The main character in Redemption is Christof, a Crusader left in Prague to recover from an arrow wound while his comrades continue their campaign. After recovering from his injury he attracts the attention of the Brujah vampire clan by vanquishing a notorious vampire from the Tzimitze clan. Christof is subsequently cornered by a member of the Brujah clan and Embraced (made into a vampire, in other words). All this is the start to a tale that could quite easily have come from the very best of "real" roleplaying sessions, taking Christof from ancient Prague and Vienna to modern day London and New York, constantly developing the tale with often lengthy dialogue sequences all done in-game. Vampire constantly demands that you play on to discover the next part of the story. What's more, there are more reasons to begin and continue playing Redemption.

From the menu screen to the closing cutscene, Vampire is a title that displays much originality, playability, beauty and sheer quality. Graphically it is absolutely gorgeous. The level designers at Nihilistic have made excellent use of a strong graphics engine, creating some beautiful and pretty convincing locations such as a snowy Vienna and a rain drenched London. Much of the architecture is so nice that it's almost a shame that the standard camera system tends to point more towards the ground. We often found ourselves using the "z" key to move to a first person view just to fully take in the beautiful level design Redemption exhibits. An even stronger point is the games characters, which are amongst the most detailed and well animated we've yet seen in a computer game.

The sound is also invariably well done. The voice acting is excellent, with some characters particularly standing out. We couldn't help grinning at the wonderfully arrogant and dismissive Vampire Prince of Prague from clan Ventrue, and we doubt we'll ever forget the wonderfully voiced vampire punk-with-attitude called Pink (you'd best not pick a fight with him over his girly name though) who Christof meets in London. Even better than the regular sound though is the music, which is utterly top class. Most of the music in the Dark Ages cities is as dark and haunting as a midnight grave, fitting the location perfectly, be it a vampire infested cavern or the Jewish Quarter in Prague. When the action shifts to the 20th century, the music changes accordingly although the quality remains the same. The music in Vampire could just as easily be a high quality movie score and is certainly one of the best sound tracks to a game we've ever heard.