COLUMN: “Vampire: The Masquerade Swansong,” good the first time, replay not recommended

Karyne Allen, Columnist

I have loved Vampires since I was a child, but the thing that I loved the most was when I was told about “Vampire: The Masquerade Swansong.”

I was extremely excited to play this game. This is a game with violence in it. I was told this game has been in the works for years. It pushed back many times which made me think this game was going to be great. I thought I was going to love everything about this game.

It hit everything that I love about games and even other subjects. Like come on- a vampire game where I get to pick their paths, this seemed like a game made for me.

When I played the game, let us just say I was disappointed by a few things.

The one thing is the fact that I did not like the graphics and sometimes I could not make a choice that was given to me. I did enjoy some things about this game like that each character has different powers and that you get to use those powers to the maximum.

The other thing that I liked was that there is a skill tree that you can use to upgrade these powers and help you though the story. There was a different ending for each character you played as in the game.

This was great because you did not just get one ending for all the characters and work that you put in this game. The other thing that I thought was good was that there were parts where if you did not all the evidence that could led the vampire hunters to your people.

It will come up again in this game, or if you were to release the werewolf, a different character would have to deal with that choice. I also enjoy that if you failed to convince the other characters in the game to do what you want or to believe you, you will fail or even possibly die.

There are even parts where you actually have to “feed” and can even eat rats if there is not anyone around. Some characters will refuse to do it at first if there is not a real reason to feed from the rats it is seen as ungraceful.

While feeding you also must find a place to feed in private to feed or you will not be able to do it, which I did not like because the lower your blood thirst got, the less you could use your powers or not at all.

I enjoyed the game, but I will say I will not be playing it again even if there are a lot more paths I have not seen. I will say for myself this is a game I will tell people to play if they want a game that is kind of slow and can take up time, but I could not see myself enjoying playing this game again

Karyne Allen is a senior journalism major. She can be reached at kkallen3@eiu.edu or 217-581-2812.