Speaking of puzzles, there are some in the game but they definitely play second
fiddle to the game’s battles. You’ll do far more fighting than puzzle solving,
and just in case the simple puzzles get you stuck the game makes it obvious as
to what to do. If you need to hit a switch, break a wall, or use your grappling
gun there will be a bright gold glow telling you just where to do so. Perhaps
the designers wanted the puzzles to be solvable by even the most novice game
players, but the result is that they seem to unnecessary rote exercises that
leave you wondering “why bother?” The game’s emphasis is obviously on fighting
and you are encouraged to kill as many monsters as is Van Helsingly possible.
Killing monsters rewards you with different glyphs that can be used to restore
your health or collected to purchase new weapons, upgrades, and combos. You have
to kill, kill, kill to earn, and the game obliges by respawning enemies if you
should return to a previously cleared area.
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| Van Helsing squares off against Frankenstein. |
As mentioned earlier you will get the opportunity to fight bosses in the game,
although they won’t respawn like the baddies in other areas. The bosses are all
drawn from the monsters of the movie, so you’ll have the opportunity to fight
Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, a werewolf, and Igor. There is definitely
something to be said for a game that lets you go up against some of the biggest
names in classic horror, but I really wish that the developers had found a way
to work in the mummy as well (joking). While each boss has his own attacks, the
battles all basically boil down to the same thing – jump around while the boss
makes his moves and then hit him as much as you can while he is pausing between
attacks. Some bosses respond to some weapons better than others, but outside of
trying a few weapons to see which one works best there is not a lot of strategy
to the battles.
Overall the game is pretty short, even though the developers tried to make it
seem longer by adding a lot of enemies. The length of the game is not nearly as
big a complaint with Van Helsing though as the one I have with the game’s
camera. You have no control over the camera in the game – it is fixed at one
spot for every scene that you enter and the perspective from scene to scene is
constantly changing. The camera is an issue right off the bat in the game’s
first level set in Notre Dame Cathedral. As you run down the aisles, trying to
collect glyphs, the camera will constantly jump as you move from one view angle
to the next. This makes navigating the cathedral to be very disorienting and
makes it difficult at times to figure out how to get to a glyph you see in the
distance on the other side of a column. The fixed camera also means that enemies
will sometimes approach and attack you from offscreen. You can use the target
lock and fire away until the health indicator at the bottom of the screen shows
you that you’ve killed your enemy without ever laying eyes on your attacker.
If Van Helsing was not licensed from the film it probably would not get a lot of
notice. Simple puzzles, short completion time, poor camera implementation, and a
general feel of repetition would conspire against it and prevent it from getting
a lot of attention. As it stands though, the game does a good job of capturing
the spirit of the film and its characters as well as the look of its settings.
This makes it worth a look to fans of the film who’d like to relive its action
sequences and do a little vampire hunting themselves.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
69%. Fans of the film will enjoy it but action game fans will probably
ultimately find it to be just an average game.
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