Van Helsing - More Hideous Than A Vampire

24/10/24

I do my best to try and not be a film snob, but I’m always on the hunt for the ‘best’ in film. I count classics like Seven Samurai, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Empire Strikes back as some of my favorite films of all time. But sometimes… man, sometimes I just love me some objectively stupid trash. Kung-Pow, Now You See Me, and one of the most defining films of my childhood, Van Helsing. The film that probably made me a little bisexual, gave me a deep love of werewolves, and an adoration of ridiculous CGI monsters beating the crap out of each other. Sad to say, its Game Boy Advance adaptation doesn’t inspire any of that pre-adolescent fervor in me - or really any positive emotions to speak of.

I am not going to mince words. There are few things more horrifying to me, in my research as to what games I’ll tackle next, finding a licensed game that was released on multiple consoles, scrolling down to its reception table, and being greeted with something like this.

That *never* bodes well, now does it? If I’m seeing a game in the 50s, or 60s, on Metacritic, perhaps the poor reviews just come from not looking at the game in the best light, or certain elements not meshing with certain tastes. When I see a game like Van Helsing with a score in the low 30s? I *know* I’m not in for a good time. And like clockwork, a good time was not had at all. And even though I tried, tried, tried oh-so-hard not to let the preconceptions birthed by it’s Metacritic score bother me… well, it’s in the low 30s, I’m not made of stone. And surprise surprise… Van Helsing isn’t good. In fact, I’d go so far to say it’s not mediocre. Hell, it’s *atrocious*, struggling, and frequently outright fumbling, with pretty much every element that’s thrown into play.

Van Helsing’s Game Boy Advance outing follows the film to a T, rapidly moving the action from set piece to set piece, with nary a minute to soak in the old-school vibes that make the film so damn fun to me. Seriously, this game, mostly owing to its short length, is incredibly fast-paced in terms of narrative progression. Anything that isn’t a major set piece from the film is cut entirely, with the only downtime this game has running from linear area to linear area. Seriously, it’s amazing that after actually including the action-light opening scenes of the film in France and the Vatican, you go from arriving in Transylvania to hitting Dracula’s castle in… fifteen minutes? Insane. In fact, this game is so short, it would probably take longer to actually watch the damn 130 minute film then beat this bite-sized little bogie - actually, almost certainly, considering the game clocks in between an hour or two even if you struggle with the more annoying elements of the game.

The game simply has no variety to it, whatsoever; you’ll be killing monsters with incredibly simplistic combat, running to the next room, maybe fighting a boss and engaging in some atrocious platforming, if you can call it even that. That’s… pretty much it. It’s linear, it’s short, that’s the bottom line. The sole ‘optional’ element of this game is the collection of four emblem fragments in each level, which upon collecting all four will raise your max HP. I have optional in air quotes because if you’re foolish enough to just not grab these, you’ll be in a world of hurt dealing with some of the more frustrating, late-game enemies.

I’ve said it with so many games at this point, but this is endemic of the low-quality licensed trash that was everywhere in this era of gaming. It’s certainly not the worst licensed game I’ve ever played, but man, I can not recommend Van Helsing at all or to anyone.

Combat, making up the nigh majority of the game, is incredibly basic; Van Helsing is armed with three major form of weaponry - melee saw-like blades, varying forms of ranged projectiles like pistols or crossbows, and a grappling hook he can use to latch onto enemies to launch directly to them. Melee combat is just a button-spamming fiesta, with most non-boss foes weak enough that you don’t really need to maneuver about them to avoid damage. Certain enemies, however, will heavily counter melee strikes, creating the need to engage in the game’s ranged combat. Garbed with guns and crossbows, Helsing is arguably more dangerous at range, being able to rapidly pepper with his weaker pistols, or use more well-aimed, charged shots with his crossbows. Honestly, you can get through a pretty decent percentage of this game just spamming Helsing’s pistols, as nothing is really bulky enough to stand up to too much punishment - in fact, certain enemies will just automatically devastate Helsing if he engages them in melee combat. In one truly atrocious example, there are enemies that’ll attack in a circular pattern upon Helsing being in range - if this happens with you next to a wall, you can actually get pinned and have your entire health bar eviscerated with nary a thing you can do about it… so, yeah, if you can, keeping your range can help your personal sanity, too. Finally, there’s the grappling hook, the sole ability that has both combat and ‘platforming’ usage. Frankly, whilst it looks mildly cool to grapple Helsing over to an enemy, the majority of times it just ended up getting me hit regardless, and I was far better off just spamming the saw-blades or filling it up with lead. Perhaps the most positive thing I can say about this game as a whole is that the combat functions - usually -

Honestly, despite combat being, well, pretty much nearly everything in this game, a decent chunk of it is just skippable. Enemies aren’t too hard to juke, and if you can get around them, just keep running from room to room. Occasionally exceptions will arise, as the game will seal you into a room until you kill everything, and the game’s main collectible - tokens to raise your health pool - will sometimes require rooms to be cleared to obtain them. But otherwise? With how quickly - and how stupidly - some enemies can kill Van Helsing, it’s a much better idea to avoid what you can and just get through alive as quickly as possible. Plus, the combat itself is so bland and basic that anyone not scared off by the game mere minutes in will probably find themselves speedrunning encounters to get through the whole package as quickly as possible. Just don’t forget to try and seek out those emblem pieces - seriously, it’ll turn this from an hour-long slog into something you’d go from probably not, to certainly not finishing!

Thankfully, dying and losing all your lives isn’t a literal death sentence, as it’ll just boot you back to the start of the game; the idea of actually having to write down the long-ass passwords the game throws at you (yes, this is a late GBA game that still used passwords, and shitty ones at that) made me want to cry. Better yet, the game is only an hour long, so if for whatever reason after all this dragging you still want to play this game, stick with it and you won’t even have to worry about the passwords.

As the game wears on, the game ups the difficulty by throwing more and more enemies at you, which after no more than four or five foes begins to dramatically kill the game’s already shaky frame rate. Thankfully, the action in this game is glacial enough that this usually won’t make the experience any worse than it already is, with the exception of any encounter with Dracula’s Brood, which explodes upon contact and utterly devastates Van Helsing’s usually minute health bar, and with how common - and nigh infinitely respawning they are - already turns the dismal experience of Van Helsing into true nightmare fuel. As a whole, the game already has one of those very laggy, loose game feels, so throwing some nasty lag alongside isn’t helping anything.

I also feel, nay, it is my duty, to bring attention to the fact that Van Helsing may feature some of the most atrocious ‘platforming’ I’ve ever seen in a game. Now, I know this is a game where you spend most of your time slapping supernatural creatures around, but in the rare moments it asks you to jump here and there, good god does it feel bad. Once you’re in the air, you’ve got no control over Helsing, and whilst the game frequently encourages you to use the grappling hook to climb ledges, I constantly found it just not working, leaving me bemused as to wether I needed to try again or I really did have to make genuinely awful-feeling jumps to progress. Honestly, it’s not even a major element of the game but it made such a negative impression on me I just had to write a whole paragraph to wash the anger out of me.

To make matters worse, Van Helsing is also an exceptionally ugly game, featuring everyone’s favorite licensed move tie-in feature: incredibly bitcruncher images of actors! Sadly, this seems to be the sole version of Van Helsing where I’m not actively lusting over Hugh Jackman. I jest, but they’re not that bad - it’s just something that always makes me laugh. Otherwise, it’s pretty much an artistic wasteland. Enemies, NPCs, bosses, hell, even the environment itself is so blurry and poorly animated that you’re really only looking at vague impressions of what they are. I’m sure that’s *technically* Van Helsing, but if I hadn’t seen the movie? Who’s to say. It’s genuinely amongst the ugliest games available on the GBA, and minus the genuine hilarity that frequently goes hand-in-hand with the less beautiful titles on the console, it’s just sad.

I really did try to not let my preconceptions formed by this game’s abysmal scores to dictate my opinions, but the fact of the matter is no matter how you approach it, Van Helsing is a truly atrocious game. It certainly functions, and didn’t put me to sleep like some of the very worst I’ve played, but beyond those basic criteria, there’s almost nothing good I have to say about this game. It’s boring, it’s incredibly ugly to look at, it’s bafflingly short yet frustrating enough to engage in that it feels far too long at the same time. I wish I could laugh, but even the minute time I spent in Van Helsing’s world, coupled with how much I love this stupid, stupid movie, bummed me out with just how universally subpar it is. Turn back, let ye be subject to eternal (read: hour-long) torment.

Thanks so much for reading my review of Van Helsing! I need to go have a lie down now. As always, you can email me at mgeorge7003@hotmail.com, find me over on Twitter @Lemmy7003, and watch me streaming on twitch under GameBoyAbyss. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time!