The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing Preview

To give the game it’s full name, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing takes a look at that vampire hunter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula who gained popular awareness thanks to the rather awful 2004 film Van Helsing. Neocore Games’ Van Helsing game, however, follows the exploits of a young  Van Helsing – the son of that aforementioned vampire hunter, beast slayer and woman swooner.

In following the pursuits of Van Helsing Jr, Neocore can tailor their story and adventure to include pretty much anything they like, without having to sully the reputation and following that Mr Helsing Senior has. It’s a smart move really, as we all know that fans of anything considered cult can be more than a little bit defensive about their IPs.

Releasing on PC and Xbox Live Arcade, Neocore’s self published title plays out as a live-action RPG, requiring you kit your Van Helsing up for each situation and then wade in taking out foes. You’ll be able to equip the usual armour enhancements – including a cape and hat, as well as armour and boots – but you can also equip two sets of weapons that can be interchanged on the fly in combat. Equipping guns, in my case dual pistols, means you can fire off rounds very quickly to keep smaller swarms at bay – or big enemies – and then switching to a sword means you can deal some big damage in close combat situations. It’s this quick change ability that adds tactical play to how you dal with different enemy types and different level situations where level design could bottleneck a large stream of opponents your way.

You also have magic that you can fire off at opponents, each with varying affects – even if it’s under the same elemental group. These varying affects come from the upgrade tech tree that’s integrated into the proceedings. As expected from any RPG worth it’s own weight, you can customise how you want your character to play and what moves you’d like to have at your disposal. All upgrades are purchased from ability points which are doled out as you level up, which comes about in the traditional way of slaying enemies and completing objectives.

In terms of how everything played out, honestly, it wasn’t as promising as Neocores concept – this may have been largely in part to due to playing it on the Xbox 360. As Van Helsing has an isometric view – with a camera you can’t alter – it automatically makes it feel awkward to play on a console, where that right thumbstick usually holds dominion over the power of camera angles. It also plays out in a similar fashion to Diablo games – with many of the team being avid Diablo fans – and so the live-action turn based combat jars somewhat with that instant feedback console mentality; I press a button, I want an instant reaction, not a time delay that leads to an action which then missess outright despite me being stood next to my target. It’s not the end of the world, or a game breaking mechanic, but it’s enough for me to have found it a somewhat uncomfortable playing experience.

Neocore have clearly been ambitious in the development of The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing – especially as they plan on releasing it as a trilogy of three standalone games. Visually it’s impressive, and creature design is as wild and wonderful as you’d expect it to be; and it’s also managed to bring a decent mix of weapons and magic for you to use. It does however have it’s downsides, that can still easily be solved by the time it releases, such as slightly repetitive gameplay and that lack of pleasant feedback I mentioned on the console version. It definitely seems like a game more suited for PC play, and I’m sure that even if nothing changes between now and it’s launch it’ll garner a lot of attention from those who are fans of vampires, werewolves and everything that The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing embodies.


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