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The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing

This has to be one of my favorite games of the year so far. Not “The Game of the Year” but definitely on the top ten lists. I’m surprised that I failed to mention this game at all. With all the excitement surrounding E3 and next gen, some little games tend to get over looked.



Van Helsing is a top down action RPG in the style of Diablo and Torchlight. It is heavily loot based and has an awesome skill tree system, closer to Diablo 3 – very simplistic and intuitive. Although you only have access to one character, Van Helsing, you do have a companion for support and can choose to build a ranged or melee character depending on which skills you choose to unlock.



First of all, it’s cheap. Cost about $15 on Steam. Second it’s long- roughly 20+ hours of click-click-clicking action. Third, it’s loaded with content. Being a low budget game, you don’t have many character models to choose from except the default one main character which only has options between different styles of swords and guns. There is also a crafting system for enhancing weapons and armor.



The world is really gothic and steam punk inspired. I like the architecture of the buildings and characters designs of all the enemies. The games characters are somewhat inspired by what I would describe as classic movie monsters like werewolf men and gargoyle creatures. I think Diablo 3 and Torchlight took a more cartoony approach to their art design, but this game seems to have a more realistic look and feel, albeit fantasized.



There is also a tower defense meta game built into the game play. There are certain points in the story when you have to defend the hub area from enemy allies, so you need to use item drops to buy and build traps to keep out invaders during these tower defense moments. It’s actually kind of fun and I wish games like Diablo and Torchlight would implement it.



I really like dark themed worlds and characters, so this game suits my gaming tastes. If you’ve seen the Van Helsing movie then you get a pretty good idea about what the world might look and feels like, since it seems to be inspired by the same visual theme and story- save Eastern Europe village from evil monsters in gothic themed world. There is also a multi-player option, but I played solo. My only main issue is that the game does appear to become more difficult towards the end due to the enemy groups out numbering you from time to time. Especialliy if you don't roll your characters right with the appropriate skill points, but other than that, I recommend the game highly.

Update: Developers have announced a sequel! 

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