Van Helsing

"Movie renditions of games...never work out..."

...or maybe sometimes work out great. Van Helsing is an example of the typical "game bundled out without much thought so people would buy it because they saw the movie." Sure there were some decent games *cough cough lord of the rings, the return of the king cough* but this one just doesnt cut it. Not one bit.
Story
Your average kick-ass monster hunter from the age of gothic-ness going after the big bad Dracula with enough weapons to start their own war. It has the same plot from the movie, so...'nuff said. If i gave this a score it'll be the rating for the movie so I'll let you decide on that. Like the movie? Good. Didnt like it? Uhm...yeah see? But IMHO the movie was decent so I gave it a 7
Gameplay
Lets see now, this is where the game went sour. The 4 gameboy buttons are assigned to do various tasks. A would fire your weapon whether be a pistol, or crossbow. Thing is the lack of precision when firing these weapons made it hard to kill monsters, especially when they spawn for an infinite amount of times. The B button makes our vampire slaying hero swing his arms? in a way it looked like Hugh Jackman was playing the part of Wolverine again. Maybe its blades attached to the arms, i dont know because of the really bad visuals. The L button would allow Van to "grapple" onto another part of the game (ala rooftop/high ledge) this sounds great but when you only need to grapple to collect glyphs (which was usually once or twice through the levels.) which makes this rather useless. Lastly the R button made our hero jump. pretty self explanitory.
Levels would be comprised of collecting X items/ killing X monsters and fighting X bosses making game drap and rather repetitive. collecting more of an item would simply increase your life total by an amount. hmmm...rather cliche and boring... 3/10
Graphics/Visuals
Oh for the love of god...the graphics in this game are very horrible. character portraits are blurred, monsters seem to be missing appendages and are very indistinct. Hey was that the skeletons head? No? dang. For some reason Helsing would look like a cheap Neo clone. Maybe thats me...Maybe he sould stick with his wolverine job since most the time you'd be slashing your way through... 2/10
Music
not much to say her...the occassional grunt from Mr. Helsing, the roar of a monster...and some pitchy gothic music...seems better then the gameplay though. 4/10
Replay Value
Dont bother. Finish it once and never touch it again
Buy/Rent
If you love the movie that much then go ahead. Other then that dont buy it,

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 05/15/04