Van Helsing

Out of all of the movies that my son and I have gone to see this summer, I have to say that my favorite one was Van Helsing. Great action, great plot, and some cool monsters really made one heck of a good thrill ride in my opinion (which still doesn’t equal the cost of what you pay to get into a movie, but that conversation is for another time and another place). Well, as history and the entertainment industry has shown us over the years, whenever you have a movie that attracts attention, you’re bound to have a game that is based on the movie hit the shelves at the same time or soon thereafter. Van Helsing is no exception to that rule, but unfortunately I can’t say that I enjoyed the GBA title nearly as much as I did the flick. This unfortunately is another thing that entertainment history has taught us … good movies many times turn into ugly games.

The Van Helsing video game follows the movie plot closely, which is a good thing especially for those of us who have seen it and want to go and live the life of the monster hunter. Characters from the film are represented in the game, including Van’s Monk buddy and the Brides of Dracula (just to name a couple), and when dialogue pops up you get a nice little rez shot of their face. The game plays out basically as a top down scroller, similar to titles like Baldur’s Gate on GBA, so Van can move in a full roaming circle around the screen and even choose a couple of different directions to move in during parts of the game which helps to break up a “Go from A to B only” kind of feel … for a while. Ultimately, you have to get to point B anyways, as we all expected, but it at least gives you a little more to do (which didn’t turn out to be such a great thing after all).

Aside from the aforementioned items, I unfortunately didn’t find much else that I really liked about the game. The gameplay was extremely repetitive and got dull after about 15 minutes of playing. Van can get different weapons as he goes, like his circular saw Tojo blades, a crossbow, and even a lightning gun, but none of them made the game any more exciting for me personally since the title essentially is just a button mashing hack and slash from start to finish. The formula for Van Helsing is simple … enter a screen, beat up all of the bad guys that appear (which all seem to be the same thing over and over again), try to find and collect some hum drum health boosting item, move to next screen, repeat until you get to the boss and then get a pass code so you don’t have to torment yourself doing it over again. Definitely not anywhere near as exciting as the movie.

Another big issue that I had with the game is the atrocious collision detection that happened way too much to be a glitch. The most common enemy that you face in the game are skeletons with red exploding balls meshed somewhere in their ribcage pixels that will not only try to claw you, but will also hurl the ball in your direction or do this weird floating fire explosion thing. Sometimes I was close to them and didn’t get hit, and other times I was a good centimeter outside the blast radius and took damage. Hence, distance weapon is usually your best bet but either way you’ll probably get hit. This really got annoying after a while, but since health is dropped pretty constantly it shouldn’t be a life or death problem. This does get bad though when getting stuck between a couple of enemies, since Van will literally get knocked backwards and stop for a good one and a half seconds until he moves again, which may result in frustrating death if you get sandwiched in between a couple of the respawning denizens of Dracula. 

Speaking of death, there is also no way to save or get a passcode mid game. Instead, if you die (which probably won’t happen much), you get to go back and do the whole chain of screens over again for that stage that you were on (YAY!). Due to the fact that I really wasn’t enjoying running from one side of the screen to the other over and over and over and over again, this was really good motivation for me NOT to die so that I didn’t have to play the level over. Even during boss battles, there are plenty of health crucifixes lying around for you to pick up … so you should be OK. Still, a pet peeve of mine is not being able to stop when needed (plus having to have my wife yell at me for leaving paper with passcodes written all over the house), so I really didn’t care for this game and level design at all.

OK, so I didn’t like the game mechanics … but is it nice to look at? Well, no. I tried this in the GBA Player and was appalled at the blotchy and pixilated graphics, so I tossed it into the GBA to see if it got any better. Well, it was a little bit, but not enough to slate the burning sensation in my eyes from the TV. The backgrounds are repetitive just like the game, and objects won’t go transparent so unseen enemies sent me sliding across the screen on a couple of occasions. The coolest thing about Van is the fact that he switches hands when shooting his six shooters, but that certainly doesn’t make up for the small handful of repetitive and poorly animated monsters that appear constantly screen after screen after screen. The sound faired a little better, but also only consisted of whooshing and clanging sounds of Van’s weapon and a repetitive (and silly sounding) scream that can be heard when the game starts, and when you get enough red crucifixes, and … well, you get the idea.

Overall, we can toss Van Helsing into that “bad game based on a movie” pile that so many of us have experienced before. I think that the movie was great, and I really think it would be exciting to play a game inspired by it, but this one unfortunately didn’t cut it for me. Just for kicks, since my son loved the movie as well, I figured I’d let him give it a shot to do the “10 year old gamer” test. Well, after 15 minutes I noticed Fire Emblem music playing once more, and when I asked him if he liked the game and why he had quit, he just said “Got bored” and went on to killing knights or wizards or whatever. Well, there you have it … if you just have to have a Van Helsing game to take with you, then I guess this is your only option, but if not then save your money.   

Gameplay: 3.0
Well, if my A button isn’t broken yet, then props go to Nintendo. The game is a repetitive button masher that requires a shade more intelligence than a potted fern to operate, and players can expect to just keep going through the same thing over and over again screen after screen, level after level, with a few new weapon upgrades that really won’t add any excitement. The collision detection is horrible, and the game loses any fun value after about the first 15 minutes.

Graphics: 3.1
I woke up last night in a cold sweat. My wife sits up and nervously asked me what was wrong. I told her that a blob was chasing me with a broken outline on it and I was scared. She calmly reassured me that it was only what I had seen in the Van Helsing game on the GBA Player and to go back to bed, since soon the review would be done and it would be all over. OK, all joking aside, the graphics were very rough and not well animated and contained dull and boring backgrounds that only had a few colors to them. The monsters themselves were repetitive and choppy. The rezzed in pics of the movie characters were neat, but not enough to save the game.

Sound: 3.5
The music wasn’t horrible, but consisted of some (you guessed it) looped and repeating tracks of creepy halloween style music. Most of the other stuff is basically popping noises from Van’s guns or the whooshing of a bladed weapon, but after a few minutes you probably won’t pay much attention to it. Also, the blob in my nightmare was accompanied by a generic scream that is also found throughout the game.

Difficulty: Easy
Even despite the bad collision detection and the fact that Van seems to take forever to recover from a hit, you should be able to run through this game in a few hours tops. After that, you probably won’t want to go back and do it again.

Concept: 3.4
Why … why must we take good movies and make bad games out of them? Van Helsing was a great flick that had great potential of being a terrific game … but this just isn’t it kids. Sorry.

Overall: 3.2

Well, there’s not too much I can say here that hasn’t already been said. Basically, Van Helsing is a dull and repetitive game that probably won’t be fun for 90% of you after a few minutes, and you’ll probably wind up getting annoyed that you bought it after running through it and then not wanting to play it again. If you just HAVE to buy it anyway, I’ll go ahead and give you an “I told you so” and please hang onto the receipt.