What brilliant material for a videogame. This years Lord Of The Rings for the videogame developers, Van Helsing features not only practically every “classic” monster you could think of; Hyde, Dracula, Banshees, Skeletons, Gargoyles etc., but also a mysterious hero armed with a cross-bow, shotgun, tojo blades and much more on a quest to rid the world of evil, fantastic. So why is it then that just hearing the title has me trembling in fear? Oh yes, it’s another movie licence…

            The title, developed by Sierra – of Half-Life fame, is an action/adventure the puts you right into the heart of the story, as Van Helsing himself. The game features the usual object-collecting puzzles that you would associate with the genre and also the usual bouts of fighting many, many enemies at once. There are 13 levels in total, each set in a different location with a cut-scene to advance the plot. The FMV is of incredibly low quality, filled with pop-up, bad animation and frankly stupid attempts at modelling hair. They also intrude on the gameplay far too much, and the result is often five minutes of play followed by an unnecessary cut-scene, followed by five minutes of play…

            The level design is appalling, with pre-rendered backgrounds you have NO control over the camera, which is daunting enough, but the design is so poor that the exits from an area are very rarely clear, and can have you stumbling around the edges looking for a path for longer than you spent wiping the floor with the enemies the room originally contained. The puzzles are, at best, unchallenging. In many cases you will either have realised what the objective is before even being presented with the puzzle, or stumble across the answer whilst attempting to fend off the generic, grey enemies. The combat is a mixed bag. Boss fights can be fun, but become inevitably easy after a short while spent learning the processes the enemy will go through, where as most of the basic enemies can be taken out by simply holding R1 and pressing your chosen attack button repeatedly.

            As mentioned above, the cut-scenes are far from the current standard, as it is with the in-game graphics too. The animation is lifeless and the characters appear as cardboard models. The enemies appear to have been ripped straight from Eternal Darkness, and down-graded graphically somewhat… and why are they all so grey??? The game has some shockingly jagged edges and terrible textures; with the kind of “stand-out” features we thought we’d seen the last of on the PSone. Remember that crate that was so obviously to be used as it stood out a mile? Well, now it’s back… only this time it’s a statue, or crucifix, or banana…