The Haunted Hoard: Dracula: Resurrection (PC)

While many video games feature the legendary vampire Count Dracula, very few depictions of him position him as the same exact character we first met back in Bram Stoker’s novel. With so many games happily changing the character to fit their game world, it comes as a shock that Dracula: Resurrection not only begins with a faithful reproduction of the final scene of the book as its opening cutscene, but it also tries to serve as a direct sequel to the events of the original Dracula story.

 

Several years after Dracula’s defeat, Mina Harker, who was once the vampire’s thrall, finds herself compelled to go to his castle in Transylvania, her husband Jonathan heading out to try and save her before the mysteriously resurrected vampire can enslave her mind once more. The path to Dracula’s castle is treacherous, with many things standing in your way as you play Jonathan’s part in what little story there is to this point and click adventure game. Despite the title billing this as Dracula’s resurrection, it’s never explained how he came back to life, he just appears during the plot and oddly enough, he isn’t truly dealt with in the story either. Dracula: Resurrection seems deliberately designed as a part of a series rather than as a game that is meant to stand on its own, as even when you do complete the story, it mostly seems like the plot is setting up for a future conflict with Dracula. This game does have a climax where something is achieved, but deferring any dramatic confrontation with the main villain until a future game makes this experience feel somewhat incomplete, and considering its length, it could have certainly done with beefing up the experience with the resolution that is bound to be found instead in the follow up titles. The adventure you do take in this title can at times feel like a bit of a lonely journey, Jonathan wandering around empty areas as the same sound effects play between them like creaking wood and odd shuffling. It gives the game a sense of foreboding as you travel the mostly lifeless road to rescuing Mina, but it’s not quite atmospheric since the game never really settles into a tone that matches it. The game almost feels like it wishes it could be a movie instead of a video game, with long animated action scenes you have no influence on. These flashy visuals can’t help the minimal substance though, but it does at least make the ride a touch more exciting than it otherwise would have been.

It seems like a lot more effort went into character models than story elements, as, for the time, the human character have impressive 3D sculpting. The characters are smooth like action figures, but compared to the pointy designs of console game characters at the time, they do look somewhat impressive, especially when the game shows broken blood vessels or hair with some texture to it on the faces of characters when the camera cuts in close. Perhaps a bit too enamored with their work on the visuals, the developers also have the characters talk in an incredibly animated fashion, gesticulating all around as the camera swaps angles constantly to show new perspectives on the exaggerated movements. It makes the game feel somewhat cheesy, but it must be somewhat intentional considering the many goofy character designs given to unusual characters.

 

As a point and click adventure game, most of your time will be spent collecting items for your inventory and finding where they can be used to advance the game. There are a few large hub areas in the game, those being the snowy trail leading towards Dracula’s castle, and underground tunnel between them, and the castle itself, and in all of them you will spend much of your time wandering about looking for things that stick out as abnormal for you to interact with. Your mouse cursor changes appropriately when it hovers over an object of interest, telling you if a special item needs to be used or if something can’t be interacted with at the time. In the early parts of the game, the puzzles don’t push you too hard, as most objects will have a pretty apparent use after you’ve found them. If they are a bit less obvious, the game does give you two old people you can consult for information that is necessary to continue, and later on, they add a third old person to consult to keep up the interaction angle once you’ve entered Dracula’s castle. A few of Dracula’s servants stand in your way as well, but interaction with them is mostly limited to them body blocking you until you find out what will get them out of the way. The puzzles gradually get more interesting and challenging as the game continues, with some of the late game ones requiring you to figure out how multiple things connect and the meanings behind clues and odd objects whose uses aren’t immediately apparent. The progression curve on the puzzles feels strong enough even though it never gets too far that they would really push you to get imaginative. There are some moments that require you to find things you might not think you could interact with at first, but that’s more an issue with the movement in the game than the puzzle designs.

Dracula: Resurrections greatest challenge is probably getting around, and while some of that is fairly earned through puzzles that gate progress, a lot of it comes from the odd way you move from area to area. Each area in the game is a static image that your character will stand in one place and look around in. You cannot move freely, but instead need to move your cursor around and find where it turns into an arrow that will allow you to progress to the indicated area. Sometimes it’s intuitive to figure out where the game wants you to point, but other times the game has its own ideas about how you can navigate about an area, with perhaps one of the worst examples being in your room at the inn early in the game. There is a puzzle involving a dresser you can push and stand on in there, and moving about to get at the right angle to push it is easy enough, but after that, there is a lot of odd micromanaging of your movement whereas most areas are about sweeping jumps from one obvious area to another. Getting up onto the dresser or off it requires you to find the point your character is comfortable doing so, and there’s quite a bit of real estate on the screen to search for this sweet spot. Wide open areas can face this problem as well, as something like a foyer has no obvious travel path so you must guess how the game wants you to walk through it. This complicates puzzles a bit as you have to search about for not only the right area to stand to complete it, but then have to move your mouse around to find the small area of interest that will allow you to interact with the objects needed to complete it. The same issue with the more open areas crop up here, as in areas like a library where the entire wall full of books could potentially contain a useful item, searching the length of it is dependent on your stiff movement and what areas are available for inspection from each position.

 

While movement is an occasional nuisance, the progression is perhaps the most interesting part of Dracula: Resurrection. The developers definitely put their efforts into presentation, and while the visuals are somewhat dated, it at least gives you an incentive to push forward in anticipation of reaching Dracula’s castle. Many of the puzzles are designed to feel like you’re uncovering some secret by figuring them out and revealing whatever is needed to continue the push to save Mina Harker. It’s not incredibly exciting, but it keeps a brisk pace so that its shortcomings are hard to dwell on, and a problem like navigation only lasts until you know the room well enough to find the arrows the next time you might drop by.

THE VERDICT: Perhaps it was not feasible at the time, but Dracula: Resurrection really should have been combined with its sequel into a singular, more robust title. As it stands, this game moves at a quick pace and connects its moments of movie-like presentation with some decent item puzzles, but too much effort was put into the visuals rather than the gameplay. Stiff movement makes it a bother to look around for the parts of the puzzle you need to progress, and while things gradually get more difficult appropriately, the plot wraps up without answering many of the big questions, leaving the player who was satisfied seeing the path open up due to their problem solving acumen suddenly denied the ultimate reward for all their efforts.

 

And so, I give Dracula: Resurrection for PC…

A BAD rating. Before a deeper explanation, a disclaimer is in order, that being you should not buy the version of this available on Steam, as it seems riddled with issues as it is a poorly done port of this game’s mobile equivalent. The original release or the one on GOG.com will let you play the game properly, but even on GOG.com it’s quite wisely only sold as part of a trilogy to avoid that emptiness you’ll likely feel through the inconclusive end of this game. Some series do delay dealing with their main villain until a later title, but the protagonist and antagonist usually confront each other at some point before the end of the first installment, whereas here the closest they really get is Jonathan getting upset over a letter Dracula wrote to taunt him. We end up with a game that is named for Dracula where the titular character hardly puts in an appearance, and what other small antagonists exist hardly feel like the meaningful opposition needed to serve as satisfying stopgaps until the future major conflict. Up until its abrupt conclusion though, Dracula: Resurrection manages some decent build-up with the slow but earned progression to the castle. Sadly, the puzzle design isn’t enough to support the experience alone, and since the only thing the game has left to fall back on besides that is its story, only the initial intrigue of wanting to understand the situation sustains it, something the game doesn’t fully deliver on.

 

Dracula: Resurrection was brought to life before it was truly ready to make its mark. As part of a larger title, it could have been a good start to the affair, but the puzzles never push to the heights you’d expect of a game’s end and the story ends before it’s been resolved. With even just an hour more of content to explore and give you some true closure, Dracula: Resurrection could have been more than just interesting but wasted build-up.