Recent history has taught us to treat anything Van Helsing-related like some gnarled necronomicon of wailing, unspeakable evils. Do not touch it, lest ye be overtaken by hackneyed gothic cliches and half-hearted performances from Hugh Jackman. And yeesh, does The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing ever sound cliched. I mean, the name conjures up visions of uninspired budgetware and snooze-worthy licensed cash-ins all by its lonesome. But against all odds, Van Helsing's incredible adventures aren't actually half bad. Sure, it’s shamelessly cut from Diablo's cloth and ultimately held back by simplicity and some curious design choices, but there's a surprising amount of intrigue, personality, and craft present in this action RPG (available for PC on Steam).
In it, you actually play as Abraham Van Helsing's son, a gruff slurry of cynicism and hat who's trying to carve out a legacy that'll rival good ol' legendary dad's. In this case, that means traveling to the faraway gothic-steampunk-noir European land of Borgovia and getting embroiled in a conflict between magic and science. There’s also a talking two-headed cow. He's basically the greatest. Also, he serves as a perfect example of the first thing that really surprised me about Van Helsing: it's actually quite funny in places. The biting banter between Van Helsing and his ghostly companion Katarina is especially fun, though far too many punchlines nosedive into insulting “Haha, girls are so vain and oblivious and like dumb girl things” territory. Still, Borgovia’s an imaginative world inhabited by characters who aren't just glistening mountains of loot in lifeless people costumes. That's a sadly rare thing in this genre.
Oh, don't get me wrong: you will find loot. Bottomless, Scrooge-McDuck-drowning oceans of the stuff. Fortunately, Katarina's around to lighten the load. Despite being a ghost and therefore technically, you know, intangible, she's quite good at collecting whatever excess pointy objects might gush from baddies' veins, keeping your pockets free for the good stuff. Yes, this essentially relegates her to the status of a pet from Torchlight, but she's a more capable – and reliably programmable – combatant. She starts off a little too squishy and death-prone, but her skill tree allows her to evolve into a powerful ranged buffer/support, damage-sponging tank, or something in between.
That, of course, brings us to the centerpiece of Van Helsing's meaty meal: hacking and its more refined, well-read cousin, slashing. Surprisingly, you can only wield two attack skills at once, both of which are assigned to your two main mouse buttons. There’s no hotbar. The twist, however, is that you essentially load up individual attacks before striking. Tap 1 for an explosive modifier, 2 for a stun, 3 for double damage, etc, then unleash your powered-up blow with a single click. Plus, I could switch back and forth between Van Helsing's two weapons of choice – a sword and a gun – at any given moment, adding an extra dimension to some already attention-devouring, loot-pinata thwacking. There is, in other words, a lot to juggle. Beasts, taste my blade; I call him Micromanagement.
The system actually kept me quite involved in most encounters, which was nice. I couldn't just zone out and click blindly, because I was responsible for making each attack count. For example, I found myself dealing with a writhing throng of skittering spiders and a few hulking minotaurs, and I realized that I really didn't want to have both sides sinking their fangs/clubs into me at once. So first I drew my gun and shot the minotaurs with tar-coated bullets, slowing their lumbering gait to a near standstill. Then I dealt with the fact that spiders are still jerks who hit really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard by switching to my sword’s chain lightning stuns. It was kind of like playing whack-a-mole, except everything had a billion twitchy legs and I was screaming the whole time.
Problem is, what I just described is an ideal scenario. Unfortunately, Van Helsing's combat has a bad habit of devolving into abjectly unmanageable chaos, due in large part to imprecise target selection, massive hordes of baddies, and interface options that only serve to make cluttered situations even more difficult to read. Not that hamstrung strategic possibilities really add much difficulty to the proceedings; they just make Van Helsing significantly less interesting. While enemy types run the gamut from amorphous ogres to spiders to steam-powered toy soldiers to even bigger spiders, there's not a lot of variety in basic attack patterns. Bosses, meanwhile, tend to enjoy playing Goliath to your ant-sized David, but often crumble after you figure out their one or two big weak points. The short version? You can lean pretty heavily on a few basic skills without much fear of being yanked out of your comfort zone.
The occasional exception to that rule comes in the form of city-protecting sequences that meld traditional ARPG tropes with tower-defense-like objectives and traps. These bits are patently brilliant, and it's kind of insane that nobody (at least, to my knowledge) crammed this potent chocolate-and-peanut-butter combo into a single cup before. It's not until Act 2 that they truly reach their potential, though, as Act 1 kind of functions as an overly-long tutorial for the rest of the game. It's not terrible or anything, but the setting, creature design, and battle scenarios improve significantly once things take a turn for the steampunk about five hours in.
Van Helsing has checked pretty much every other ARPG box, so you're probably expecting co-op. Well, let's start with the good news: it's in. You can gather a murder of Van Helsings (yes, that is the only proper designation for more than one Van Helsing) and slay monsterkind until it’s on the verge of extinction. Problem is, I really do mean that. Enemies don't respawn, so you can't farm for loot or just kick back and test your mettle against endless hordes. It's a bizarre design decision, but one that makes death during single-player far less of a slog. Between that, a relatively involved story, and Katarina's unflinching tenacity, Van Helsing gives the impression of being built with single-player in mind first and foremost. Multiplayer, meanwhile, is a distant second, bolstered only by a few tougher difficulty modes that at least make the journey less of a cakewalk.
But then, this is a $15 licensed game we're talking about, and goodness, it achieves a lot within those cramped confines. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing can't quite go toe-to-toe with heavyweights like Diablo III, Torchlight II, and Path of Exile, but – against all odds – it's still a worthwhile, fun, and occasionally innovative hack 'n' slash. So good job, Van Helsing. Way to defy expectations and not be Hugh Jackman this time. Now, everyone go beat it so we can start demanding an expansion focused exclusively on the two-headed cow.
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Verdict:
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is no second coming of Diablo II, but it's a fun, funny action-RPG with occasional glimmers of innovation. Sure, it's fairly derivative overall, simplistic compared to genre kingpins, and weak in the co-op department, but obvious care went into its craft. Miraculously miniscule price tag or not, Van Helsing is a damn (and probably damned) solid game.
