Halloween Reviews - Choice of Games' Vampire the Masquerade
The next game in this series is:
Gather your allies to hunt the vampires that terrorize your town! Study their ways and exploit their rivalries, or you'll become a vampire yourself.
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First thing first: whatever they claim, this is
NOT Vampire the Masquerade game. World of Darkness setting has many great games and I don't know why they insisted on calling this VtM game. It would be closer to the truth if they labelled it Hunter the Reckoning and all reviews would be a bit more positive because it's a quite good game.
You're driving back home to a small town where you grew up. Your grandpa died recently and he left you his shop (you decide what kind of shop) and you have a nice night road drive ahead of you (yep, Vampire the Masquerade Night Road pun here) through the forest when you suddenly feel like you hit someone or something. You pull aside and get out to investigate... All your choices in this intro - as always - are establishing your background and stats. Are you a former criminal? Maybe a cop? Did you dabble with the occult or were you more inclined to spirituality?
After a brief meeting in the forest, you'll get back to your hometown. You'll rekindle old friendships with your childhood gang and organize them into something more, you'll learn more about what has been going on in the town, why that old creepy house on the hill with a bloody past has new residents and who they are, why teenagers are missing in the town...
If after reading this you thought "Oh, but that sounds really familiar!", congrats! You're officially a true horror fan. The story is heavily influenced by Stephen King's Salem's Lot (both novel and movie) and another horror movie classic, "The Lost Boys".
The atmosphere will mentally transport you into a small American town, similar to many King's small towns, with colourful characters and typical King-esque "friends forever" group we saw in "It", "Dreamcatcher", "Stand by Me"...
Now, there is one absolutely infuriating character. Despite being obvious he should be killed and not any of the confronted sides have any reason to keep him alive, you are forced to be annoyed by his presence for a better part of the game. Why? Because of bad writing! While the story is good and keeps our attention, that one person is essential for the story's progress - hence having plot armour! Not to mention, the author doesn't understand VtM clans because that character is a mix between Nosferatu and Hecata.
Another issue that I have with the game is mechanics. I'd like to play as an occult expert but the game is practically punishing you for using curses and spells making it unplayable. The game was also quite broken at release - you'd get the same ending whatever you choose - and some issues were even up to recently - spirituality (that has all the benefits of occult but no negativities) was almost unobtainable in character creation but they fixed that.
The other thing is the main side quest. Apart from helping your town and your gang solve the vampire problems, you need to clear your grandpa's shop debts but the game ignores all possible solutions except one.
In the end, this is a very good game but not VtM and there are many different endings. It has a vibe typical of good '80s vampire movies and I often listen to this while playing Out for Blood:
Final verdict:
7/10 
Pros:
+memorable characters and Salem's Lot / The Lost Boys vibe
+huge amount of possible endings
+decent story length
+you can (finally!) kill that annoying prick
Cons:
-you can't kill him soon enough
-this is not a VtM game
-game is punishing you for playing a certain type of hero (occultism)
-the game needed lots of polishing and some minor story inconsistencies are still here
