The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing Review
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The long game, though, isn't quite as good as the low-level clicking. With only one class available, Van Helsing's skill trees have to cover a wide variety of play styles, which mean that they lack the focused flavour you get with games like Diablo or Torchlight. They're a bit of a mess, too, with a variety of very similar sounding abilities sprawled awkwardly across a series of pages, while the control scheme seems intent on having you ignore the regular sweep of hot key load-outs as much as possible in favour of picking one or two core attacks to focus on and then tweaking them with a series of power-ups.
These power-ups are triggered by cashing in rage, which you build by dealing damage. The system allows you to take your basic area of attack fire spell, say, and turn it into something that burns longer or reaches further, perhaps, or to fiddle with the way your energy beam works. But if you love those glissando moments as you run your finger across the number keys when cornered and then sit back to watch the fireworks, Van Helsing's not really interested in the same things. Skill-swapping via the F keys is more than possible, but the focus of the system clearly lies elsewhere. This is a nice point of differentiation, but chances are you'll play through most of the game leaning on a couple of skills, levelled to the max. It seems like a waste.
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Would I play a sequel? Yes, most likely. Van Helsing isn't a polished game, or even a particularly thoughtful one for most of its campaign, but it has scrappy charm and schlocky character, and it benefits from leaning on one of those design templates that is ultimately really, really difficult to screw up too badly.
