Reviews from

in the past


I was originally gonna play Cyborg Justice or something to pass the time tonight while doing laundry, but for some ungodly fucking reason I booted up Bram Stoker's Dracula on Sega CD. I assume Francis Ford Coppola launched a tactical psychokinetic nuke at me to lower my IQ points and make me play his crappy Sega CD game.

The entire concept of the game itself is pure comedy gold. Keanu Reeves just going around decking the shit out of bats and punting rats is utterly laughable, I don't remember him doing that stuff in the film. The hilarity eventually wears itself out though, because Keanu's jumps are really goddamn stiff. They feel like if you were trying to play a Belmont in ten times normal gravity, and you actually outrun the camera a bit while doing them making it go off-center, which results in you falling straight through the boards on the bridge in stage 1. The waves of small enemies are also just way too numerous for your limited move set, even after you discover your Tiger Kick that you can use via hitting Up+B (or C, I can't remember and I'm not looking it up).

After that initial blow to your funny bone from booting this game up it seriously wears out it's welcome very quickly. Every time you continue (which is a lot) you're gonna be seeing the same drawn out screen transitions, shitty looking cuts of the movie and hearing the same sustained notes of the soundtrack for so long you'll feel the brain juice leaking. I looked up the longplay on youtube and this game is apparently an hour long if you never use a continue, holy fucking christ. That's way too fucking long, I'd be feeling lobotomized by that point.

This version of the game used the power of the Sega CD to draw pre-rendered backgrounds that your sprite pretends to walk through while engaging in awful combat gameplay. There's also some typical FMVs thrown in for good measure, but no sign of any good gameplay to be found.

Seeing Keanu Reeves punch out waves of bats and flying books while squatting sure is hilarious. But only when I'm not playing this clunky snoozefest of a game.