BloodNet: You'd Better Hang on Tooth and Nail

 

Dracula is sure fond of commas.

          

Until this last session, BloodNet was going strong. I was mentally working up a "Summary and Rating" entry that would put it ahead of most of the Paragon team's other RPG efforts and well into "recommended" territory. I even had some positive things to say about combat, which no one else seems to like. But then it all came crashing down this session, showing that Paragon never did learn any lessons from its previous RPG failures.

    

I started the session a bit lost. I had a bunch of open quests, but I wasn't sure how to make progress on any of them. I started revisiting old locations, and then I noticed that something I had done had given me a new location to visit: "Lazlo Greene." This turned out to be the apartment of an agoraphobic hacker. Convinced that I had dragged dangerous radiation into his apartment, he wouldn't even talk with me until I gave him an "Insul Suit," which I happened to have. 

        

I'm guessing it doesn't get terribly cold in this apartment.

    

Lazlo had a long spiel (at least 1,000 words) about how when a hacker's consciousness is "dispersed" in cyberspace, TransTech can take those pieces and graft them onto the minds of other people, giving them skills and knowledge they wouldn't otherwise have. The technology they use to do this is called a "Morph Spawner," and he gave me the code (BLACKWOOD) for the WELL where I could find it. Every time I tried to visit, I got kicked out because of "incompatible hardware." I think I was supposed to make a raid on a TransTech office first, but I completely forgot about this questline. Let me know if it would have made a difference.

     

While I'm on the subject of cyberspace, I also tried the code for the Bank of New York (NYVAULT) and found myself in a WELL with a large board showing dollar values, but I couldn't find anything to do here.

     

Those completely random numbers sure are helpful.

              

The more important thing is that a search of Lazlo's apartment revealed a gas mask. This was what I needed to survive the sleeping gas that I used on the Icon Robbers. (For some reason, you need only one gas mask despite having six party members.) I returned to their headquarters, put them to sleep, and searched their pad. I found a HoloCam, two rolls of HoloFilm, and a Multichannel Transmitter.

        

          

I had been on this quest to get the transmitter for Coover Tristan of the Kafka Conspiracy. When I returned it to him, the only "reward" I got was an offer to join the party, which was full. But the HoloCam turned out to be useful. You may recall from the last session that a TransTech executive named Walter McCalaster was in the process of seizing St. Patrick's Cathedral. His assistant, William Dougan, found the matter distasteful and had told me that he'd help if I could find some dirt on McCalaster. With the HoloCam, I was able to record some video of the executive hanging around with a floozy. I took it back to Dougan, and he said it would be enough to get McCalaster tossed (apparently, his wife is a more powerful executive), and thus he'd drop the lien on St. Patrick's.

      

Don't mind me.

      

All of that got me nothing more than an offer from Mother Mary to join the party. While her faith, innocence, and courage are admirably high, they don't win battles.

         

In my hour of darkness, she is standing right in front of me.

       

Around this time, I started getting attacked randomly as I moved from place to place by members of the Black Aggots. Apparently, failing to return the drug database to Shock Maraud meant that he had to take Van Helsing's contract. But the attacks were random and infrequent. If a party member died, or if I just didn't want to fight, I could reload and it probably wouldn't trigger again in the same place.

       

Why was I taking a subway tunnel in the first place?

         

After this, there was a lot more bumbling about. I visited some stores, sold excess goods, and ultimately got my bank account up to nearly $300,000. I had been thinking that I'd be able to buy my way out of difficulties with gear, but it turns out the stores don't really sell anything you can't find or make. I restocked some ammunition.

  

Ultimately, I had to look up help for the next part of the plot. It involved the Red Crosse Knights in their cloister in the Bronx. Ultimately, Stark has to find some Soul Blades (the swords the knights use) and get their leader, Sir Sebastian, to "bless" them so they'll be useful against vampires. There are two problems. First, Sir Theodoric guards the armory and won't let you search it for blades unless you prove you're not a vampire by standing in front of a mirror. (If you just kill him and take the blades, Sebastian refuses to bless them, recognizing you as a murderer of a fellow knight.) Naturally, Stark can't do this. Second, Sebastian sees through Stark's "Instapigment" and recognizes him for a vampire. 

       

Theodoric is so stupid, I can record the video I use to fool him right in front of him.

       

The first problem is overcome by having Stark take some HoloCam footage of himself and then project it into the mirror to fool Theodoric. The second problem is solved by taking Sebastian's rosary beads to Cyril Thorpe, the psychic hacker, and asking him to essentially muddle Sebastian's mind. There are a lot of problems with these two "solutions":

   

• It's not clear that the Soul Blades are necessary. Vampires can be killed with stakes. But the next plot point doesn't trigger until you have them.

• Even if you discern the Soul Blades are necessary, it's not clear that they have to be blessed--although I admit I may have missed some dialogue to that effect.

• While you can record HoloCam footage of yourself anywhere, it's not possible to project it until you're standing at precisely the right place in front of the mirror.

• You can't actually project images "into" a mirror. Go try it.

• There's no way this would fool anyone. Sir Theodoric is standing right there. Stark would have to mimic the poise, background, and movements of the HoloCam footage, while clearly holding a HoloCam pointed at the mirror.

     

But I suppose the bigger issue is that the game is just so full of stuff and quests that unless you've taken very careful notes and reviewed them frequently, it's hard to make a logical connection between Sebastian, the need to confuse him, his rosary beads, and the abilities of Cyril Thorpe. I might have overcome that obstacle if I hadn't taken so long a break in December.

       

In a world where crosses and holy water visibly damage vampires, I guess I'd no longer be an atheist.

      

With the Soul Blades in hand, the first thing I did was visit Abraham Van Helsing's apartment and kill everyone. It turns out only two of the occupants were vampires, but everyone falls to the blades, and every one of my party members except Stark himself and Chuck had acceptable skills with "Blades." My party took a lot of damage, and instead of resting, I healed them with a MedKit. I had bought five or six MedKits at the last store, thinking they were single-use items, but instead they just let anyone with the "Medicine" skill practice healing, so multiple kits are redundant.

       

That's what we like to see.

       

Although I made it through this combat, a few issues arose that dogged me for the rest of the game. First, characters sometimes stop doing anything in combat. When you try to issue orders, they're listed as "inactive," but it's unclear why. They won't respond to any commands, just standing dumbly round after round, no matter what you tell them to do. Second, I discovered that you can enter a character's inventory to swap weapons and armor in the middle of combat. This is done with the "View Status" option. You can thus bypass the useless "Change Weapons" option, except that doing so always puts the character in an "inactive" state. Third, some weapons clearly don't use the ammo that the manual says they use. In particular, the Machine Pistol is supposed to use .44 ammunition, but the game keeps telling me that a character wielding it has no ammunition--which is fine because the Machine Pistol jams every time I try to use it anyway. All in all, combat is a highly frustrating experience despite looking relatively good on paper.

   

But I defeated Van Helsing's lackies. The only thing I got for it was a Signal Scrambler, found while searching his house. I want to note for the record the game's description of the Signal Scrambler, as shown below.

      

Think about the kinds of things this might be good for.

       

More bumbling about. At some point while trying to repair Charley Flyer's mind (I still can't figure out how to do that), I tried cyberspace again, and I was approached by the avatar of Melissa Van Helsing herself. She indicated that she wanted to betray her father, and she asked me to meet her at Le Phood.

   

Le Phood turned out to be a restaurant on the Upper West Side, and I could totally see it existing in real life. In addition to a snotty waiter named Ennui--we had to bribe him $50 to allow "street people" into the restaurant--it featured tables that were hoisted up in the air on chains while diners ate at them.

       

It must be annoying to lower them every time the waiter wants to refill the water.

     

The best part was that Walter McCalaster was working there as a waiter. This led to the best dialogue exchange in the game:

    

• McCalaster: "Care for something at the bar, sir?"

• Stark: "Just bring over the dessert cart, boy. How about serving up a nice big slice of humble pie?"

• McCalaster: "You! How dare you show your face to me after ruining my life! A TransTech career shot to hell because of you and your holier-than-thou-bible-beaters!"

• Stark: "Careful! Keep your voice down. You might get busted from waiter to busboy."

• McCalaster: "I swear to God, I'll rip your heart out right here at table seven!"

• Stark: "Before you do, I think the lady here cares for some fresh ground pepper on her salad."

       

At this point, the game took things too far by actually having McCalaster attack. The six-on-one odds didn't go in his favor. Aside from the implausibility of a former executive having to take a position as a waiter mere hours after his firing, I love seeing games make small changes to their worlds based on the character's actions.

    

Melissa was sitting by herself. She asked to join the party to help take down her father, suggesting that we speak to Alexander Tennant at the Hellfire Club. "[He] knows many of my father's secrets, things even I do not know." Stark, naturally skeptical, quizzed her about her motives. She related that her father had turned her into a vampire against her will and had basically kept her as a slave for centuries.

       

Yikes, Abraham. Wasn't there a less creepy way to do that?

          

I reluctantly accepted her and kicked out Garrick. I worried Ryma would go with him, but she didn't. Melissa has excellent statistics, being particularly skilled on "Melee," "Blades," "Leadership," "Stealth," "Strength," "Endurance," and "Cybercloaking." I would have been happier if any of these skills except "Melee" and "Blades" had any use in the game.

    

With Melissa in tow, we returned to the Hellfire Club and talked to Tennant, who had his own mysterious motives for betraying his master. He mentioned Grant's Tomb, so we headed up to Riverside Park in Harlem, entered the mausoleum, and found absolutely nothing. I even tried coming back at night. 

      

I've been to Grant's Tomb, and this doesn't look like any part of it.

       

Again, I had to look up a hint. You have to reveal a secret door by using the Signal Scrambler found in Van Helsing's apartment. Other than its proximity to the Tomb (they're on the same street in the game), what does something that "jams a range of multimedia signal transmissions" possibly have to do with revealing a secret door? Oh, I'm sure you'll come up with explanations, but if the wall was just a holo-projection or something, the game needed to offer some kind of clue.

    

We went into the back room, where Abraham Van Helsing attacked us with a bunch of his non-vampire lackies, and of course Melissa betrayed us and joined her father's side. So what was the point of her approaching Stark? Just to lure us to this location? Van Helsing could have ambushed us anywhere.

      

This looks more like Grant's Tomb, but the real one has two sarcophaguses. His wife is buried with him. This one doesn't even have room for a second one.

     

The combat took me a few tries because when you're fighting both vampires and non-vampires, you have to have some party members armed with regular weapons and some armed with vampire-killing weapons, and since you can't change in combat, you have to anticipate ahead of time. But after a couple of false starts, the dice went our way, and we were able to kill both Van Helsings and their minions. With her dying breath, Melissa said her father "forced" her to deceive Stark, and that she ultimately really did care for him. I don't know what to believe.

       

Fool me -- you can't get fooled again.

      

I naively thought this would be the end of the game, but nothing new seemed to trigger based on the encounter. Again, I had to look up a hint. I had completely missed that a guy crucified on the wall of Grant's Tomb was actually a living person--Alexander Tennant. For no reason that I can see, we had to use electronic lockpicks to release him. He relayed that Van Helsing was almost certainly still alive. "He has a fail-safe condition on his own life . . . He has his heart preserved. You must fight to destroy it." He directed us to Room 1122 at TransTech.

     

I thought the guy on the wall was just decoration. (I have no idea what's happening on the left side of the screen. It glitched a bit.)

     

Meanwhile, among Van Helsing's effects was a green pendant that Deirdre Tackett had owned and Chuck had mentioned. I fiddled with it forever before having success with the "Disassemble" command, which revealed an "Emerald Looker Chip." From the manual, a "looker chip" is the "basic cyberspace navigational tool." I replaced the default chip, jacked in, and got a message from Deirdre Tackett to Chuck. The message revealed that the code for the Lost Kids' WELL, where they're protecting the "Incubus" code, was KANSAS. Incidentally, the need for associated physical objects (chips, cloaking units, "essences") attached to the decking unit prevents you from just using these WELL codes prematurely once you know them.

       

I'm pretty sure this is the only time this command is used in the game.

      

I went to the WELL, met the Lost Kids, and got the Incubus unit.  

        

"Tommy! Pete! Janie! Zuzu!"

      

All there was left was to storm Room 1122, after a quick trip to Abyss to pick up another character to replace Melissa. Van Helsing attacked along with three TransTech security officers who wore suits that protected against energy weapons. Van Helsing himself is immortal until you attack his heart, which is a tiny red blot on the screen (not the large one in the middle, which is just a projection), so it took me a number of tries to figure it out. The security guards have extremely powerful weapons like Wrath Rays, and only luck, reloading, and fiddling with different weapons allowed me to kill them after about six tries. I probably could have made it easier by ditching Chuck for a fighter, but I didn't know if I'd still need him.

     

The heart in the incubator is defending itself with its fist. Makes sense.

      

When the battle was over, the only one standing in the room was Dr. John Harker, another Brahm Stoker character. He thanked me for freeing him. "You must go into cyberspace immediately to exorcize the vampire's curse." But he warned me that even with Incubus, I would need a "priest" to perform an exorcism. "Without a priest, you will remain a vampire." 

   

I hadn't met a priest on my journeys, but I had met Mother Mary. Either the developers don't know the difference between a priest and a nun, or something changed in the Catholic Church over the interceding century. Before running over to St. Patrick's, I drank my last vial of blood to keep my vampirism at bay. Mary joined the party, and we returned to TransTech. This time, Dr. Harker said that I had "the power to end this evil." He gave me the address of "one of the deepest levels of cyberspace," where I could "have this vampiric evil purged from [my] soul." The WELL code was ELIZABETH. I was sure it would be MINA.

   

I jacked into cyberspace. A new avatar was floating around, its owner named Harley Shakespeare. He or she had some proposal involving creating a fake version of Incubus and selling it to the Kenyan mafia for $100,000. I skipped through the dialogue and ignored him. What a weird side quest to offer in the final moments of the game.

      

Fun fact: There is a Kenyan mafia. It's called Mungiki.

           

I found a F.A.T.S., entered the WELL code, and came face to face with . . . D*R*A*C*U*L*A. Just kidding--wrong game. It was just Dracula. 

    

You think you've won, Stark? You think killing Van Helsing frees you? Did you believe that old fool was strong enough to rule cyberspace? To control TransTechnicals? He was but a pawn, a pawn of Lord Dracula, a pawn just like you, Stark, like all of New York and, soon, all of the world. I have merged my power, my immortal intellect with cyberspace. I have cached my mind permanently in the network, forever safe from stake and flame, from laser and sword, safe from the superstitions of trembling mortals. I need only obtain the Incubus program, and no ice will contain me, no area of cyberspace will be beyond my grasp. I shall be truly undying, and though I have given up the sensuous pleasures, I will have gained omnipotence. I shall be as near to a god as this miserable age will ever know. 

      

Rather than analyze this inane plot twist, I'll move on. Stark found himself in a large room, seemingly part of a castle, with a checkerboard floor. Incubus spoke up at this point, warning me that Dracula was "extracting from your mind images of people you know and turning them into your enemies." The program said that it could create virtual weapons and armor to fight each virtual enemy that Dracula created. In the ensuing combat, a "Choose Weapon and Armor" option replaced the "Change Weapon" option in the usual menu.

      

The game tries to trick you with "Soul Blade" on this menu. "Blessed Soul Blade" is on the next one.

      

My first enemy was Lash Givens. I chose a shotgun and a Kevlar suit, blasted him in the face, and killed him.

   

Next enemy: Melissa Van Helsing. I chose a Blessed Soul Blade. She had a White Noise Blaster. I tried several armor types against it and did best with a Force Field. But I couldn't hit her. Round after round, I missed as she slowly sapped my health with her weapon and killed me. In five reloads (and I had to fight Lash again each time; you can't save in between), I think I hit her once.

          

Vampires: Only killed by stakes, holy water, and White Noise Blasters.

      

There are two things working against me. First, Stark has a skill of only 58 with "Melee" and 75 with "Blades." Then again, he's worse with almost everything else. If I'd known I'd have to fight solo battles at the endgame, I would have pumped up his combat statistics more. Second, he's entering the final battle with only two-thirds of his hit points. I never found a way to heal him. Drinking blood just satisfies his bloodlust; it doesn't restore health. There was some talk about being able to sleep in a coffin, but I never found one.

     

So that's where I stand--on the threshold of victory, unable to defeat a single enemy. If I'm forced to start completely over with a stronger character, I wonder how long it will take me to reach this point again with my notes. The one benefit of starting over is that I can subtitle the entry: "I'll Make a Brand New Start of It."

   

We have here a game that started out with an interesting premise and has interesting elements, but also has illogical plot twists, an impenetrable inventory system, an arbitrary combat system, ambiguous character development, and a majority of skills that have no in-game use. That's Paragon BINGO.

Time so far: 25 hours