Vampire: The Masquerade — Out for Blood

This game LIT up my brain! I've played many Choice of Games and Vampire: the Masquerade titles, and my brain will dwell on VtM: Out for Blood for a long time coming. Out for Blood feels like a mellow Hunter: the Reckoning game. The writing style is simple and matter of fact, giving the player a sense of their eyes opening to a clear view of the real insidious nature of vampires. There's no rush of power, no satisfaction of a new Discipline learned; no glamour to hide how much vampires can suck. The small town setting, Jericho Heights, wasn't a perfect place before her, but a certain ancilla's pervasive corruption made life way worse, like rot creeping into already scarred tree roots. The characters and narrative framing constantly encourage striking these vampires down. Any option to become non-human must be very late game, I think. Choice of Games announced that they're going to release more World of Darkness titles, and I hope Dattilo writes a HtR one.

Hunter was the general vibe, and the nitty gritty the storytelling and coding techniques impressed me too. On the coding side, I was in awe how Dattilo made it possible for the player to input pronouns. VERY cool! On the storytelling end, Out for Blood showed me a character type I've never encountered before: a wheelchair user who is also an outdoorsman. Adam navigates a forest and shoots a vampire from his chair. It was really exciting to see. I wonder if romancing Adam changes his decisions and feelings about his chair.

Though Out for Blood has a big word count and the vast machine of code does stutter under its own weight, the game felt short--something new was always drawing my attention, begging to be investigated, prodded, and flirted with. The romances are the standard light fare for a Choice of Games title and well woven into the other plotlines. Another reviewer said the sex scenes set their eyebrows on fire, but the scenes like one step above fade to black. In movie terms, maybe rated R in USA and PG-13 for Europe? My PC's love scenes were more romantic and sensual.

Overall, what an astonishing, fun game, and an unique entry in the CoG/VtM universe. I want to play Out for Blood again and again and again.

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