Vampire the Masquerade
MacSoft
Rating: 4.5
Vampire, the Masquerade, is the computer game version of the storytelling pen & paper RPG, published by White Wolf. VM is part of their World of Darkness, which includes Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage the Ascension, amoungst others.
VM is the first and, so far, only one of these games that have made it to the electronic world. Werewolf was going to make it but was cancelled a few years back for reasons unknown. It will not surprise the reader that the two main parts of the Vampire storytelling game VM and Vampre: The Dark Ages are both featured in this 3rd person RPG.
You play Christof, the gallant Knight Templar, free from a campaign against the heathen barbarians, as he falls in love with a nun tending to his wounds in Prague. Then he finds himself sucked into the world of vampires. In a wonderful twist, your gallant hero gets to slaughter many of the Templars? main rivals, the Teutonic Knights, after being imprisoned by them at the behest of a rival vampire clan leader. It seems that one of the tribes he slaughtered in his recent battles was a human front for one of the vampire clans. He is embraced by the Brujah clan to prevent him being killed or enslaved by those he had enraged. The then man, now vampire, attracted the attention of other vampires because of his poetic and forbidden love for the nun, Anesska. And so, Christof fights his way across Europe and over the centuries trying to save his beloved while unsuccessfully avoiding the blood feuds of the vampire clans.
Much of the information for the game is relayed via glorious and occasionally long cut-scenes that are some of the most impressive this reviewer has ever seen. These scenes are done so well that they are not even out of sync when the game is played on a minimum specification machine. The game can be ponderous at this level of spec, but with a bit of practice, it is eminently playable and a wonderful way to waste away hours of the night. It is after all a vampire game, so you would expect to play it at night.
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