Review #592: Van Helsing

 Devil May Hugh Jackmancry.

 Let me take you back to the year 2004. Devil May Cry had already been subject to two games, and Van Helsing, the movie, had just come out. The movie received poor reviews, but somehow, did quite well with audiences, me , personally, found it to be alright, but nothing special. Regardless, someone decided that Van Helsing could be a decent Devil May Cry clone, and thus, here we are. This shouldn't surprise you, someone thought that The Nightmare Before Christmas and Devil Macy Cry coul mix as well!

 The story is a decent retelling of the movie, while I haven't seen it again since 2004, I can remember most of the plot and the game does a good job at retelling it without sacrificing much to the necessary filler in order to pump out a playable version of the plot. I think that fans of the movie would be quite pleased with how the game adapted the plot. As for the story itself, you play as Van Helsing: Monster Hunter, who is sent to help a town from their Vampire troubles. As luck would have it, Dracula is to blame, so good ol' Van will have to deal with Vampires, Gargoyles, Zombies and even Werewolves.

 Melee and ranged weapons? Air juggles? Fixed camera angles? Lock-on button? Collecting orbs to purchase new moves and items? Searching for life-extending items? Devil Trigger? Check, check, check, check, check, check and check. This is a Devil May Cry clone through and through, although a low budget one. Triangle acts as your main melee attack button, while the square button shoots whichever projectile weapon you've equipped. You can lock onto enemies with the L1 button, allowing you to do things such as hold back when pressing the attack button in order to launch the enemy into the air. L1 is your 'Devil Trigger', or super mode, which makes your weapons somewhat stronger for a short while, although you have to find the super modes of your weapons first.

 When you aren't fighting excessively large waves of enemies you'll be making your way from mission to mission. There's some small leeway for exploration, although the path forward is always clear to the player. Sometimes you'll have to clear fairly simple puzzles in order to progress. The game takes place throughout 12 missions, and I cleared it in about 3 hours. You can find 'Cheats' and Challenge Rooms to unlock even more 'Cheats', so there's definitely some replay value here, if you like the game that is.

 The game is fairly alright, however, it sadly fails in the same way Devil May Cry 2 did... Guns solve everything. For instance, there aren't many extra moves available for purchase, and they aren't very useful either. Not that it matters, since you only get two melee weapones(Tojo Blades and Scimitars) while you get about 6 different guns(Dual Pistols, Shotgun, Crossbow, Electric Gun, Minigun and the secret Rifle), clearly hinting at how you should be fighting. Getting close and personal is usually quite unsafe, while you have a useful dodge, most enemies have a ton of super armor on their moves, so your melee attacks won't stop their incoming attacks. To aid to this is the fact that there's a ton, and I do mean a TON of flying enemy types. Heck, using the launcher+Jump-follow-up melee attacks is fairly wonky, if you are gonna pop-up an enemy it's better to just shoot at them.

 And this is a problem, because this game wants to focus on combat, and if it was about pressing buttons and timing them, it'd be alright, but at the end of the day all you'll be doing is holding the square button, to shoot, while dodging incoming attacks. This is how you're supposed to beat the final two bosses, which is a bit lame. That said, for whatever reason, this game feels better than DMC 2. I think they added the right amount of audiovisual feedback from guns to make them sorta gratifying to use

 For as bland as the game can be, I think it's alright if you liked the movie. Van Helsing's character model looks exactly like Hugh Jackman, impressive for its era, even though most of the game's graphics are quite lacking, with stiff animations and jumpy performance(particularly the cutscenes). But, hey, they managed to make a very playable tie-in, and, if anything, I can admire their ambition in aping Devil May Cry.
 5.5 out of 10