Re: Bookrage's choiceofgames reviews
Bookrage's review of "Choice of the Vampire."
Hello all,
as promised, I am giving you my impression of "choice of the Vampire" from the Choiceofgames series. I am glad I waited for a third playthrough on this one as there are some things I failed to notice on my first two that change some of the views I have of the game.
Genre: This story is very much a southern Gothic Vampire story, much in the style of Anne Rice and her imitators. You live in a secret society of vampires and are in several key events in New Orleans and other parts of the south from the battle of NEw Orleans until the formation of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1870s.
incoming biases: I have a stron gdislike for anything that really romanticizes vampires and I prefer them to be monstrous such as they were in many earlier works of the 19th and early 20th centuries rather than today. Also, despite being a southerner myself, I don't like romanticization of the old south either as I think it doesn't have much to be proud of. The game doesn't shy away from the bad stuff, but there is still too positive a light on some things that happened then as I see it.
writing: the writing is typical for many vampire stories of this sort. However, there is quite a bit of lucivious details and at times, it seems the author is trying to get lust into the story even where it is inappropriate for the mood. When one character feeds in one scene, they have her strip and dance around nearly naked before feeding. This is simply fanservice and does not contribute to the story. Your feelings along lustful lines are often dictated for you and you'll be described as being overcome with lust for many characters, both vampire and mortal, and it doesn't really try to take into account the players' own tastes and just forces your hand. I know vampirism in literature, even the actual classical stuff I like has a lot of homo-eroticism in it, but I would still really like to have more control over that than I did. This is not the only area where this happens, as much of your own dialog is written for you, and in terms too specific for you to avoid feeling jerked around by the story. The story also doesn't give you enough choices and you will often feel your character hurled from one situation to the next, with the game saying you made choices when in fact you are just being led by the ear.
That said, the game's story is actually quite branching and in 3 playthroughs, I got three very different experiences. None of them were great, but I will say the game has a lot of options.
One of the strangest things I have found in the game is that chapters are not clearly marked. The number of chapters, at least as marked by next chapter buttons, also shifts wildly from playthrough to playthrough depending on which path you choose. Based on the fact I play a chapter a day and like things to be tied up neatly, this sloppy division of the gamebook was particularly annoying to me.
Mechanics: The mechanics in this game are extremely murky. It is often hard to figure out exactly where strengths and weaknesses will come into play. Some of them, such as fighting and agility are pretty easy to understand, as are rationality and superstition, though I feel those last two are rather insultingly named because superstition applies to almost everything religious in the game while reason applies to almost everything anti-religious, while if you look at a lot of the great thinkers in the real world, religion does not equal stupidity, nor does a lack of religious belief protect us necessarily from having superstitious fears or beliefs. (Just watch gamblers of any faith or lack thereof.) Others, such as lore, are not quite so clear. Also, although the game gives you many options to increase your stats, and many of them are quite ham-handedly announced, other points, like when you announce your preferred prey, are not quite as intuitive. It is often hard, except in action sequences,to figure out what is best for your character to do.
railroading: oh my god Yes! You will feel constantly jerked around by this story. On the bright side however, it is a railroad with a lot of switches and different paths. You will always feel jerked around, but you will know you will have some choice into which path you are dragged down.
achievements: Actually a place where this game shines, though that might be partly because it sets the bar so low elsewhere. There are not a lot of individual achievements, but I can tell you that they are a legitimate challenge and many of them require careful play to obtain. There aren't any sat-based achievements such as having your lore above a certain stat or having the anachronism stat high, but there are many that are based on events throughout the story. Some of them are pretty hard to get. I don't have many but I have gotten some rougher ones. Some of them are even cleverly named. My personal favorite is "Edward" which you get for deciding only to feed from animals.
final remarks: This one is low on my list for a reason. It embodies a lot of writing tropes I dislike, the mechanics are hard to follow, you will often feel that you are not really in control of your character, lust is all over the place in your character's mind regardless of if you want it or not or how you invision your character thinking. However, it does have the redeeming qualities that it has many interesting and challenging achievements, and the story does truly branch in many ways. If you are willing to forego the bad writing, this one can be a nice challenge if you want to try everything.
I will say that it improves a little on replays if you try other things, but it hasn't improved enough to let it rise above "Choice of Zombies" on my list, though at this point, I have played a game that has been worse.
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