Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines

"Given some extra post-release love via heavy handed patching, Bloodlines has the potential to become a truly majestic role playing game. As it stands right now, it’s like eating a bagel with some mud on it. Sure, the cream cheese might be divine, but you’ll still be able to taste the mud."

"While a determined player - especially a PC RPG player - will forgive much of this, and my selection of bugs are fairly extreme examples of what's going wrong, it's really not on. Suffice to say, those stories about it being done ages ago and being stuck on a shelf until Half-Life 2 was finished are evidently a lie. Someone decided to throw this into the shops and then patch later."

"At its best, Vampire could have turned out to be a really solid first-person RPG title, but it lacks that hint of brilliance that Troika's first game, Arcanum, had."

"Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines is a solid RPG title that offers a lengthy story mode that has plenty of replayability potential."

"...Bloodlines' open-ended approach, combat system, and dialogue options make it feel a lot more like a successor to action-RPG classic Deus Ex than the recent sequel did. Ignore the problems and frequent loading pauses, and you'll be rewarded with a long, highly replayable RPG with a fascinating setting and first-rate writing. Don't miss it."