10 Video Games Released At The Wrong Time
3. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Plenty of games here have gone toe to toe with other major releases and suffered for it, but Vampire: The Masquerade seemed to make that their mission.
The game originally set a target of releasing between Half Life 2’s announcement and eventual release. It was an admirable plan, trying to give themselves comfortable distance either side of that 18 month window. However, delays took it much closer to Half Life 2 than they would have liked, and it was laughably buggy when they shoved it out of the door too.
It wasn’t just joined by Half Life 2 though. Halo 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3 both came out in the same month as well, meaning November 2004 had three of the most popular games of all time... and Vampire: The Masquerade.
Save for the bugs, which arguably would be much less of a factor with a hypothetical ‘ideal’ release date, Vampire was a great game that had ambitions ahead of its time. It was one of the first games to weave storytelling inside the gameplay rather than just shoot-cutscene-run narratives.
A shame it missed out on the spotlight.