Fangs, but no fangs
Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption
PC CD-rom £34.99 Activision ****
Both vampires and role-playing games (RPGs) suffer from image problems. These include pale complexions, aversion to light, skin complaints_ and that 's just your average role-player.
So the release of a vampiric RPG, based on a tabletop Dungeons and Dragons game, should be enough to send you scuttling to the uninstall icon.
Indeed, a cursory glance at the manual confirms early suspicions. Stats, experience points and spells are all commonplace with the plot heavy in "thine"s and "thou"s. But, despite these handicaps, Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption delivers a stylish undead romp.
This is due primarily to the stunning visuals. Unlike the 2D retroism of Diablo and the rest, Vampire offers a full 3D environment that will stretch your pricey graphics card.
Unfortunately the gameplay hasn't evolved to the same degree, with a formulaic emphasis on monster bashing and stat-building sadly prevalent. In fact, this could almost be Diablo 3D, and there is plenty here that fans of the Blizzard games will enjoy.
In particular, the multiplayer, complete with a human storyteller controlling the game, will appeal. What won't impress are the artificially unintelligent members of your coterie. Walking in sunshine and failing to replenish crucial blood stocks, these sidekicks would be laughed out of the Daikatana school of sidekicks.
Also, saving is a needless chore. While the ability to save everywhere can lessen atmosphere, it at least keeps frustration at bay. Here you can save only at certain points, which makes the extremely tough later levels too much of a challenge. Nevertheless, Vampire's sexy graphics and polished style offer the promising of a more fashionable future for RPGs. (GH)
Follow that carnage
Destruction Derby RAW
Sony PlayStation £25-£30 Studio 33/Psygnosis ****
Destruction Derby has always been a great game for kids and drunks, but this third version is worth playing even if you're old and sober. Since it doesn't include any wrestling, except with the steering, the chief mystery is why they've called it Destruction Derby RAW. Polished would have been a better description.
DDRaw gets off to a good start with a front end that makes choosing a car and track fun. After that you have to score the required number of points in each race, through a combination of bashing into other cars and finishing in the top half-dozen places. If a track proves too hard, you can always try a different one.
The two dozen tracks are of variable quality but the best are excellent, and the strong racing element distinguishes DDRaw from rivals in the wrecking game genre, such as Driver and Carmageddon.
However, DDRaw also has an Armageddon mode played either in a bowl or on top of a skyscraper, where the sole aim is survival. It comes as no surprise that several of the development team worked on Indy car simulation Newman-Haas Racing, but if what you really want is a racer, this is not the game to buy.
Six of the tracks offer multi-player racing for up to four players, so DDRaw provides a more brutal version of the sort of racing that has helped make karting games popular with the back-from-the-pub crowd.
The dreadful clipping that distinguished the first Destruction Derby has almost completely disappeared, so your car no longer seems to go halfway through walls. Pop-ups are also very well controlled, which helps DDRaw feel more realistic. Still, a mirror would have been nice.
Destruction Derby was one of the first PlayStation games in the UK, which probably helped it sell better than it deserved - Psygnosis says it shipped more than two million units of the first two versions. The competition has now become so much tougher that it's hard to see DDRaw matching that, but it is a much better game. (JS)
The grating adventure
Icewind Dale
PC CD-rom £39.99 Black Isle/Interplay ***
It may be another Black Isle RPG set in the Forgotten Realms, but Icewind Dale is neither a sequel to Baldur's Gate (that would be Baldur's Gate II, coming up this winter) nor a missions disk (that was Tales of the Sword Coast).
As a result, it's dissimilar enough to its predecessor that saved characters from the first game cannot be imported; and similar enough for BG veterans to pick it up without a second thought.
As before, the code driving the game is Bioware's Infinity engine. Cosmetic tweaks aside, the mouse-and-hotkey interface remains unchanged. The character models, depressingly, are identical, and even some of the voice acting sounds familiar.
The most obvious change is one of location: as the title suggests, the action takes place in the frosty northern wastes of the Forgotten Realms (although the inhospitable climes have done nothing to thin out the numbers of marauding baddies).
The backgrounds have become much smoother, so that they look better in themselves, but contrast all the more unfavourably with the now crude-looking heroes. And of course there are new enemies, new weapons, new quests, new items and a whole new shock-horror secret to unravel.
The significant twist in the gameplay is that instead of starting with one character and collecting pre-generated adventurers during the game, you now create your entire team from the off. While this makes planning your campaign easier, it destroys some of the most enjoyable aspects of Baldur's Gate: the Magnificent Seven-style team-building, the soul-searching about which companions to take and which to drop, and the wittily scripted banter between your comrades that made those cross-country massacres seem so much more civilised.
Indeed, while on the surface Icewind Dale appears to be a thinly veiled rehash of Baldur's Gate, in the event, it lacks much of what made the original great: the rounded characters, the subtle dialogue, the novel quests and the relentless humour.
Which, to be honest, is precisely what Baldur's Gate fans were hoping for from this halfway-house release. After all, if Black Isle used up all their brilliant ideas here, what would they have left for BGII? (AB)
