What is Vampire: The Masquerade ?

Vampire: The Masquerade — Redemption is almost as schizophrenic as the creatures of the night that populate its pixels. Just as Christof, the game’s central character, cannot reconcile his crusader soul with his vampire form, the game cannot make up its mind whether it’s a single-player action game or a multiplayer role-playing game (RPG). The end result is as brilliant in some places as it is uneven in others.

As a single-player experience, Vampire follows the story of Christof, a knight templar who falls in love with a nun, becomes a vampire, and rises to power in the world of the night. The game is set in four chapters: Dark Age Prague and Vienna, and modern-day New York and London. Each realm is reasonably expansive and populated with a wealth of player characters and nonplayer characters (NPCs).

MacSoft built the game on the Quake III engine, but apart from the familiar texture mapping and slick particle and lighting effects, you’d never guess it; the interface and controls opt for Diablo II’s point-and-click directness. Sadly, the NPCs’ artificial intelligence (AI) doesn’t quite live up to its Quake III roots; your allies trip over one another to attack the same foe, and your enemies periodically walk right past you without noticing. The click-on-your-target method of combat is sometimes harrying during rumbles in tight corners — your allies can obscure your target, and since vampires are denizens of the city, confining rooms and alleys are all too common.

As a multiplayer RPG, Vampire forges new ground. One player serves as the Storyteller, placing key objects in the game world (including relics, medallions, and blood-plump rats) and flitting back and forth between the NPCs. The other players are just that — players in the Storyteller’s tale. This Storyteller-player setup recreates the feel of sitting around a kitchen table with your friends, rolling dice. Sadly, Nihilistic Software (the game’s original developer) isn’t releasing the Vampire software-development kit for the Mac — this drastically limits your options for creating a unique multiplayer experience... And since cross-platform networking isn’t an option, your virtual kitchen table can only accommodate your Mac-using friends.

Still, beneath these rough edges lies a gaming gem. The single-player story of love between a demon and a nun is conventional yet not entirely predictable, and the multiplayer game, while limited, opens new doors for computer RPGs. Vampire is a harbinger of excellent things to come.

Pizor, Rich. (March 2002). Vampire: The Masquerade. MacAddict. (pg. 58).

Download Vampire: The Masquerade for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 8.6

Compatibility notes

Minimum Requirements

• PowerPC G3 @ 300 MHz
• 128 MB RAM
• Rage 128 graphics card with 8 MB VRAM
• 768 MB hard disk available
• Mac OS 8.6

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver