For the past few years Eastern European developer Neocore Games has been releasing a series of excellent gothic horror PC action role-playing games, and I’ve been ignoring them. I blame Hugh Jackman.
Every time I saw the title The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing pop up on my list of Steam releases, the first image that came to my mind was not a Diablo-style action RPG with a lovely mixture of supernatural and mechanical flair. No, what I saw in my mind’s eye was this:
2004’s Van Helsing, starring Hugh Jackman’s hair and Kate Beckinsale’s bodice, apparently left a bad taste in my entire being. The subsequent video game release from Vivendi Universal did not help.
Thus when I see a promotional image like this…
…my mind immediately imagines Hugh Jackman under the goggles and bandanna and vetoes anything associated with it.
My mind has done me a great disservice.
Last week Neocore released The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut, compiling all three games in the series into one massive adventure. Six playable character classes taking on 50 hours of adventure alone or online with other players, daily and weekly quests, randomly-generated scenario maps and a level cap bumped up to 100 — it’s a pretty massive offering.
This is a game that does not shy away from completely flooding the player with different things to destroy, gifting them with entertaining way to annihilate them in the process. Within the first ten minutes of the adventure I’d encountered a gigantic horde of enemies, mowing them down neatly with explosives, my whirly machinegun buzz saw pet thing and my ever-present ghostly companion, Katarina.
With some of this fall’s most eagerly-anticipated titles arriving this week and the next, I might not get a lot of time to play through more of Van Helsing’s incredible adventures, but now that I know it’s both incredibly entertaining and 100 per cent Jackman-free I’m definitely down for more.
Comments
11 responses to “I Shouldn’t Have Waited So Long To Play The Incredible Adventures Of Van Helsing”
Woah man, why all the Jackman hate. Sure that movie wasn’t for everyone but some people really liked it.
Kotaku didn’t like him so must everyone else!
Agreed, I liked Jackman, liked Beckinsale’s bodice also. I’ve just overloaded on ARPGs lately with Diablo 3 and Path of Exile. Had hoped Final Cut would have made its way to consoles.
There’s some funny stuff about Beckinsale’s bodice in one of the interviews. When she was hanging upside down she kept falling out of them and Hugh would just keep looking down and say “sorry love, you’re out again”
I had fun. Not enough to go back and watch it again, but Wenham made me laugh and I’ve quoted “Actually, I’m a friar” more than once.
“But your oath, you’re a monk”
Yeah, I don’t get the hate either! I thought it was quite enjoyable … maybe I’m just out of touch.
It’s one of my go to movies.
The first game lies untouched in my huge Steaming pile of shame. 🙁
Grim dawn beats this and d3
I remember playing the first one for a little while (I think as part of a play-for-free weekend) and while it seemed like it had some interesting ideas, that gameplay / combat felt incredibility limited and shallow even in comparison to vanilla Diablo 3.
No thanks.