Another exceptional game I played more recently (in my late twenties) was Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. This game is a first person shooter and a role playing game at the same time. Its a single player game and available on the computer. The game allows for replayability by giving a lot of choice with regard to which class of vampire the player picks and which skills the player chooses to upgrade, like any role playing game. The game itself was released in 2004 although it has a 90s feel with the old basic desktop computers in the game and the retro graphics. It seems to be set in Los Angeles in the US, with a fictional secret vampire society existing alongside humanity in secret.

The context is at the start of the game the player has just been turned into a newly formed vampire. Some sort of vampire council is held to decide the fate of the vampire that turned the player and the council decides the punishment is death, which is promptly carried out. However the player themselve is spared and set loose on the world. A character called Prince LaCroix gives the player various missions which takes the player to various locations (Santa Monica, Downtown, Hollywood, Downtown) with various side missions available. Eventually as the player becomes stronger LaCroix turns on you and declares some sort of vampire bounty on your head. There is also a very old vampire sarcophagus that allegedly grants god like powers to the vampire that accesses it, which Lacroix wants. At the end the player can choose from a few factions to side with including LaCroix, the Kuei Jin (who are like China’s version of vampires) and another group called the Anarchists who seem to be the most moral and decent of the bunch.

The brilliance of the game is firstly the gameplay in the second half of the game when the player has access to a huge number of firearms and vampire powers (including Matrix style bullet dodging). There is huge satisfaction to be had in gunning down endless armed NPC (non player character) thugs of the various factions. The levels themselves are well designed and not tedious. The gameplay and difficulty is just the right challenge for someone who has experience with computer games.  I find Prince Lacroix to be a delight as a villain. He is totally corrupt and self centred to the point where he is amusing. The main plot is interesting and original.

Another plus of the game is the nostalgia to an earlier era when there were no smartphones and the internet was much more basic.

My favourite of the levels is Chinatown where the weapons used really begins to take off so to speak (from pistols to automatic weapons). The part of the game I like least is unsurprisingly the sewer level which is filled with enemies and seems to take ages to finish.