Bloodlines, the newest game's subtitle, immediately gets brownie points for being developed by Troika Games, the company composed of Fallout veterans. If there was any developer who could do an RPG series justice, it's these guys. Their RPG Arcanum went on to win tons of Game of the Year awards when it was released, and for good cause: When you construct one of the best RPGs of all time, in the form of the original Fallout, your pedigree precedes you where ever you go. Bloodlines drops the party aspect from Redemption in favor of the gamer taking on a single character and traversing the underbelly of modern day Los Angeles. Here you will speak with a cast of colorful characters and visit some of the city's darkest, deepest parts.

Right off the bat, Bloodlines is not for the queasy or the kids. Being based on vampire lore assures you that the blood will be flowing like water and the adult content is prevalent. In fact, your character will visit strip clubs, club enemies to death with a severed arm, and hear more than a few F-bombs dropped here and there. I can honestly say that Bloodlines is one of the most adult games I have played this side of the wonderful San Andreas.

To power all this gore, Troika chose to use the Source Engine which is currently powering a little game you may or may not heard of; I think it's called Half-Life 2. The Source Engine boasts some amazing physics and effects (how else could the gravity gun be so much fun?), but Bloodlines fails to capitalize on this fact. For the most part you will be able to pick up bottles, glasses and assorted trash here and there, but nothing near the interactivity of the environments in HL2. This comes off as slightly disappointing considering the advanced physics engine is one of the major selling points of Source. Still, if you are able to bypass the lack of user interactivity, you will find a wonderfully crafted world, shrouded in darkness.

The game, as previously mentioned, is based on a pen-and-paper RPG. Troika managed to make the game easily accessible to non-fans of the series by allowing the game to create your character sheet for you. As in all major pen-and-paper RPGs, your character sheet defines all of the characteristics of your character. From charisma to strength, your faux-persona is beefed up in many core categories throughout your playtime, opening up new avenues of gameplay as you progress. Starting a game presents you with two options; take a blank character sheet from scratch, or answer a few questions based on moral and ethical values and allow the game to pick the best fit. Either way you will join one of the game's half a dozen clans, which will further determine your traits and skills. Also for the newbies is the option to allow the game to disperse experience points into aspects most aligned with your clan, thereby making those hard, character-developing decisions a bit easier.

One of the most important things is keeping up the Masquerade, which means no public feeding on humans, no using your powers in front of humans and no breaking human laws, as the police in the game will pursue and kill you. You are awarded Masquerade points when you begin the game. For every violation a point is deducted; when you have no remaining points the game is over. Also, on the character sheet is your character's level of humanity, which separates your human side from the monster within. Performing inhumane actions (such as stealing charity money) lowers this aspect, whereas taking on side-quests and helping people adds points to your rating.

The storyline has you taking over a recently turned vampire who faces execution along with your Sire. It seems as though the newly appointed Prince doesn't like minions being created without his permission. As your previous night's lover is beheaded before you, the Prince decides you may be of more use to him alive rather than dead. He sends you to LA to carry out a series of missions, but there is more going on than it seems in the City of Angels, and you're right in the middle of it. It'd like to say that Bloodlines utilizes the open-ended gameplay made so popular by Grand Theft Auto and its army of clones, but this bloodsucker is fairly linear in its approach. You receive missions, stored in your journal, that either progress the main story or serve some other side purpose. Even though they are linear, the objectives are varied and usually fun to accomplish. One highlight has you traversing through a haunted hotel in search for a locket. I can honestly say that this was one of the creepiest and most fun levels I've played in a video game in a long time. The linear nature keeps the environments from getting stale with endless backtracking.

Although the levels are pretty good sized, you will move between zones from time to time, and this is where a bit of frustration settles in. The long load times break any tension or sense of cohesion present while working on a particular mission (must like EverQuest 2), but on a speedy machine this may not be much of a problem.

The game's music is a combination of original and licensed tracks, which really complement each other. The track playing throughout the Asylum Club immediately got to me and forced me to just idle inside for a few minutes listening to it. Sound effects and voice work is also top notch, which is what we have come to expect from Troika. Each character is accompanied by spoken dialog delivered wonderfully with a bit of cheesiness for good fun. While your character is basically a mute, conversations are initiated by you and progressed when presented with two to five different responses to another characters comments. Special phrases are colored differently (such as seduction and persuade), but all dialog displays Troika's sense of humor, sometimes having you laughing out loud at the screen.

The only major drawback to the game is, unfortunately, a huge hamper on the gameplay. While moving from place to place in the first person perspective works out well, combat (sans guns) moves the camera into a third person view and feels almost broken. Expect to die many times because you simply had a hard time understanding why it should be this hard to fight. The only saving grace is gunplay, which fortunately sticks to the FPS perspective, but guns do the least amount of damage in the game. You would think with such a solid FPS engine powering the game, combat would be executed more intuitively. Also, some performance tweaking with the game's settings may be required as a system meeting the minimum requirements stuttered like hell when entering new areas or having to deal with environmental variables, such as rain.

Aside from the combat issues and linear storyline, Bloodlines impressed me a great deal. I didn't know what to expect from the game, mainly because I had heard such disappointing things from those who played the first in the series. I was pleasantly surprised to see the game play out as well as it did, usually making me want to keep playing just to see what twist the story would take around the next bend. Troika managed to create some memorable characters, memorable environments, and a memorable game in an aging PC genre. It isn't going to light the fires of every gamer out there, but anyone who has ever enjoyed Fallout, Zelda or any other action RPG is sure to find something in Bloodlines to sink their teeth into.