Product Reviews

Vampires stopped being scary in the 70s, when the Dracula story had finally been sucked dry by increasingly silly films. But the undead always rise again, and vampires had soon been reinvented as sympathetic outsiders. This modern mythology, exemplified by the novels of Anne Rice, is largely to blame for all those pale teenagers in heavy eye makeup who only come out at night.

Bloodlines taps into this tradition to cast you in the role of a modern-day Californian who's been newly converted to vampirism. Its first-person viewpoint (switchable to third-person) makes it look like an action title, but you can often solve problems by stealth or persuading people through multiple-choice conversations rather than fighting. The combat system is more to do with picking the most appropriate skills to use than simple hand-eye co-ordination. The balance between subtlety and brute force is up to you as your chosen vampire clan affects your character's strengths and how other characters react to you. For example, the Toreador clan specialise in charm and seduction, while the hideous Nosferatu can't pass as a human and have to sneak around.

Bloodlines uses the rules and

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background of the pencil-and-paper role-playing game it's derived from to add depth. For example, you need a regular blood supply to use your powers, but draining people of blood completely saps your remaining humanity. There's more than one way to solve this problem - you can buy blood at a crooked medical centre, seduce someone to create a willing donor or even prey on rats if you're desperate!

The writing and voice-acting of the characters is excellent, and adds to the desolate, sleazy atmosphere. Explaining your plight as the game opens, one character exclaims: "Blood - it's your new rack of lamb, your new champagne, kid!" This game certainly deserves its 18 certificate, but the sleaze isn't gratuitous - even the busty Jeanette character has surprising depths.

Bloodlines is an amazing achievement, but it isn't without flaws. Frequent (though brief) loading screens harm the illusion that you're exploring a continuous world. Characters often display animation glitches, and the in-game text is riddled with spelling errors. The game becomes far too linear later on, with little opportunity to avoid fights. Annoyingly, scripted events such as doors opening or people or objects appearing can occasionally fail to take place, breaking the game when a crucial scene or event stops dead unable to move forwards. Although the frequent autosaves mean this kind of glitch won't ever cost you a lot of progress, it's still frustrating.

If you enjoyed the Deus Ex games, or you're a fan of the original game, you may be able to forgive Bloodlines its faults, especially given the lengthy game's potential for repeated play. Otherwise, we'd recommend you hold out for an update on the Net or a budget re-release to come out with all the problems fixed.