Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption - Only a Week to Install!
So last Wednesday, I tried to install my old copy of Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption. I wanted to take a look at the modeling they did for the architecture in medieval Prague for some ideas. No dice. The installer would just disappear, never to return.

I forgot about it. It didn't work. I complained briefly about it in passing last week. Too bad - I always remembered the level design in Redemption looking pretty good in spite of its low polygon count (mainly because of the lighting and shadowing system that was used for the game, which was ahead of its time).

Then, a week later, I suddenly get a popup complaining that I needed to re-insert the Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption install disc. I hadn't shut my computer off in all that time, and I hadn't hunted down the installer through the task manager. In fact, I had three copies of the installer all playing the Redemption theme music at once.

Bizarre. I don't know if this was an artifact of copy protection, a crappy installer, or what... but nearly a week later, I was finally able to install the game. I spent about an hour playing it - mostly wandering around Prague and the mines and seeing how they made repetitive textures not look so bad. But the game played just fine. It definitely looks dated, but aside from the installer problems, the game works.

So what do you do when an installer goes bad like that? Waiting around a week for an install isn't generally a reasonable solution to play a retro game.

For what it's worth, I always loved Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption. Mechanically, it was only so-so... excessively linear, but the game system was good. As it predated Neverwinter Nights, its storyteller multiplayer stuff was way ahead of its time. Buggy and crashy, but a heck of a lot of fun when it worked. The dialog was purple prose bordering on ultraviolet. But for sheer atmosphere, the game still ranks among the best.

Labels: Mainstream Games, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:14 AM (Permalink)