Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Remember that thing you like from 10 years ago? It’s probably getting a sequel. Shenmue 3. Evil Genius 2. Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2. The calendar of upcoming games is packed with throwbacks that will revisit the worlds we left behind over a decade ago. Oddworld: Soulstorm is heading back to the strange homeland of Abe the skinny green freedom farter. Mechwarrior 5 is booting…

Tagged with Black Forest Games, Deep Silver, E3 2019, feature, Hardsuit Labs, interview, Paradox Interactive, rebellion, Ys Net, Destroy All Humans!, Evil Genius, Evil Genius 2, Shenmue I & II, Shenmue III, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2.

 E3 is getting started this weekend, otherwise known as the Encredible Electricity Experience, or sometimes simply “Hellweek”. It’s a very busy and exciting time to be a videogame liker, but you might need some help. Allow the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, to be your digital sherpa through this storm of fictional bullets and lightsabers. Let’s talk about what we’re looking forward to…

Tagged with E3 2019, Podcast, The RPS Electronic Wireless show, Bee Simulator, Cyberpunk 2077, Halo Infinite, Outer Wilds, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, The Outer Worlds, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, Watch Dogs Legion.

Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines has been written about a lot on this site (far more than one would expect from a game with both a colon and a hyphen in the title, which should be made a crime). It’s a clunky, unfinished mess of an action RPG that runs better today than it did on release in 2005 only by the grace of a…

Tagged with Activision, feature, Troika Games, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

Not only does a great hero need a great villain, villains are usually just so much more fun. Whether it's the tortured lost soul who can only find peace by destroying the universe or the cheery psychopath looking to see the world burn, it's no wonder that many of the greatest films of all time have been defined at least as much by the baddie…

Tagged with Baldur's Gate 2, feature, FINAL FANTASY VI, RPG, The RPG Scrollbars, ultima vii: the black gate, Final Fantasy VII, Planescape: Torment, STAR WARS Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords, Undertale, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

It's Summer Games Done Quick time again! You know what that means. The final seal has been broken, the rivers are turning to blood, and High Dread Azagorath is free to destroy the land. But while people wait, they're doing speed-runs. And in celebration of that, I thought I'd take a dig through the archives for a few particularly impressive and interesting ones that take…

Tagged with feature, RPG, speedruns, The Elder Scrolls, The RPG Scrollbars, Two Worlds, Divinity: Original Sin, Mass Effect Andromeda, Planescape: Torment, Quest For Glory, System Shock, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Wasteland 2.

There's a real urban fantasy gap in the gaming industry, and it's never made much sense. We see a thousand Tolkienesque fantasy games a minute (rough napkin calculation) and the future's typically so bright, even the lens flares need shades. Yet when it comes to that line where the mundane meets the magical, mostly what we've had for the last few years is false hope.…

Tagged with Baldur's Gate II, feature, RPG, The RPG Scrollbars, Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption, World Of Darkness, City of Heroes, Secret World Legends, The Secret World, Unavowed, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

We are living in a golden age of big-budget PC games that offer us choice and freedom. Be they descendants of the System Shock model - finding a route around a meticulously-crafted, locked-down and hostile place, most recently seen in Prey [official site] - or the roleplaying games based around choice and consequence rather than action alone, they are legion. There are so many, even,…

Tagged with feature, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Dishonored 2, Hitman, Mass Effect Andromeda, Prey, System Shock 3, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

The problem with fantasy is that it's often not very... well... fantastical. Far too often, even brand new worlds feel like Tolkein or Warcraft or Star Wars with a few twists, and the serial numbers scraped off. The good thing about this is that when a game does take us somewhere new, it feels all the more special for it. This week then, a quick…

Tagged with Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse, Bloodnet, Entomorph, Escape From Hell, Eternam, feature, RPG, The RPG Scrollbars, Ultima: Savage Empire, Arcanum: Of Steamworks And Magick Obscura, Darklands, fallen london, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

So, a confession. My plan for this week was to talk about Obsidian's Tyranny [official site] - the game, not any rumours of Feargus Urquhart openly stealing puddings from the company fridge no matter how well labelled! Unfortunately, that plan hit a tiny snag... I haven't had a chance to play much of it yet. A shame, simply because the genre is well overdue a…

Tagged with feature, Knights of the Old Republic, RPG, The RPG Scrollbars, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Tyranny, Undertale, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

We're coming to the end of the Summer Steam Sale so chances are you've picked up the things you'd already got your eye on, but there are always games that sneak under the radar or come from genres you might usually ignore. That's why we've put together our final recommendation list. Here's a whole list of things we love and why we think they're worth…

Tagged with A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, feature, Steam, Steam Sale, Apotheon, Cities: Skylines, Cradle, Day Of The Tentacle Remastered, Door Kickers, Hexcells, Kentucky Route Zero, Legend of Grimrock, Legend of Grimrock 2, Mini Metro, Prison Architect, Risk of Rain, Shadow Warrior, Shadow Warrior 2, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. I've checked the RPS master Have You Played document seven times now, convinced that I've made an error. How could we not have written one about Vampire Bloodlines yet? In many respects, the modern gothic RPG is the ur-RPS game, a game of…

Tagged with feature, Have You Played, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

Not for the first time, I've spent quite a while recently pondering the nature of roles - more specifically, mechanical role versus narrative role. When we think of RPGs, what we're usually thinking of is the latter. You play the role of the Hero, but in a universe that's typically designed to let you define that however you like. I'm not saying that's a bad…

Tagged with Dragon Age, feature, RPG, The RPG Scrollbars, Ultima obviously, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Dragon Age II, Hearthstone, Planescape: Torment, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

There's something oddly comforting about radio. Comforting because it's so familiar, so natural. Odd because it's a comfort that most of us don't really use all that much these days, at least not in the ways that games just casually assume. It's a little like the whole audio diaries thing - it makes a vague sense that everyone in a city like Rapture might record…

Tagged with feature, The RPG Scrollbars, World Of Darkness, City of Heroes, Dead State, EVE Online, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

The news that Paradox Interactive had purchased World of Darkness creator and publisher White Wolf a couple of weeks ago came as something of a surprise. It also raised a lot of questions: what would become of existing third-party relationships? What are the plans for digital spin-offs of White Wolf properties? Can we expect another Vampire: The Masquerade CRPG at any point in the near…

Tagged with CCP, feature, interview, Paradox, White Wolf, World Of Darkness, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

Most RPGs ask you to save the world, but not all of them offer a world worth saving. Honestly, there's been quite a few where given the choice I'd have joined the evil overlord just to beat up all the potion vendors who wouldn't even give me a discount before the final battle, and for the mere chance of stabbing the guard in Act 1…

Tagged with Anachronox, feature, Neocron, RPG, The RPG Scrollbars, Ultima, Mass Effect, Planescape: Torment, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, World of Warcraft.

Given a choice, I almost always play as a mage. Swords? Pah. Divine magic? Save it for Sunday School. Give me control over the elements, the power to reshape the very building blocks of the universe according to my every whim, and if at all possible, a cool hat. It's an easy fantasy to indulge in almost any RPG out there. I just wish it…

Tagged with Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition, Dragon Age, feature, RPG, The RPG Scrollbars, Ultima, Divinity: Original Sin, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Dragon Age II, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Secret World, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, World of Warcraft.

They say the definition of madness is repeatedly trying the same thing and expecting different results. But hey, the Malkavians of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines have lucked into stranger things, so I figure there's at least a chance that one day I'll fire it up and find a whole new adventure waiting. Today was not that day. Tomorrow isn't looking too likely. Yet still…

Tagged with Bloodlines Antitribu, Clan Quests, feature, RPG, The RPG Scrollbars, troika, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

An entirely objective ranking of the 50 best PC RPGs ever released. Covering the entire history of computer role-playing games is a daunting task and attempting to place the best games in such a broad genre in any kind of order is even more daunting. Thankfully, we are equal to all tasks and below, you will find the best fifty PC RPGs of all time.

Tagged with Anachronox, Avernum: Escape From the Pit, Baldur's Gate II, Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition, best games, Best RPGs, Betrayal At Krondor, Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition, Din's Curse, Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, feature, FTL: Advanced Edition, Legend of Grimrock II, NEO Scavenger, Neverwinter Nights™ 2 Platinum, Pool of Radiance, Shadowrun: Dragonfall Director's Cut, Space Rangers 2, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Game of the Year Edition, The RPS Bestest Best Games, Ultima Underworld, Wasteland 2 Digital Deluxe Edition, Wizardry VIII, ZangbandTK, ADOM, ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery), Brogue, Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, Darkest Dungeon, Darklands, Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Diablo II, Divinity: Original Sin, Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition, Dragon Age: Origins, Dwarf Fortress, Fallout, Fallout: New Vegas, FTL: Faster Than Light, hand of fate, Mass Effect 2, Pillars of Eternity, Planescape: Torment, Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, risen, Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic, Sunless Sea, System Shock 2, The Banner Saga, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Titan Quest, torchlight, Ultima VII, UnReal World, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Wasteland 2.