the nosferatu creepy

picked up a copy of vampire the masquerade: bloodlines while waiting for inspiration elsewhere to strike. i gave up on city of villains, thanks to some wacky support answers. basically, a friend of mine bought a copy of the game, hoping we could form a ravenous duo of death-dealing villains, but found the copy he'd purchased online was the american release, and not the european release as mine was. unconcerned, he installed, and found that, unlike any other game we'd been playing, he couldn't actually get onto my servers, and i couldn't get on his.

still relatively unconcerned, he wrote to support and was told he'd have to provide proof of purchase BEFORE they'd let him use the european servers. okay, now that was weird. but when he said he'd got it from ebay (and copy-pasted his worthless receipt), they said they wouldn't help him out because ebay wasn't a proper retailer. despite having bought it new from an online shop through ebay. sounds just plain crazy and like they were avoiding work. so, after a few more beggings and confused queries ending up in wait after wait for answers, we just gave up and i cancelled my subscription and moved on.

so, i got vampire the masquerade: bloodlines, and installed it. i'm a big old fan of the white wolf universe. i'd say it was for the tabletop rpg, but i'd be lying. it was for the ccg version, which i played with friends for many years. i also got the old vampire game they bought out years ago which was a complete flop because the company making the game released it and ran. kind of looks like the same has happened again. i'd love to see a mmporpg of the white wolf universe. i mean, how cool would that be? for matures and not teens, of course.

so, i burned up the game, downloaded a patch and dived headfirst in.

the game was kind of boring me a bit. and then i got to my first actual real kind of mission. it was to go to a haunted house and retrieve something which belongs to the ghost there. sounded boring. but i went.

and wow.

i have to tell you, as i walked through the map of the house, the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up! i have never in my life of gaming had a reaction such as this to a game. i was totally caught in it. little whispers, ghosts peeking through stuff. in one room, you walk into the room and you can see this malicious guy standing behind some pipes. as you go around the pipes, he's disappeared! it just keeps happening. whispers. lightbulbs burst and explode. in one room pots and pans are thrown wildly about in increasing violence. it's just so creepy. it's like walking through a japanese horror movie.

i'm happy. did a few other little quests, but so far none has captured that atmosphere. i'm going to keep going in hope some do...

wow.