Classic Review - Medal of Honor: Allied Assault [2002]

 

In 1997 when Steven Spielberg was making Saving Private Ryan he observed his son playing GoldenEye 007 and had the great idea of creating a realistic World War II experience that would satisfy both history buffs and people what wanted to kill Nazis. Two years later, Electronic Arts published Dreamworks Interactive's Medal of Honor for the Playstation. The game, in which players filled the shoes of fictional Lt. Jimmy Patterson, an OSS officer, received favourable reviews and quickly spawned a sequel in 2000 entitled Medal of Honor: Underground in which players became french resistance operative Manon Batiste. It was not until 2002 however that developers 2015 granted the franchise it's true form - Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for the PC. It exceeded the mark famously, earning earning millions for EA and won universal acclaim including 91% on Metacritic.

Using a modified version of the id-Tech 3 game engine, developers 2015, inc crafted Medal of Honor's best self - a genre-defining game that rejuvenated interest in the the era and propelled the developers to later create the Call of Duty franchise. Allied Assault was able to utilise the superior power of the PC to push graphical boundaries and introduce superior gameplay elements into players hands which was most notably seen during the harrowing Invasion of Normandy and the Omaha Beach Landings where the action on screen featured many characters moving during the relentless assault from German guns. Spielberg himself considered his work done when he saw this work and left the series to EA at this point but not before crafting the interwoven stories of his three protagonists with the Allied Assault saga telling the story of Lt. Mike Powell as he undertook dangerous missions for the OSS (meeting Manon Batiste and raiding the same fort as Lt. Patterson did in the original Playstation game).

MOH:AA is a bit more than Quake with a WWII skin however. While you get to use and shoot authentic WWII weapons at hundreds of Germans there's a little more 'realism' at work here influenced by Spielberg with his angle of educating the masses about the era. Your run speed and jumping height are a lot less than you may be used to as an FPS player, likely an effort to be more realistic. That said, you can still in common FPS fashion, can quite happily lug a fine collection of weapons such as a Thompson SMG, M1 Garand rifle, Springfield Sniper rifle, Browning Automatic Rifle, Winchester Shotgun and a Panzershrek anti-tank weapon along with a pocket full of grenades and a Colt 45 sidearm all at once - maybe that's why running and jumping are curtailed? Unlike most games at the time however the Medal of Honor franchise did not feature blood or gore, as Spielberg asked for it to be absent as the Columbine Massacre happened just months before release.

There are a number of elements that set MOH:AA apart and were used in many later games. One of the more useful mechanics was a compass with objection pointers rather than the staple mini-map. This allowed the player to follow his practically linear objectives quickly without breaking immersion or consulting a map every few minutes wondering where he needed to be going. While not the first game to use the 'lean' mechanic, it was the first time I used it and by all accounts much better implemented than previous efforts such as Soldier of Fortune and Return to Castle Wolfenstein . It was also the first non-tactical FPS game in which you had an AI 'squad'. They were basically useless and died easily but it did give the appearance that at least for some of the game, you were not responsible for winning WWII entirely on your own, but for the vast majority you were.

Along with the obvious attention to graphical details, the weapons, uniforms, vehicles and scenery of the era, sound played a very important part in Medal of Honor. Everything from the 'ping' of the M1 Garand to the rumble of a Tiger tank sounded unique and atmospheric while Captain Dale Dye and W. Morgan Sheppard among others leant their voice talents to NPCs. However it was the music of the game that stole the show. A young Michael Giacchino who had only composed scores for either little known or movie tie-in games up to the point where Dreamworks got him to compose Medal of Honor and Underground, took the scores for both games, added some new Allied Assault themes and crafted what is not only one my my favourite but easily one of the best video game scores of all time many years before achieving the fame he enjoys now.

While it feels overall very like Saving Private Ryan and the Omaha landing remains one of PC Gaming's defining moments, the majority of the game feels like a very sanitised version of WWII in comparison to more modern efforts. However it's still worth taking for a spin especially with 3rd party enhancements such as this texture pack. 

Medal of Honor:Allied Assault is only available with the Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Warchest, which includes the expansions Breakthrough and Spearhead on Origin for €9.99 or on GOG for €9.09.

Retro Review: Soldier of Fortune [2000]

Note this review includes experiences only made available with the SoFplus Mod

It's the 20th Anniversary of easily one of my all-time favourite First Person Shooters - Soldier of Fortune, so I thought as I had purchased it from GOG during a recent sale after thy had finally secured the publishing rights in 2018, it was time to take it out for a spin.

Soldier of Fortune is a truly dumb game, it's plot is insane and would have been laughed off the pages of a comic book in the 1980's, let alone accepted in one of the first videogames which rang in the new century. The story such as it is makes you feel like you're in a classic '80's action movie, probably starring Chuck Norris. It's filled with cheese and tropes from TV, movies, comic books and other video games but the gameplay is sublime and it's what has brought me back now again after what I reckon is about 10 years since I last played.

Soldier of Fortune is considered a classic example of the FPS genre and a fantastic example when looking at a game of that era. It shares a lot of aesthetics with 3D shooters of the time like Deus Ex, SiN and Half-Life - clearly developers were still coming to terms with the possibilities the new 3D engines were affording them, and each developer was keen to add their own mark on the genre in order to stand out. One way for Soldier of Fortune developer Raven Software, was to make the whole game a gun-porn lover's wet-dream. It was one of the first games (with the like of Counterstrike and Rainbow Six) to take the majority of it's arsenal from real-world weapons as opposed to the previous efforts of the genre like Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem 3D which feature mostly sci-fi or otherwise fantastical weapons. The second, and by far the more important hook was adding the GHOUL damage engine to the Quake 2 FPS engine to create something unique - one of the bloodiest shooters ever released!

 

You see, most First Person Shooters did not (and most still don't) depict intense graphic violence. When someone was shot there was perhaps a texture change where "blood" appeared on their clothing. If one was lucky, a pool of blood appeared under a fallen body. Even when games began to incorporate rudimentary rag-doll physics - a "body" on the floor my 'jerk' if you deliberately emptied the clip of your assault rifle into your slain opponent; it most certainly didn't react like it would in reality, i.e. explode against the wall with blood, flesh, bone and internal organs freed from the confines of the body as you spat white hot leaden death at it. This tame approach taken by most developers ensured that FPS games were at least released everywhere as very few of them are banned, but Raven and Activision eschewed this for Soldier of Fortune.

Soldier of Fortune had GHOUL. From Wikipedia: "The GHOUL engine enables depiction of extreme graphic violence, in which character models are based on body parts that can each independently sustain damage (gore zones). There are 26 zones in total. A shot to the head with a powerful gun will often make the target's head explode, leaving nothing but the bloody stump of the neck remaining; a close-range shot to the stomach with a shotgun will leave an enemy's bowels in a bloody mess, and a shot to the nether regions will cause the victim to clutch his groin in agony for a few seconds before keeling over dead. It is possible to shoot off an enemy's limbs (head, arms, legs) leaving nothing left but a bloody torso." What this does not tell you about though is the death screams. Even though Earl Boen, Todd Sussman and Michael Clarke Duncan are heard, the game's voice acting is so-so, but enemy death screams are magnificent, it really does sound like you've just blown a guy's limb off, or set him on fire as he writhes around on the floor screaming. 

 

Soldier of Fortune naturally sprouted much controversy and was banned in many territories. Notably it was labelled an "adult motion picture" and was rated as a pornographic film in British Columbia, while in Germany, it was placed on the Index List of the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons. This was all despite an option in the menu where one could turn off the violence/gore effects as one can in many games. There was also a version produced which entirely and permanently locked out the violence/gore called Soldier of Fortune: Tactical Low-Violence Version, but I know of no pussy who was subjected to it.

The game primarily uses the Quake II engine and so shares lineage with Heretic II, SiN and Daikatana. Playing today I'll agree it's aged significantly but if one applies the SoFplus mod, you get to tweak graphics features including playing in widescreen resolutions, but beware that you may get some slight hall-of-mirrors effects on screen edges as the game was ever only designed for 4:3 aspect ratio. The game ran with no significant issues on Windows 10 1909.

While entries in the Hexen and Heretic franchises helped establish Raven Software, it's with Soldier of Fortune that they truly made their mark and allowed them to develop more notable games later such as a sequel Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix as well as significant FPS entries - Star Trek: Elite Force, Star Wars - Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Quake 4. They have a significant role to play today in the Call of Duty franchise and I'm glad I took a nostalgic 9.5 hour journey back through one of my favourite games to remember where they came from. 

Soldier of Fortune Platinum is currently only available on GOG for €9.09 but watch out for frequent sales.

The SoFplus mod is available here: http://sof1.megalag.org/sofplus/

First Chief of Space Operations sworn in

Vice President Mike Pence swore in General John “Jay” Raymond today as the first Chief of Space Operations, the title of the officer in charge of the newly created sixth branch of the U.S. armed forces - The United States Space Force.

When I began this multi-part series in 2017 and even following it up last year with the inevitable realisation that this was probably actually going to happen, I still didn't think I'd be writing this today. But once the chief is assigned, the ball is rolling and over the next few weeks and months Raymond will work with the Department of Defence in establishing immediately, a force of space specialists drawn from what was the Air Force Space Command, the administrative, training and procurement entity of the USAF for space. Gen. Raymond will also command the United States Space Command, the joint-service combatant command that conducts space operations.

According to it's mission statement, The U.S. Space Force is to "organize, train, and equip space forces in order to protect U.S. and allied interests in space and to provide space capabilities to the joint force. Its responsibilities include developing military space professionals, acquiring military space systems, maturing the military doctrine for space power, and organizing space forces to present to the Combatant Commands".

A force of 16,000 personnel will be stood up over the next 18 months but Gen. Raymond suggested that adopting a new uniform, logo and of course, a song will take much time in the months, if not years ahead.

Although that said, I thought they had the song sorted:

Sources: 
US Space Force Fact Sheet - https://www.spaceforce.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheet 
Twitter account of Mike Pence -  @Mike_Pence
Video: Starship Troopers 3 - Youtube

Review - Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order [2019]

 

Not being a pessimist granted me some level of anticipation for this year's main Star Wars game - Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. First - it was to be a single-player game! This caught the attention of everyone due to the fact that Electronic Arts had done little with the Star Wars licence other than the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO and multiplayer shooter Star Wars: Battlefront, and even damaged the franchise with Battlefront II's now infamous loot-box debacle which caught the attention of governments around the globe. Secondly, it would be a totally new game  - not following on from before or even prominently featuring known characters. It would be set much earlier in the "Dark Times" (post Revenge of the Sith) than Star Wars: Rebels. So the ingredients were there for some great storytelling of a Jedi on the run during the time of the Jedi Purges.

As much as I would have in the past for almost every LucasArts title, I was not about to drop a pre-order on this during the summer before a November release. While Respawn developers did create one of my favourite shooters Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007, and unlike Bioware did not yet suffer damage from EA meddling, EA had too much 'Dark-Side' energy built up not to warrant a period of observation after release - as well as a price drop - to determine if it was going to be worth it. Thankfully, it seemed like the results were favourable and Jedi: Fallen Order was going to be a success. EA confirmed that it was the fastest-selling digital launch for any Star Wars game within its first two weeks on sale and achieved a respectable score of 81 on Metacritic.

With a 15% sale before Xmas, I acquired the game and began an incredible 30 hour journey as a young Jedi Cal Kestis (Gotham's Cameron Monaghan) who encounters and teams up with Cere Junda (Wolfenstein and Call of Duty's Debra Wilson) her pilot Greez (Matlock's Daniel Roebuck) and Cal's trusty droid companion BD-1 (WALL·E's Ben Burtt). Together they embark on a noble quest to rebuild the Jedi order. As modern Star Wars games respect canon however, I knew it was highly unlikely to happen, but it's not about the ending, its about the journey and with a story created by Stig Asmussen (God of War III) Matt Michnovetz (Star Wars: Rebels) and the legendary RPG writer Chris Avellone himself, I was not disappointed.

 

The game slowly but surely instructs you, first in movement before introducing combat and force powers. The idea behind this is of course your control scheme is completely alien. Thankfully rather than leveraging the amnesia trope, here Cal has been hiding out on the planet Bracca scrapping old starships for raw materials, lying low and off the radar not using his powers - until the day he has to! Every so often sees Cal learning a new power like push or pull or ability like double jump and wall running, reconnecting with the force and further embracing his heritage. Thus as the player you are drip fed the new ability after a time you should be comfortable with all you have already learned.

The gameplay here seems to be a hodgepodge of other well known games. I've seen Tomb Raider, Uncharted, Assassin's Creed, Dark Souls and Sekiro mentioned for everything from the puzzles and parkour movement to the combat and resting areas with references to Metroidvania due to the need to often return to an already visited area after you've unlocked something or gained a new force ability or upgraded BD-1's abilities. In light of this, Jedi: Fallen Order won't seem very innovative with regards to games themselves, perhaps even derivative of the aforementioned and I'm under no delusion that this game would still be great if it wasn't Star Wars. I think the draw here however is the story, the sounds, sights and atmosphere. You are interacting with a world (worlds) in the aftermath of a great war. While The Empire is certainly in control, technological remnants of the Clone Wars are visible as are the remains of fallen Clone Troopers littering the landscape, grounding you in Star Wars lore.

Progress is steady and methodical. For every kill or new exploration discovery you gain a Databank (journal) entry for flavour and XP which eventually fills a bar netting you a skill point which you can spend on new survival, force or combat techniques to improve Cal's abilities as you progress. But don't wait too long before spending because if you're defeated in combat, you will lose the unspent points to your assailant and only by striking them again will you regain them, or instead you will need to retreat and gain XP elsewhere.

Honestly, the game is hard in my book. I eventually turned the difficulty down to easy mode because, hey - I'm old and I started getting a pain in my hand from the intensity of the lightsaber combat. There's no stealth approach, no mind-tricks or Obi-Wan style popping distractions like in many other Jedi-related games, the solution to every enemy encounter here is force push them off a ledge, parry baster bolts back to them or most often - slice them up with the lightsaber. Once you get used to it, it becomes second nature to jump feet first into EVERY situation and the pace of the game really only supports this mentality anyway so off you jump with reckless abandon.

Speaking of jumping, there's more jumping in this than Mario, and like him you'll fall a lot. Jedi Fallen Order's levels are very vertical in their design evoking the LucasArts levels of yesteryear. Falling damage isn't too punishing, which is good because you fall a lot. If there's a solid space that the player character can occupy, below you then it's likely you can just jump/fall down to it. However after a certain distance - or if there is just a void below you then you 'die' - but it's not the same as being defeated. If you fall you'll just immediately re-spawn a safe distance from same ledge you fell off. You will often mis-time a jump, or fail to catch a ledge or a rope or even go too far over the ledge while sliding down a ramp at speed - yes you will fall a lot.

I really enjoyed the puzzles in the game, and there are quite a few. Some require a single motion or moving something, while others require reflexes, mastery of the game controls and the realisation that physics rather than just colour or number exercises, are an acceptable way to approach puzzles in modern games. Some puzzles are a doozy and I'll admit that once I had to look up a solution to a puzzle and it was simply a matter of using not one, but two force powers on a platform - it had not occurred to me that the same geometry would have been differently affected by different powers (in my defence it was 3:30 AM and I took that as a signal to sleep).

 

Exploration is rewarded when you come across Force Echoes which allow Cal to experience a moment of the past using The Force gaining experience. Also you find treasure, which is only cosmetic and is found in storage containers. It will be one of a lightsaber custom part, a poncho design or a paint job for the ship or for BD-1. Some exploration reveals harder to find secret areas which reveal powerful Force Echoes which permanently increase your maximum Force energy pool or perhaps even more valuable - health canisters which increase the amount of total health boosts you can carry (Note: I got nine, but not the achievement which said I found them all!).

Graphically the game looks fantastic. I'm almost ashamed to say that this is my first Unreal Engine 4 game even though it's been in use since 2014. With all the enhancements Respawn had plugged into it, 4K frame-rate was a little below 40 so played at 1440p to maintain a solid 60FPS with full detail and it was worth it. Of particular note was the particle effects with rain and snow being very well modelled and combined with the realistic particle physics, it presented very realistic movement patterns. Reflective metal surfaces and flickering lights too seemed superior to those of the Frostbite engine which I had much more experience with. Also I was amazed at the quality of facial modelling and especially the lip syncing during NPC conversations. It seemed as good as any 3D animated TV or motion picture presentation today.

It would be remiss of me for not noting the multitude of enemy-types that you constantly kill during your quests. There are of course the indigenous denizens of each planet you visit, spider or crab like crawlies, slugs and rat like creatures are common as is the ability of many of the enemy types to range you or explode when they die - which 99% of the time is with a lightsaber melee attack so you have to be close - because of this you will get good at jumping and evading. The more common enemy however is The Empire and you'll be dispatching dozens of not hundreds of Stormtroopers, Scout Troopers and Purge Troopers (in their black armour) as well as Security Droids and Probe Droids with their distinctive electronic warbling that will have you looking about frantically to see where the bastards are!!

Speaking of sound, I've always felt like it must be an easy job to be the sound guy on a Star Wars project because the sounds of Star Wars themselves are so distinctive, you rarely need anything new. Many of Ben Burtt's original sound designs are here (or recreated here) but there is still a phenomenal array of sounds for the new locations, environments and enemies that Respawn did a fantastic job of adding. The voice talent as one expects with the involvement of Lucasfilm is top notch. In addition to the aforementioned actors we hear Tony Amendola (Stargate SG-1), Scott Laurance (Star Wars: Resistance) with Liam McIntyre (Spartacus) as Malicos and Forrest Whittiker as his Rogue One character Saw Gurerra. The music score is also noteworthy; Steven Barton (Call of Duty 4, Titanfall) and Gordy Haab (Halo Wars 2, Star Wars: Battlefront) blended their original music performed by the London Symphony Orchestra with established themes from John Williams to craft a powerful and evocative Star Wars score that is sure to make an impact on all who hear it.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order makes up for lost time in the continuation of video-game storytelling in the Star Wars universe which has been lacking for far too long. Whether 'Star Wars Jedi' continues as a franchise or if new single-player games can be green-lit and produced as well as this was then we can perhaps consider these "Dark Times" to be over. 

Side Note: I recommend playing in "Story Mode", especially first time out, as this makes it a more manageable cinematic experience. The enemies are weakened and less aggressive, the damage you take is less (falling damage is eliminated), and the parrying timing is more favourable to you. You can and will still be killed if you don't use all your abilities but unless you're solid at combat in Sekiro or Dark Souls you will likely break your mouse/controller in frustration at higher difficulty levels.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is available for the PC on Origin or Steam (Origin activated) for €59.99. Seasonal discounts have been observed on those platforms and on key vendors Green Man Gaming, Humble Bundle and Fanatical, resulting in prices from €49.99 to €52.99 approx.

Retro Review - DOOM II: Hell on Earth [1994]

This time last year, I gave a retro review of the original DOOM! So again I decided to end the year's gaming by returning to the DOOM universe for the sequel DOOM II: Hell on Earth in honour of that game's 25th Anniversary.

Unlike it's directly supplied predecessor DOOM II got a commercial boxed release and was understandably a best seller. It is however a textbook definition "more of the same" as it quite literally just the same game albeit with some new enemy types and more open space to the levels. This couldn't be done today, it's expected that sequels today have some significant degree of gameplay improvements, graphics upgrades and in the cases of a franchise - a continuation of the narrative. DOOM II however has the same bare-bones narrative (not that it really needs any) but has absolutely no graphics or gameplay upgrades.

Only three things define DOOM II as being different from DOOM. The first is the super-shotgun, the single new weapon added to your arsenal and it's both welcome and useful. The second is some genuinely interesting new enemies: A Chain-gun Dude who uses a chain-gun and drops it when you kill him, a Cacodemon upgrade called a Pain Elemental (above) who shoots Lost Souls from it's mouth and explodes in Lost Souls when killed, the Mancubus who shoots fireballs, the rocket-firing skeleton Revenant and of course the Archvile who can burn you and raise other demons you've killed from the dead! The third defining characteristic of DOOM II is that id were able to take advantage of upgrades in computer hardware within the year and make the physical size of each level much larger with higher geometry, wider areas and more enemies.

DOOM II: Hell on Earth feels bigger and more difficult then it's predecessor and it does take a bit longer - about 7 hours to complete it's 30 levels. While it's levels pose more of a challenge in many respects, I don't think they are as interesting as what were originally designed and DOOM's use of Satanic references to the Bible and Dante's Inferno are not as prominent for most of the sequel. The ending is disappointingly lacklustre with the final boss - the visage of Baphomet - just being a static but heavily guarded, invulnerable monster whom can only be killed with a few precise rocket shots to the brain (below). This boss dynamic is in contrast to the more satisfactory and dynamic Spider-Demon end boss of DOOM but sadly id would revisit this boring mechanic with Shub-Niggurath in their following game Quake 18 months later. That said, the journey to this point, the other 99% of DOOM II is well worth a revisit.

Despite its total lack of innovation over it's predecessor, DOOM II: Hell on Earth was a commercial success for id and even provided stiff completion for the technically superior evolutions to the genre that were released not long after - 3DRealms' Duke Nukem 3D and LucasArts' Dark Forces.

DOOM II is available from Steam for about €5, and often discounted to about €1.50. DOOM II comes bundled with Final Doom on GOG for about €9 but frequently discounted for about €2.60.

Alternatively the DOOM 3: BFG Edition bundles DOOM 3, DOOM II and Ultimate DOOM for €19.99 on GOG and Steam, but again, frequently discounted for about €6 (as of time of writing).

In memoriam, 2019

We take a moment to remember those we lost in 2019:

Carmen Argenziano, 75, American actor (Stargate SG-1 as 'Jacob Carter').
René Auberjonois, 79, American actor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as 'Odo', Benson).
Maj Gen Eldon Bargewell, U.S. Army Ret. 71, American army general, commander of Delta Force.
Keith Birdsong, 59, American illustrator (Star Trek),
Gordon Bressack, 68, American television writer (Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs).

Gay Byrne, 85, Irish broadcaster (The Late Late Show, The Gay Byrne Show).
Seymour Cassel, 84, American actor (Star Trek: The Next Generation as 'Lt. Cmdr. Hester Dealt').
Jacques Chirac, 86, french politician, President and Co-Prince of Andorra (1995–2007).
LTC Richard E. Cole, USAF Ret. 103, American air force officer, (Doolittle Raid).
Larry DiTillio, 71, American television writer (He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Babylon 5).

Billy Drago

Billy Drago, (above) 73, American actor (The Untouchables, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.).

Aron Eisenberg, 50, American actor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as 'Nog').
LtGen Jack B. Farris, U.S. Army Ret. 84, American military officer, (Operation Urgent Fury).
Peter Allan Fields, 84, American television writer (Star Trek, The Six Million Dollar Man).
D. C. Fontana, 80, American television writer (Star Trek).
Robert Forster, 78, American actor (Jackie Brown, Olympus Has Fallen, London has Fallen)
Marie Fredriksson, 61, Swedish singer-songwriter (Roxette).
Brendan Grace, 68, Irish comedian ('Bottler', Father Ted as 'Fr. Fintan Stack').
Grumpy Cat, 7, Internet meme cat
John Harold Haynes OBE, 81, English Publisher (The Haynes Owner's Workshop Manuals)
Rutger Hauer, 75, Dutch actor (Blade Runner, Split Second, Flesh and Blood).

David Hedison

David Hedison, (left) 92, American actor (Live and Let Die, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea).
Neil Innes, 75, English comedian (Monty Python) and musician.

Nikolai Kardashev, 87, Russian astrophysicist (SETI), developer of the Kardashev scale.
Gen Paul X. Kelley USMC Ret., 91, American general, Commandant of the Marine Corps (1983–1987).
Jeremy Kemp, 84, British actor (Star Trek: The Next Generation as 'Robert Picard').

Ken Kercheval, 83, American actor (Dallas as 'Cliff Barnes').
Pat Laffan, 79, Irish actor (Father Ted, The Snapper).
Major General Alexei Leonov, 85, Russian cosmonaut (Voskhod 2), first person to walk in space.
Tom Lyle, 66, American comics artist (Star Wars, Spider-Man - creator of Ben Reilly's costume).

Barbara March as 'Lursa'

Barbara March, (above) 65, Canadian actress (various Star Trek appearances as 'Lursa').
Peter Mayhew, 74, English-American actor (Star Wars as 'Chewbacca').
Vonda N. McIntyre, 70, American science fiction author (Star Wars and Star Trek novels).
Syd Mead, 86, American concept artist (Blade Runner, Aliens, Tron).
Dick Miller, 90, American actor (Gremlins, many Star Trek appearances).

Lawrence G. Paull, 81, American film production designer (Blade Runner, Back to the Future).

Scott Rubenstein, 71, American television writer and story editor (Star Trek: The Next Generation).
W. Morgan Sheppard, 86, British actor (Star Trek: The Next Generation as 'Dr. Ira Graves').

Judge Dredd illustrated by Ron Smith

Ron Smith, 94, British comic artist (Judge Dredd (right), Rogue Trooper, Transformers).
Peter Tork, 77, American musician and actor (The Monkees).
Rip Torn, 88, American actor (Men in Black, Dodgeball), Emmy winner.
Francis Tresham, 83, British game designer (invented the concept of a Technology Tree).
Jan-Michael Vincent, 73, American actor (Airwolf).
Robert Walker Jr., 79, American actor ( Star Trek as 'Charles Evans' in "Charlie X").

Herman Wouk, 103, American author (The Winds of War, War and Remembrance).
Max Wright, 75, American actor (ALF).

Special Mentions: Danny Aiello, 86, American actor. David Bellamy, 86, English naturalist. Elijah Cummings, 68, American politician. Windsor Davies, 88, Welsh actor. Doris Day, 97, American actress. Albert Finney, 82, English actor. Peter Fonda, 79, American actor and screenwriter. Clive James, 80, Australian author. Micheal Legrand, 86, Oscar Winning french Composer. Arthur Murphy, 90, Irish broadcaster. Luke Perry, 52, American actor. William Simons, 78, Welsh actor. John Singleton, 51, American film director and television producer. Caroll Spinney, 85, American puppeteer. Freddie Starr, 76, English comedian. Clive Swift, 82, English actor. Niall Tóibín, 89, Irish comedian.

May they rest in peace.

Retro Review - Beneath A Steel Sky [1994]

One game that sadly never got a proper remaster treatment [save a quasi-'remastered' IOS port] was Revolution (Broken Sword) Software's Beneath A Steel Sky, a 25 year old point and click adventure with a dystopian/cyberpunk sci-fi setting and a cult following to this day. I said it would be nice to sample a short adventure game for a change and as BASS has been freeware since 2003, and delivered free with GOG accounts, there was no reason not to.

As Robert Foster, stranded in an irradiated desolate wasteland outside the city walls as a child you are found by theatrically evil security forces and returned to the Union City. Foster soon escapes from his predicament and begins to uncover corruption and conspiracy around every corner - much of which as he discovered is all about someone important called Obermann - but is Foster Obermann himself?!!! 

One of the principal draws of the game however is the collaborative effort of famous comic book creator Dave (2000AD/Watchmen) Gibbons on the game. Gibbons was responsible for the character designs as well as the backgrounds and had an extraordinary level of input including a graphic-novel style intro and finale.

It wasn't quite as slapstick as Lucasarts' point and click efforts but it was certainly more tongue-in-cheek than Sierra's offerings from the period. I would compare it far more to the Star Trek 25th Anniversary/Judgement Rights games in tone. While the plot is certainly dramatic and dark, the interactions and dialogue is absolutely fucking hilarious and delivered with just as hilarious voice acting - including a turn from a young Jason Issacs.

Puzzle wise, there were a few quite less than obvious solutions that I'll admit needing a walk-through for, and each time I'd admit I'd likely never have tried that as a solution to the pending issue, but there are not many of these situations. Most puzzles/solutions are revealed by carefully moving your mouse around at anything that might look like it's vaguely interactive and most of the time it is, and there is a palpable sense of accomplishment when you do figure it out for yourself.


Beneath A Steel Sky sports an exceedingly simple control system - you can select everything from right or left click and F5 brings up the save/load/quit menu, and that's it! It's certainly easier to play than any other point and click and that simplicity made it a more immersive experience. In fact when coupled with Gibbons' influence it was almost more like reading a comic book for seven hours than playing a game.

This year, Revolution announced a sequel: Beyond A Steel Sky, was in development. It is again in collaboration  with Gibbons and is expected to release in 2020.

Beneath a Steel Sky is free on GOG.

First Play Review - BioShock [2007]

Note: This review is for the 2016 Remastered version of the game.

With so many people surprised I hadn't played a BioShock game and so many recommendations were given, when I had to opportunity to get "The BioShock Collection" a bundle of all games in the trilogy in November last year, I took it.

Now I want to start by saying I'm not a fan of the horror genre itself. I can't relate to most horror movie characters because they're so incredibly dumb. I also particularly isolate the games, or movies of the survival-horror genre. I regard survival horror as unentertaining and a waste of my precious time for the most part. For example, I hate Ridley Scott's Alien [1979], the thought of going into outer space without an arsenal of heavy weaponry and the military training to use it is the most dumbass concept I've ever seen committed to film. I only bring this up here because BioShock is often labelled as survival horror. I disagree with this label as unlike the say, Resident Evil series, because BioShock gives you enough guns and ammo; and while it's tense and atmospheric, it's not frightening or scary. I just wanted to nip that concept in the bud before the entire internet goes wild with "Creedon played a survival horror game!!!?" or some such social-media 'panic'.

BioShock, the spiritual successor to System Shock marries Steampunk/Cyberpunk with biological elements creating a sort of 'Biopunk' as it were and if you can visualise that concept then you have a fundamental understanding of the world in which the game takes place. The story is a simple concept, it's 1960 and you survive a plane crash, washing up near a lighthouse that's actually an entrance to a giant underwater city - Rapture. Unfortunately it's a world in chaos and you must navigate it's perils guided by an ally on your radio to get you to safety.

Despite it's somewhat horror-oriented setting, you never feel like you're in too much peril. You have an array of weaponry as you would expect from an FPS: pistol, shotgun, machine gun and the like but also a few weapons unique to it's biopunk setting. The trick is that ammo for all the weapons is not plentiful but you can pick up raw materials and craft ammunition at special stations which are plentiful enough. If an arsenal of weapons wasn't enough, you also have some biologically created "superpowers" called Plasmids that allow telekinesis, mind control or the ability to burn or freeze enemies or the environment to name but a small few. You can upgrade not only your powers and talents as you would in an RPG but also your weapons, so eventually you feel powerful enough to ignore most dangers and waltz around killing everything like an omnipotent god.

 

Most of the characters are unfriendly towards you, which is not unusual for an FPS but sadly enemies are not incredibly varied. All are humanoid, mostly the former denizens of Rapture who are all driven insane but in contrast - one duo of enemies is very interesting - Big Daddies and Little Sisters. I will say now that I say these in my head as I type, it feels really weird! Little Sisters are a plot point, they are the ones who carry magic essence harvested from the ocean floor, they are immune to your interference while their protectors, the Big Daddies - mutated humanoids in deep sea diving suits - are active. One of your main objectives is to incapacitate the Big Daddies, so you can rescue the Little Sisters from their power-induced mind-controlled state or if you're evil you can harvest their power for yourself! 

The environment of the game is truly unique and I've never seen, let alone played in one like it. It ran great at 60FPS in 4K. I didn't play the 2007 version of the game but I know that lighting, texture detail, volumetric smoke and surface reflections were unlikely to be as good in that as they are in the 2016 version. The sound plays a very important part adding to the atmosphere. You will need to become familiar with the groaning and moaning of the Big Daddies to track them and you'll likely hear them long after you turn the game off! Voice acting isn't shabby with Armin Shimmerman and J.G. Hertzler (Quark and Martok on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) lending their voices to characters as does Juliet Landau (daughter of Martin Landau) who is remembered as Drucilla in Angel.

 

BioShock was a worthwhile diversion for 24 hours, which is certainly longer than the norm for first-person-shooters and I'm looking forward to BioShock 2 and BioShock: Infinite at some point in the future.

BioShock: Remastered is available on it's own for €19.99 or €4.99 in many sales on Steam or GOG. Steam also offers BioShock: The Collection which has BioShock 1 & 2 Remastered and BioShock: Infinite in one package, and this collection is often discounted from €60 to €14.99 or even cheaper on a Key-vendor like Fanatical.

Note that the 2007 edition of BioShock is no longer available for sale, but a purchase of the 2016 remastered version (or collection) will have the original version also added to your game library. The same goes for BioShock 2. Additionally if you own the original versions of BioShock or BioShock 2 on Steam, you have access to the remastered versions for free.

Review: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain [2015]

The 32 year old Metal Gear franchise, brainchild of Japanese developer Hideo Kojima, spans over 20 games and is often referred to as one of the most complex narratives in video game history. It's also a predominantly console-oriented affair with only about five of them being ported to the PC. I never played any of them because more often than not, console games are crud when ported to the PC and I dislike playing franchise sequels without playing the original. The mouthful of a title Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain however, the last in the series, was really pushed for the PC more than any MG title before it and as I got it free with my GPU when MG fans were paying €50 for it so I felt it would be rude not to try it.

I've played games which one completes and indicates you're done in the form of an end credit sequence and only offers you to reload your last save, likely the last one made before the game ends. Some games offer the ability to go through the whole thing again on harder difficulty, only now you have all the weapons and gear you picked up along the way. Others offer some sort of continuation to online multiplayer, while most genuine online or MMO types of games offer the promise of continuation and "the grind" until content is updated. In the Autumn I self-imposed a completion of MGSV, easily one of the most interesting, rewarding and addictive gaming experiences ever. It felt strange uninstalling this as while I had finished all the main missions and seen the story to it's conclusion, there was still hundreds of hours of game to get lost in. I guess I didn't feel I was entirely finished with it yet; but after 589 hours (according to Steam) I figured that I probably should be, so that I can play others, so I had to forcefully pull myself out.

My initial thoughts were mixed. The first hour of the game is heavily scripted, with little by way of gameplay. Without spoiling anything, you're escaping from a hospital being invaded by a paramilitary force and you've just woken up from a coma, so you're not yet "at your best". It's filled with scripted events, blocked exits, fake doors, and you're lethargically following a bandaged man unmistakably voiced by Kiefer Sutherland (which somehow is also your own voice?) in a backless hospital gown telling you to do everything. That said it was exciting and spectacularly directed in terms of visuals but it makes no sense until the end of the game about 50 missions later!

Prepare yourself for a whopping 4 hours or so of cutscenes and scripted sequences spread throughout the game where Kojima advances the bizarre story, which does have some exceptional dramatic moments, one of which I had I can only describe as "traumatic". It certainly makes me appreciate the level of following the franchise has and perhaps justifies the adoration for Kojima I've seen online. Sadly while the game satisfactorily ends it's story, there was a few threads that were left unfinished but this was because publisher Konami put pressure on Kojima to finish it up and thus did not have time to complete everything including the most major thread which should have been "Mission 51" - the details of which can be viewed on Youtube. However I must stress that MGSV:TPP does not have a KOTOR2 situation to the ending, where the publisher demanded the developer cease development, tack on an ending and release it in that state, leaving a plethora of unanswered questions. In MGSV the main ending to the game is intact and was likely completed at the same time as the start, so various Internet musings on the game being "unfinished" are inaccurate, it's just not 100% complete. I can't speak for it addressing all the plot points that the overall lore of the whole 20-game MG series demands but unlike KOTOR2, the ending is paced adequately and the game is bookended satisfactorily.

While the 50 or so story missions are the driving force behind the game, one would have a difficult time as you progress through the story without completing Side Ops - similar to side-quests in any bog-standard RPG - which are the real meat of the game, more so than the story missions. This is certainly where one would sink most of their time into as one really has the freedom to complete Side Ops in which ever way you choose as there is only a single win condition. They can take as long as you like, use whatever tactics and resources you want and it's all good so long as you eliminate (kill or extract) a target or rescue a prisoner etc. There are 150 of these missions throughout the game and often you find yourself repeating them for the rewards in order to build up your military strength. The list of Side Ops available changes every time you complete some and return to the helo and are often updated with new ones as you complete story missions so one must always check them out after a main mission as some of them needed to be completed before a main mission will unlock and vice versa.

Building up your military strength is a crucial component of MGSV and one I particularly enjoyed. One can't really progress in the game without doing it because the enemy begins to develop countermeasures to your attacks and you need to stay ahead of the curve by developing better weapons and equipment. You eventually get a Fulton recovery device which you attach a balloon to a person or animal that you have incapacitated (not killed), a container or a vehicle and it's magically added to your resources. The person is brainwashed into joining your team, you get a reward for rescuing the animal, the container translates into resources needed for development and the vehicle becomes yours to drive later or sell.

This brings me to Mother-base - your base of operations which you really need to build up so you can hold more staff, develop more and more weapons and equipment and thus can complete missions faster, easier and with higher chances of success.  Mother-base can be visited (a lot of the the plot points force you to return too) and there are some training missions to be had there. It does get rather big (35 separate platforms when fully developed) but you can drive between platforms in a jeep (if you have the time), fly on a helicopter (of you have the money) or my favourite: sit in a cardboard box on a delivery area and Fed-Ex yourself to another site!

Of course when you complete building Mother-base, the building doesn't stop. The Forward Operating Base or FOB is the final type of content for MGSV. One develops a basic FOB (essentially a near identical copy of of Mother-base in other territorial waters) during the single player game but it's really for multiplayer or event driven content. Developing an FOB increases the limits you can expand your staff even more. This is needed if you want to develop a higher grade of weaponry than you have and also generate automatic materials procurement through automatic mining, which in turn allows you to expand even more, and build even more FOBs, to expand more staff limits, to get higher levels of staff, to get higher levels of weapons and so on. I didn't get to the maximum level, I don't know what it is but I had 109 platforms which cost filled with 2800 unique staff when I called it quits.

There is a con to the FOB though. As your FOB (containing a percentage of your resources - even though you collect as part of the single-player story game) is permanently online, it is actually vulnerable to attack from other online players! Other players can actually land on your base - and if they're good enough - kill or abduct your staff and steal your raw materials! Unless you're good enough to retaliate, the only real defence against this is to not develop an FOB which severely limits the military level you can achieve and you would find it more difficult to complete. While I'm confident the issue was serious a year or two into the game's release - four years on I was only invaded once losing a mere 13 staff which were replaced instantly with staff from the base's "waiting room". It would be prudent to develop security devices and adjust the security level as high as you can so that only vets could ever attack your base and not some random noob!

In addition to a kit that might take you a while to decide what to bring from dozens (later hundreds) of available options - each of which can be customised to your liking - you also can take an AI 'buddy' to aid you in your mission. You start out with a horse first, it's good for getting around but it's limited. The buddies I used most often were D-Dog, a dog, a good dog that can sniff out weapons, vehicles, enemies, wildlife, resources and medicinal plants or Quiet a sexy semi-naked expert sniper for which no expense was spared on the movement physics of her breasts - remember the game was developed in Japan and they're a bit strange over there. I spent about 100,000GMP in game to develop clothing for her, thus treating her like a soldier and not the Dutch underwear model that provided her motion capture. Quiet's a dab hand with the sniper rifle and can actually be sent on command in to an area and methodically eliminate enemies while you leave the game to go and take a shit. She's actually a good quarter of the story to the game too so don't kill her when you first meet her.

I will say graphically the game is top tier. The Kojima Productions FOX engine is easily the most optimised graphics engine I've seen in years netting me a steady 45+ FPS at 4K Ultra detail. I needed to drop to 2K during the hot summer due to heat but FPS rose to 60 which I limit manually. This is much better performance than any Western-produced game in it's class. Character modelling is impressive for the main characters, but secondary characters not so much. Animations aren't the best either with some of the characters stances looking a bit constipated but environments are astonishingly detailed even though there are really only two regions; rocky and sand-brown Afghanistan or swampy green yet more brown Zaire. This game proves that there is indeed beauty in the mundane but it would have been nice if there had been a reason to have more temperate, arctic environments or even coastal regions.

I need to mention the game's soundtrack because it's certainly the most impressive I've heard since World in Conflict. The game is set in a version of 1984, and the soundtrack reflects that exceptionally. Midge Ure's "The Man Who Sold The World" is sort of the game's theme, and there are other offering from Kim Wilde, a-Ha, Hall & Oates, The Cure, Ultravox, Billy Idol and many more. As you invade installations you can take tapes of the songs out of the cassette players and they'll be available to listen to on your own in-game Walkman as you play or there's an option to choose your "helicopter music" - So I challenge anyone to say they have lived until they ride in a helo that's blaring Kajagoogoo's "Too Shy" on it's loudspeakers! Additionally, the in game score by Swedish composer Ludvig Forssell with Justin Dungeons & Dragons Burnett and Daniel Call Of Duty: Black Ops III and IV James deservingly earned them the best score at the Game Awards. 

Bring a trained Force Recon Marine allows me to appreciate it when game designers understand the value of a tactical approach to warfare. Often such designers and Hollywood directors are of the idea that "Special Operations Forces" means "louder bangs with less men", and while it certainly can be, more often than not it's the completion of an objective before the enemy realises you've been there. What MGSV:TPP allows, is for you to take any approach, from any direction, from any distance, in daytime or night, lethal or not and complete the military objective by killing everyone loudly, neutralising everyone silently or vanishing without ever being discovered. Games like Call of Duty rely on scripted sequences to convey stealth but it's eventually just an exercise on who you kill first and how many, while the Splinter Cell franchise is built on stealth and penalises you for going loud or being discovered. MGSV in contrast gives you to the freedom to adapt to do whatever you want to do to the point where I'm sure many other games will now feel a little hollow or too constricting, even "ruined" by comparison to such a free-form experience.

I have no issue recommanding Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain to anyone who appreciates shooters and stealth games but this is not for casual gamers. The only way to progress is by spending time doing some legwork and that takes serious man-hours, but I feel the rewards are worth it in the long run.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is worth the €29.99 you'd pay on Steam but you can find it bundled with it's prequel episode Ground Zeroes as METAL GEAR SOLID V: The Definitive Experience for the same price but as with all you can wait for a sale and get it all for about €6.99.

First Play Review - Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines [2004]

Note: This review is for the game using the Unofficial Patch v10.4 (31/5/2019)

 

This year marks the 15th Anniversary of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, one of the most unique RPG experiences for the PC that is beloved by many and often spoken about when referencing the best RPGs of the '00's but also as one of the best bug-ridden games of all time. It's also the year in which a sequel - Bloodlines 2 was announced much to the surprise and delight of fans of the original. So now that it has received significant fan patch support and was recommended by a trustworthy source I thought it was was time to see what the fuss was about.

My first pen and paper role-playing situation was not with D&D but in fact with White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade. It wasn't a particularly long adventure but I learned the basics of role-playing through White Wolf's system and I found the World of Darkness setting itself to be most intriguing, later even sampling Mage: The Ascension. I recall in the late '90's / early 2000's that White Wolf was to bring elements of their world to video games. Having achieved some success in 2000 with Nihilistic Software's Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption set in the dark ages, White Wolf later licenced V:TM to Troika Games who leveraged Valve's powerful new Source engine to craft an action RPG set in 21st Century Los Angeles.

The combination of melee or automatic weapons with vampiric powers made real by the engine for Half-Life 2 was certainly a winning combination in theory but sadly the execution fell just short of perfection. While it's fair to say Activision gave Troika many extended deadlines, they finally forced it's release in November 2004, creating a game that was "playable" (as deemed so by Activision, not Troika) as opposed to complete. The remaining bugs themselves weren't game breaking but excessive load times, apparently missing content and moronic A.I. were just some of the peeves that prevented the game from greatness. What didn't help the case was that Troika's previous game Dungeons and Dragons: Temple of Elemental Evil was also pushed out the door before completion as well, so people were already weary of another instance of that and Bloodlines' state upon release was enough to dilute enthusiasm. Despite very favourable reviews from the game press, Troika itself didn't survive the poor sales and financial failure and it shuttered in 2005.

In the meantime two enterprising individuals sought to open the game up and make valiant attempts at 'fixing' V:TM-B. Dan Upright first created an unofficial patch but it was taken over by Werner Spahl from version 1.2 and Spahl continues to update the patch to the time of writing. Not only are there substantial graphical improvements but all the content that was cut from the game was restored as well as a significant amount of character 'paths', dialogue trees and added features. A feature of the patch allows for a basic experience that simply fixes bugs but leaves the gameplay otherwise untouched from 2004 or the "Plus" version which includes the restored content and other tweaks that bring the game into a more modern way of playing. Spahl has received praise and creative assistance from former Troika developers and the GOG version of the game actually includes the unofficial patch today.

So how does the game play now? Well I can only tell you that as this was my first time with the game but it was an interesting experience. It's an FPS at heart but clearly an RPG in execution and scope. As a Kindred (vampire) you choose a clan, sort of like choosing an RPG race/class combo and this determines your powers. Based on a series of questions you answer at the start the game chose the Tremere (Blood mages), Brujah (anarchists), Malkavians (the insane), Toreador (the sexy ones), Gangrel (animalistic) or the Nosferatu (monstrous). For me it was Ventrue, Vampire nobility, destined for leadership. Your powers duration and intensity is determined by a blood pool - which can be refilled by feeding from people - but don't get caught by someone else as the whole point of Vampire: The Masquerade is not to reveal the existence of the Kindred to humanity. The rest is standard RPG faire: get quests from NPCs, complete quests, get loot, sell loot for money, get XP points, spend XP points on character sheet to increase power and ability, advance plot and repeat until end credits.

So one would have assumed that using an FPS engine like Source would have made the action element great and the developers would have only to worry about story, animation and RPG elements, but no, combat is bad! I get the idea that the pen and paper system itself is being emulated to some degree and one must spend points into say - firearms to improve accuracy, but I'll be honest, in a video game situation, where you are carrying around about seven of them at a time, it's not fun shooting at someone with a gun and hitting your enemy once in six shots before reloading, especially when they are all crack shots against you! This would be acceptable if there were ways to avoid combat completely, but other than areas you can use domination or charm (Jedi mind-tricks for vampires) or stealth - which despite the patch, is a broken or cheesy mechanic depending on how you look at it - combat is still inevitable. There are really too many combat sequence especially in the last 20% of the game for you not to put all the experience points you can into combat abilities just to stay alive. In fact I admit that I turned on "god mode" for much of the game because I was genuinely becoming bored by the combat itself.

But if the combat was boring, why continue? Well thankfully, the plot is well written, rich and nuanced and has a level of freedom that I did not expect for this era. It has consequences to your actions and has a range of possible endings to your storyline that Bioware should have taken a cue from it for the Mass Effect saga. The story drip feeds you V:TM lore through NPC dialogue which is much more satisfactory than the usual CRPG trope of reading a book you've looted. The lore as presented in the game itself is merely the skin on top of the soup that is the pen and paper sourcebooks but its plenty for the game purposes in which you are cast as a newly embraced fledgling Kindred who is completely clueless as to what they have become and not only must now navigate the game world but also the complex intricacies of vampire politics.

The design of the world itself is worth noting, it's naturally in perpetual darkness as it's taken as a given you don't wander around during the day for obvious reasons. The locations are mostly urban L.A. but there are distinctive differences between them, e.g. Santa Monica is by the seafront, Downtown is comprised with tall skyscrapers and Gothic architecture and Chinatown is filled with lights and eastern style signage. This isn't a sprawling open world, you're eventually blocked by a fence and inaccessible tunnels at the ends of each street which act as invisible walls, but there's no reason to explore beyond anyway because for the most part you're going to a specific building to advance whatever quest you're on. Exploration only occurs within a building, down a sewer, or other enclosed area, rarely topside in the streets of L.A. There was one particularly well crafted level that took place in an abandoned hotel that your character is sent to in order to get rid of a spirit that had chased away the renovation crew. It was filled with eerie sound effects, jump-scares and poltergeist-like shenanigans. Had the entire game used the investigation-style gameplay employed in this level in the rest of the game without instead such a heavy reliance on combat it would have been a much better game. 

Voice acting is 90% excellent but some was abysmal, and I expect I could tell when Spahl got a fellow fan to record a piece of missing dialogue for the cut-content, but not having played the unpatched-version I'm unsure. That said it's less than two-dozen lines of dialogue in several thousand so I wouldn't be too concerned. The score was produced by Rik Schaffer who composed the music for Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer and Activision licenced songs from contemporary minor artists at the time and they form part of the games nightlife atmosphere especially in the many bars and nightclubs you frequent which are littered with the posters of real-life bands.

Having now played the game myself I can say that the game is a product of it's time and hasn't aged as well as others from the mid 2000's. Sadly while the unofficial patches have made the game quite  playable, it suffers from often moronic A.I. or the lacklustre and at times, chronic combat. With that in mind however, the strength of RPGs like this lies in the story they weave and combat is just a means of navigating obstacles in the way of advancing the plot, of which this game certainly worth the €5 price tag.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is available from Steam for €19.99 or GOG for €17.99. However the game is often on sale from either vendor for somewhere in the region of €5. However during the most recent sales I observed only a minor drop in sale price to €9.99 possibly due to a resurgence of interest in the game because of the imminent sequel in 2020. 

At time of publishing, the unofficial patch is v10.5 and available here.