and feeding on the stragglers. I kill the rest in hand to hand combat. Vampires are superhuman, so you're going to kick a lot of mortal ass.

Ranged combat is comparable to Deus Ex. At low levels of Ranged, you're going to have a shitty reticle thus missing a lot and doing very, very little damage. Pump it up and you'll soon be popping caps in a lot of asses, though. So far, I only have to weapons: a Thirtyeight and a Shotgun. I like the Shotgun, it does a tremendous amount of damage, especially at close range.

The FPS combat really isn't anywhere as good as Half Life 2 or Call of Duty, but it's better than a lot of games, including FPS's like Men of Valor and Conflict Vietnam. Personally, I like sneaking around. Third person combat is amazingly fun, too. When you hit people, they get thrown around. You'll feel the full force of your vampire's strength in unarmed and melee combat. There is nothing more enjoyable than beating someone to death with a severed arm.

 

[Sol Invictus]

"Uh, that's a bad comparison considering most, if not all RPGs (except Fallout) use hubs. Baldur's Gate, for example."

Huh? BG didn't use a hub.

All the areas were hubs, my brother. Remember Beregost in Chapter 2? You could only go to Nashkel and Beregost (and the surrounding areas, of course. Similar to Bloodlines.) but you couldn't go to Baldur's Gate until Chapter 3, I think it was.

But really...this is all Ortchel's fault. He's an idiot.

Calling Bloodlines' areas 'hubs' is pretty stupid considering the fact that you can't actually complete a hub one at a time, as they aren't chapters. You do have to return to them, you know. A bunch of missions from the first area can't be completed without venturing into the other 'hub' areas first, either. And you will get missions from the other areas that relate to the first 'hub', as well.

I suspect Ortchel isn't even 5 hours into the game and he's already come to this conclusion.