Rating: 
Summary: too many problems with online multiplayer(DON'T WORK)
Review: The game is fine if you just want to play single player or over a LAN. Online multiplayer apparently is no longer supported in any form or manner. Activision does not even give answers to problems with online either. The official activision website for this game; The links do not work. The game has been abandoned by the manufacturer, developers and everyone it seems. Save your money and don't support activision. Don't buy this game if you could ever possibly want to play it online with friends. Cuz you can't.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Multi-player, if you can find the right people....
Review: When I first started playing this game, I realized several things. First, the single player is pretty weak. This game was obviously designed as primarily a multi-player game. Single player CAN be fun, but for a RPG, the game is pretty linear. I mean, you can pick from several pre-designed phrases when talking to certain NPC's. According to what responses you pick, your "humanity" rating will either be raised or lowered. Humanity is basically defined as how "human" your character still is. In other words, if your character has low humanity, then you are closer to becoming a monster, and if it drops completly to 0, then you don't have any more control over your character, and you have to start from you last save point. Naturally, only the most sadistic and demented players will actually reach a score of 0, as you literally have to go and kill civilians over and over to get a score that low. However, I've found a way around this. If you use the spell "Theft of Vitae", you can get all the blood from humans you want, and your humanity score will not be lowered! Yet, if you "feed" from a human (meaning you bite the person and drain their blood in the "traditional" vampiric way) and actually kill them through doing this, your humanity score will go down. The manual is also not very clear on what raising your humanity actually involves. I literally had to play through the game several times before I realized what things I had to say in order to have a higher humanity rating. However, at the end of the game, if your humanity is very low, let's say 5 (out of 100), the last boss will say something to you, and you will have three choices to pick. Thus, you can get all three endings by having a low humanity score! Yet if your humanity score is high, (I think above 50), then you only get the "good" ending, and you can't even see the other ones! Obviously, then, there's almost no incentive to keep your humanity high, which is one of the most critical (and tragic) elements of any Vampire:The Masquerade game. The multi-player is where this game really shines. If you are playing with people who are actually serious about playing the game the way it was meant to be played (i.e. role playing) this game is a blast. The "storyteller", or person that hosts the game, has the option to create enemies, objects, props, etc. and so the levels can be customized pretty much any way you want them to be. However, unless you're good with programming, you will have to use the "pre-made" levels, although you can fill these levels with whatever you want to. There IS an option for more experienced players to create their own levels, though you have to have a special programming tool for this (which was not released with the game, you have to go and download it for yourself). I believe the name for it is the NOD SDK, but I could be mistaken. In either case, it's readily available on almost any web-site related to Vampire:The Masquerade-Redemption, although the "official web site" ... is where I'd go for most of this stuff. Overall, Vampire is a decent single player game, and it has the potential to be an excellent multi-player one. Like any game that you play online, the amount of fun you have is largely influenced by the people that you play with, so it's important to make sure you find people that are serious about role-playing. That is, unless you want to join a game where all you do is hack-and-slash, because the majority of games that are created seem to be more like that. Still, like with any good game, it supports people who want either/or, you're not forced to roleplay if you don't want to, nor do you have to hack-and-slash.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrific game, horrible pathing
Review: If this were a review purely about content, then Redemption would get a well deserved 5 stars. Unfortunately, the technical problems drag the entire game down. The bad: Horrible pathing! Your party members block you all t he time and walls trap you sometimes. In Neverwinter Nights, party members would just scoot out of the way when you needed to get by them. In Redemption, you need to move around your party. I can deal with that, except you're constantly put in scenarios where your 4 party group is traveling through a tight corridor, and needing to go backwards is a nightmare. I finally gave up and switched control to the lagging member and used that character to move back. In most other games I've played, you could just 'shove' characters other characters out of your way. That's the best way about it, because when you're mid-fight, the last thing you want to do is reposition a stubborn party member who just won't get out of your way. Absolutely abismal pathing in this game. There's not much pizazz to the weapons and armor available, either. Guns and ranged weapons are pretty useless in the game, and I've found sticking with the good old shield and sword works better. Again, I blame the developers. There is little to none available as far as support, and I've only found one patch so far. The Good: This game contains THE MOST engaging, engrossing and interesting plotlines I've seen in a game. The story content is unparalleled. You follow Cristof Romuald, a crusader knight of the dark ages who fights in the crusades. He is wounded and nursed back to health in medeival Prague by the beautiful nun, Anezka. You begin the game playing Cristof as a human, and you follow the character through his Embrace and change into vampiric state. The game is based on White Wolf's 'Vampire: the Masquerade' and 'Vampire: the Dark Ages' tabletop RPG books. The designers of Redemption did a good job of bringing WW's material into the game, and do so in a way that is pleasing to a V:tM fan yet still easy for a beginner to digest. As the plot continues in the game, Christof's sire and friends explain to him about the vampire clans, vampire origins, etc. etc. I had my doubts about getting this game because I doubted a game could do justice to WW's publications, but after playing it, you really can't help but enjoy the story. Basically, you play Christof through the ages and travel through Prague, Vienna, London, and modern day New York. He's basically on a path to redemption (thus the name of the game is Redemption), and depending on how humanely you act throughout the game, you may or may not receive redemption. (A humanity score is kept.) With the gaining of experience points, you can buy skill points, and with enough skill points (strength, dexterity, intelligence, charisma, etc.), you can buy discipline points. That's where the real fun is at- the disciplines (vampire powers). Multiplayer is ok. I heard Redemption's multiplayer capabilities referred to as "Neverwinter Nights Lite." There's not much by way of video-gaming you can do on multiplayer, but you can hold campaigns and assign a storyteller. The storyteller holds GM powers and can access each player's advancement menu to grant exp, control players, speak through players, spawn items, and kill or revive players. So if you'd like an alternative to tabletop and currently play V:tM, you can definitely check this out. This game is definitely roleplay heavy, and they speak in Ye Olde English (at least Christof and Anezka do). It's not to say it's corny, though. They may say "thee," "thou," "thy," and "hath," but the dialogue and voice acting is *fantastic*. Despite the (inexcusable) technical problems, Redemption offers the richest content and voice acting I've seen in a game. I truly hope that game developers will pick up V:tM to base another game on, and hopefully, they'll do justice to all the fabulous content they put in it by making it sufficiently playable. It's really worth picking up if you're like me and are more an RPG fan than a hack and slash powergamer. If you want a game with a rich story, this one won't disappoint in that aspect. But be warned of the pathing, lack of support, and other gameplay issues.
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