Finished this in PCSX2 - started with no mods and finished with upscaled textures. Played on normal.

I don't have many positives to say about this game. To be honest, the studio's achievement is remarkable considering their context, but the game isn't very good.

The graphics and ambientation are the best part in my opinion. Both Van Helsing and the monsters look cool, the game is filled with fog and a dark atmosphere, and there are a lot of well known, well-modeled characters.

The problem is the game part of the game (lol). Although pretty short, it gets really repetitive rapidly. The combat is very simple, and quite bad - you can't really move Van Helsing intuitively, specially when dodging, as it feels the controls don't properly align with the camera. You are forced to lock into enemies so you can even hit them. There's also a dodge button, that either has no i-frames, or has too little of them at 60fps, since you can't dodge through attacks. The ranged combat allows for four types of weapons with differing fire rates and damage. The slower weapons do the most damage and most stagger, and are the only ones worth using in the late game due to the latter, otherwise enemies just stun lock you to death. You can cheese the mechanics because the fire rate gets reset when dodging, so if you hold the shoot button and dodge constantly, you can shoot twice as fast with the coil weapon, for example, turning most fights into a joke. The melee combat is cool and simple, but every time you hit an enemy, the camera zooms closer, so by the time you finish a combo, you can barely see your surroundings.

The bosses look cool, and are usually quite a difficulty bump, but even them are repetitive since you'll fight most of them more than twice. The music doesn't sync well with the combat, abruptly ending about 3 seconds after fights end. The voice acting is awful, and so are the animations.

It was a passable experience that doesn't overwelcome its stay.

basicamente devil may cry com uma tematica muito semelhante, a maior diferença na gameplay é o uso do gancho para puxar os inimigos mas nada muito inovador, também podemos farmar pontos trocando de sala para que no fim das fases podemos melhorar nossa vida e equipamentos o que será bem necessário já que os chefes podem ser meio complicados as vezes, historia para mim foi o fator mais interessante mas no fim o jogo em si é bem passavel, não é ruim e dá pra se divertir muito caso queira algo parecido com devil may cry

Innit weird how few direct DMC clones there are? Obviously stuff like GoW and Ninja Gaiden follow directly in the DMC lineage, but they very much do their own thing, and have oodles of clones attempting to imitate their style. Maybe it's just because early PS2 era was still a lot of figuring out 3D action games, but there's not a lot of games that seemed to set out to straight up steal Capcom's success.

Van Helsing is one of a few examples, and despite being pretty unmemorable (dropped after a few hours of play), it is a surprisingly attentive entry in the genre, with wistful dark whispery corridors and a bevy of survival horror inventory puzzles. It's cute! Even has a grappling hook, and Devil Trigger right off the bat, which is funny. Also you have to try and keep your hat on in fights, also funny. Neat little footnote!

To be honest, this would still have been an amazing stand-alone video game. If the movie didn't exist, this would have been the coolest ambitious PS2 hack-and-slash. I found myself wishing it would never end.

There are so many small details about this game that makes it so much more impressive than it has any right to be. It was the studio's second PS2 game, and only three years before becoming defunct. The game is Devil May Cry in Castlevania. It's bad-ass.

And the hat mechanic is awesome!

This is probably going to be the most random game on my profile. I played this game as a kid and I came back to it as an adult. I had a bone to pick with it. I remember liking it, but it was too hard for me to understand as an adult. As an adult, I beat it deathless.

It's a solid game for a movie-tie in and DMC clone. Being both of those things doesn't make it bad, but it doesn't make it remarkable either.

Those revolver sounds by the way are just... Chef's kiss. So good.

Score: 75

This is one of those childhood games I have a fondness for. Being one of the first mature interactive experiences I had ever laid my 8 year old eyes on, my best friend and I couldn't get over how cool it was. Along with Halo 2, Pac-Man World 2, and Fable, we stayed up throughout the night and played it on the floor of his childhood bedroom until the wee hours of the mourn.

Fast forward a year or so and I received my plunge into the world of mature, multifaceted games with the Xbox 360. Helsing in tow, said friend came over and to our surprise the game wouldn't work. Nor could we figure out how to plug in the XB original's controllers. How disappointed we were.

Eventually I picked this bad boy up for myself a few years ago and gave it a whirl. As to be expected, the same rich supernatural world I was so enamored with as a child, now looked like the cheap movie tie in DMC clone it really is. After reminiscing a bit I ended up putting the title down and that was that.

This third time however things proved different. I had seen mention of it among the retro community and seeing as how I've been getting back into gaming this past year I thought I'd give it one more go. Despite the previously stated realization still reigning true, this has that charming style and solid mechanical backing to make for an adequate ride. One that's repetitive, derivative and is the epitome of missed potential, but isn't a bad way to re-live a slice of the 6th gen.

As far as movie adaptations go, this one is fairly good but they certainly only did the bare minimum. I would have loved to see a wider array of locales, a more fleshed out story, or something like the Bite Helsing suffers serving more consequence than it did. The game is about as paint by numbers as it can get, but for me that's all it had to be. 5-8 Hours of no thrills bare knuckle hack and slashing, from the days when all you needed to be a AAA blockbuster was gameplay and a vague excuse for it.