Van Helsing is a poorly made game that, if you never played it, you should not even set eyes apon...
But is its bite worse than its gameplay? You take on the role of notorious monster hunter Van Helsing in a quest to rid the world of anything that goes bump in the night. In a true Gothic-style, which stays true to the movie, the gameplay is your typical monster shoot-em-up – it’s not that original, but it has something about it which just makes you want to play.
Strangely for a movie tie-in these are no full motion video sequences from the film, only cut 3D scenes using its own built in gaming engine.
It does still manage to muster up the film’s atmosphere without having to rely on footage from the film. Some people will like this, others will loathe it – personally, I thought it added a bit of a twist to the movie-console relationship. Graphically, it is gorgeous. Very dark and mysterious and making full use of the console’s engine. One quirk which does irritate though is the camera angle which you have no control over sometimes forcing you down a dark alley with nowhere to go. It would have been nice for the developers to include some form of camera control just to get you out of those tight spots when you can’t see around a corner.
But it’s really the monsters you play this game for, and there’s plenty of them to get their teeth into you! Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula and Wolf Man are all waiting to give you a run for you money as you try all manner of combos in a bid to rid Transylvania of these terrible foes. Thankfully, an auto-aim feature means that you never really miss a monster, which is a good thing when you consider that you can be battling over ten of them at any time – imagine having to aim first as well! As well as his primary weapons (guns to you and me), Van Helsing has access to a host of other artillery, including a flame-thrower, spinning buzz-saw tojo blades and a grapple gun which he can use to get himself out of danger. Overall, Van Helsing, from Vivendi, is pretty average. It’s not a bad film tie-in, but it just doesn’t appear to have enough depth to keep gamers entertained for hours on end. The graphics are great and the atmosphere average, but once you’ve killed one monster, you’ve killed them all.
Cover Artwork ~C~ Bad cover and for a bad game.