Vampire: The Masquerade — Out for Blood

Well this one was disappointing. Four fifths was build up and fluff and then there was a mad and disjointed rush to the conclusion at the end. It kind of read to me like the author got writers block or was procrastinating/padding for word count and then kind of forced an ending actually. But I'm just speculating... Descriptions were unnecessarily detailed with padding. Connections between characters seemed lacking or rushed. Character motives were lacking. Decisions seemed to narrow to a handful of not very logical choices as time went by. These decisions seemed to miss options the text itself suggested were there (e.g. at one point you have a flashbang grenade, and the text suggests you could use it in an ambush, but then there was no option to do it. Instead a bunch of other largely sub-optimal choices were presented). Stat checks seemed to require very high scores (or alternatively the scores don't matter and you will always win or lose reagrdless maybe, I'd have to replay to confirm and I don't wish to do so) and often repeatedly focussed on only a handful of skills, with repeated options for the SAME STATS in the available decisions. So I can choose two different choices with different flavour to achieve an objective but they both test the same stats. So unless you picked exactly the right scores to focus on you end up gimped and have to choose the 'safe' option or just fail because there is largely only the one stat mix to get through the situation. I also think these stat choices work against the 'everyman stumbles into vampire hunting' scenario. I ain't paying a professional hunter here, I'm just some schmuck who accidentally finds themself up against Vampires. There is only so elite I am likely to be! I had good to decent skills of 6 or 7 (total) in my chosen stats and even when I had a choice that let me use them they seemed to fail most of the time. Even when I was e.g. armed with a forgiving (of an amateur) weapon like a shotgun and my enemy was unaware of me! Yeah, so I didn't really like this game. Which is a shame 'cause I love the hunter style concept and have enjoyed a number of the other World of Darkness games from this publisher!