The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing has seen releases on several platforms over the past year or so. This is actually my second experience with the game, the first being with the PC edition through Steam. But just how does the new Xbox One version hold up, and does the game offer up enough fun to earn a recommendation, especially at a time when there are so many great games to choose from?

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is a downloadable title that –at the time of this writing– is currently free through the Games With Gold promotion. First off, this is some great marketing for the game as I feel that releasing during the holiday season would have doomed the title to relative obscurity.  The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is and action adventure RPG that is played from the top-down perspective. It works much in the same way that Diablo 3 does, although not nearly as impressive on any scale. Then again,  The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing knows it’s place –download only– and does its best to provide some button mashing fun under the guise of some classic literary lore.

You play as the son of Van Helsing from the original Bram Stoker story, but the twist here is that you have been paired with an AI compatriot in the form of the ghostly Katarina. This means that unlike Diablo and the like, you are never taking on the hordes of the underworld on your own. This adds a bit of fun to the adventure as not only can Katarina handle herself, the relationship between the two characters is pretty darn enjoyable. After the game tosses you into the starting town –after a pretty terribly written intro– things play out in pretty standard fare. You wander around looking for NPCs with the obligatory exclamation icon above there heads to take on missions that advance the story. It’s all pretty cut-and-paste, but it works well enough in the context of the game. Unfortunately,  The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing just doesn’t have that engaging of a story, in fact, odds are you are going to pretty much ignore what amounts to someones first run as a D&D Dungeon Master.

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing works pretty well. As a PC player, it was a little jarring to get comfortable with a controller over the more intuitive PC keyboard. With an action RPG of this nature, and so much going on, your fingers are going to get a workout as ever single button on the controller is going to be used. Van Helsing can switch on the fly between melee and distance attacks. As you progress you will pick up loot from slain enemies and can find new weapons to buff up your character. Drops are all randomized, but if you play the game on casual mode these drops will of course be much better early on. If you have played a game of this nature in the past, I’d suggest you skip the easy settings and get right into the advanced action. Attacking and spell-casting work fin, but chances are you are going to be frustrated with the slow speed of your attacks, even when you do upgrade and find weapons with quicker attack speeds. One major isue that seems to plague this release is using the left trigger to activate things within the game world. There were so many times where the action prompt would display and it would take me multiple presses of the trigger to get the game to recognize it. Most notably is when you reach an end of level portal and will hit the trigger over and over until the game registers the press. Funny enough, the screen will acknowledge that you pressed the trigger, but it takes the game some extra time to process it.

This leads into another major problem with The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, and that’s the painfully long loading times. For a download only title the load times feel worse than an early PS1 era game. Yes, once an area loads you won’t see another loading screen while you play it, it’s just annoying how long it takes getting into whatever area to jump into. While this is an issue, the game does make up for it by offering up some pretty impressive battles. The enemies in The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing are pretty fantastic, taking from ancient European mythology, something that is pretty foreign to us in the West. Since there are two of you in play at all times, enemy encounters can get downright massive. It’s not uncommon to find yourself lost in the action, as dozens upon dozens of enemies surround you. Another really engaging aspect of the game is the boss battles that you will come across. You’ll often face of against multiple bosses at once, each being pretty impressive and match the games steampunk like atheistic. The story plays well in this respect as there is all sorts of experimentation being done on classic monsters to really keeping going just to see what’s next.  Not only that, but the game also throws non-traditional bosses that require you to use you head to tackle.

Graphically,  The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing looks good. It’s not going to knock you out, but the world that the game creates is a lot of fun to explore. The game does sometimes have a number of issues with stuttering here and there, but it was never enough to really frustrate me. This being a console means that stability issues have been ironed out when compared to the PC release. Animations are all great and Van Helsing will change along with the armor, weapons, and accessories that you outfit him with. Enemy models are all well done and really help set the overall mood of the game, without being too dark and gritty. Yes, you are dealing with monsters and the like, but the steampunk styling keeps the game colorful and light.

You’ll be able to upgrade both Van Helsing and Katarina, but the menu system is a game of trial and error. Nothing is laid out for you in an easy to digest manner, even if you have experience with these types of games. I found out completely by accident after playing for a while that I could map other unlocked abilities to various buttons, as the game never clearly explains this. I also really buffed some of my abilities without knowing that there were other traits, tricks, and auras that the game really requires you use and upgrade to get through later levels. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing really does just toss you into the deep end and asks you to learn to swim really quick. While this can work to those experience to these type of games, newbies are going to feel really overwhelmed even in the early parts of this adventure.

I also need to note that the basic controls in the game feel very old fashioned. You can only do one major thing at a time while playing The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing. Movement works fine, and attacking works fine, but just don’t expect to be able to do both at the same time. This makes battles, especially those with tons of enemies, more difficult than they need to be. The game also allows you to target in all eight direction via the control stick, it often feels like the game wants to snap on to the four cardinal directions. There were times where I had the control stick pushed to 1:30, but the character would jump between 12 and 3 from time to time. Even more egregious, and something that you may not be able to deal with, is that the targeting of enemies in completely hit or miss. I’m not talking about the hit boxes –those work fine– but there is no clear way to target anything. You are going to be pushing the control stick in a general direction and hoping that you can contact. This is incredibly aggravating when using melee weapons as you are going to miss more often than note, especially when there are so many enemies on screen that you can’t tell what’s going on.

Still, there is a good deal of enjoyment to be had, as long as you don’t come into this one expecting something as well put together as Diablo. But if you are looking for something a little different The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing may be right up your ally. The game is $14.99 and at that price point it’s just straddling the line of being a recommendation, but since the game is free to Gold users during the month of December, you really can’t pass it up. At the end of the day The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is a mixed bag of a game. There was real potential here, but the game just always comes up a bit short just when it starts to impress.

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J. Luis

J. Luis is the current Editor-In-Chief here at GAMbIT. With a background in investigative journalism his work encompasses the pop-culture spectrum here, but he also works in the political spectrum for other organizations.

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