The Haunted Hoard: Van Helsing (GBA)

You don’t have to look hard to find something that throws together classic movie monsters like Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein, but while those are usually lighthearted Halloween adventures, 2004’s Van Helsing film turned those creatures into prey. Working for the Holy Order as a force for exterminating supernatural beings, Van Helsing is made into an action hero who sounds like he’d be perfect for a video game adaptation. After all, the same familiar creatures he faced in the film slot nicely into video game boss roles, but developer Saffire was tasked with making two different versions of the game, one for home consoles of the time and another for the portable Game Boy Advance, and it seems they didn’t give the handheld game the attention it needed to capture that idea well.

 

Van Helsing on the Game Boy Advance does follow the events of the film and even uses digitized portraits of the characters for conversations so you can see Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale in a game whose sprites don’t have discernible facial features. This action game is presented in an isometric perspective and zoomed out a fair bit so you have a chance of seeing the foes you’re fighting meaning that simplified characters aren’t really a problem, although it does mean making out the monsters you’re up against a little hard. I’m unsure why the abundant skeletons all have a red orb floating around their midsections even though they do use it to attack so it has a purpose at least, there are small spear-wielding figures I’m guessing are the dwarves that serve Dracula in the film, and there are thin hovering robed figures with either tentacles or fire coming out of their head but utilize electrical attacks. Perhaps if I had seen the film more recently I could identify that unusual last monster, but there is at least a range of monsters and some like the giant statues do look good even though their attacks can seem to damage you even when you don’t seem to be hit by them.

Being a monster hunter, Van Helsing has a few tricks to defend himself with, but the one you’ll use most often is his close range blade swipe. Quick, unexciting, but effective, the slash often deals more damage than your other options, especially the wimpy pistol the game gives you at the start that often deals one damage compared to your blades that deal 6 or above. However, with some foes you can just pull the trigger repeatedly so they can’t ever approach due to the constant stream of bullets, the gun at least having that potential yet unexciting purpose. You do get to start with a grappling hook as well though, this able to pull in certain enemies for an immediate strike and they’re usually in range for a few hits before you need to run off to avoid being hurt yourself. Oftentimes in a battle though the enemy will be fairly close and probably accompanied by some other monsters who are closing in around you, so the grappling hook is a very situational tool. The crossbow you get a bit into the adventure at least has decent damage on top of being a range option, and while the game eventually gives you an electrical gun to fight with that deals much more damage, you have to stand in place to charge it and enemies closing in around you to hit you over and over is a common problem you’ll want to avoid.

 

Essentially, beyond some pestering with the crossbow and using the electric gun against foes designed around it, you’ll likely be running up, striking a foe with your knife as much as you deem safe, and retreating until you can repeat it, and Van Helsing’s combat never really gets more complex than that. Some bosses like the agile werewolf can be just bothered with crossbow bolts from a distance if you don’t want to try the knife tactic, but they’re both slow options and the combat is incredibly repetitive and unengaging since it rarely demands more from the player. Some foes like the teleporting brides of Dracula seem like they’d throw a wrench in those plans but you can swipe at them while teleporting to wear them down, and the bats that are flighty enough to potentially avoid your repeated swings but you don’t actually have a superior tactic to use against them and you have to hope you attacked in time for them to be in the path of your blade.

Battling monsters is pretty much all there is in Van Helsing on the GBA, so the fact it is so undercooked even when engaged with as the developers intended speaks for how little the game offers. The dangerous fights in Van Helsing aren’t really the ones where you and the enemy are trading blows, they’re often just instances where you get cornered and even your mostly useless jump won’t let you leap out of the area you’re boxed into. Enemies sometimes become briefly invincible when they’re attacking to force you to not just run in and slash until its over, and even bosses like Frankenstein’s Monster do things like becoming impervious to all but one attack method that you then just repeat until it’s over. On the other hand, some boss fights have health pick-ups scattered around abundantly to undermine what little difficulty they had, so it’s not like these fights shine either. Unfortunately, winning battles is often the only requirement for making progress. Sometimes you might find optional content such as the four Red Glyphs in a stage that can be collected for a health bar boost, but while some you just need to get to by using your grappling hook on the right ledge, others require you to clear the room of baddies. Beating foes can earn you Gold Reward Glyphs or Green Power Glyphs as well, but Power Glyphs just earn you more extra lives when the right amount is collected and the Reward Glyphs mostly just add to a secondary scoring system. Getting extra lives can at least make up for moments where you find yourself surrounded by too many monsters to handle, but collecting extras in Van Helsing is not much of a task and only really rewarding when it comes to the health boosts that help you avoid potential deaths.

 

While the comedic contributions of Van Helsing’s associate Friar Carl inject a little levity here and there, mostly you wander around a few screens of an area looking for the way forward while either being forced into a fight or having optional fights along the way. Most of the enemy types do get old before they’re finally swapped out, and in a game that takes less than two hours to complete it’s a little surprising the repetition sets in so hard. Possibly it’s just that most foes have some way to artificially extend the fight by not allowing you to continuously attack them, and when they come in small groupings where their numbers are replaced as soon as a monster goes down, the fights definitely manage to drag as they repeat the same sort of action you have experienced previously and will do so again in the next area.

THE VERDICT: Van Helsing on Game Boy Advance may bring together many familiar horror movie monsters for you to fight, but you’ll be fighting wave after wave of boring skeletons to get to them. Even when you reach a fight with something like the Wolfman or Frankenstein’s Monster, the fights are simple and sometimes only give you one way to hurt the monster, paring down an already simple fighting system where none of your options are satisfying to use. Most of Van Helsing is just fight after fight with little meaningful variation, some of your options practically useless. Exploration can net you some health upgrades, but since it leads to more tedious battles, it’s best to just push forward and get this short game over with as quickly as possible.

 

And so, I give Van Helsing for Game Boy Advance…

A TERRIBLE rating. Even though you’ll be mashing your attack options constantly without too much thought in Van Helsing, it’s a short experience you can push through despite it providing nothing interesting to latch onto along the way. A lot of its combat design is undone by the lack of options it gives you or isn’t really built well to begin with, enemies either cumbersome and relying on brief invincibility to have a chance or coming in a group that can close in and kill you without there being much recourse for being boxed in. It’s not too hard to avoid those situations once you know they can happen, but it’s hardly like doing so is the game asking for deliberate strategy during the constant repetitive combat. Monster types are rehashed way too often without new variables in the fight and even when something new joins the action it doesn’t require any real shifts in methodology unless you only have one allowed option for dealing damage to that enemy type. With so many fights cut from a similar cloth you can push through, the action slow but the overall game length still very short so it can only be stretched so far.

 

Greater enemy variety, fights that require some more thought to them beyond when it’s safe to run in and slash, and some gameplay moments that maybe made better use of the grappling hook so it’s not constant combat could have pulled Van Helsing on Game Boy Advance up above its awful offerings, but Saffire putting its eggs in the console game basket probably would be the right decision considering the time they had to work on both projects. Both the GBA version and the PS2/Xbox versions would come out a day before the film to capitalize on interest in it. Saffire stated they started working on the GBA game in November 2003 and with a release date May 6th 2004 they do seem like they had little time to manage this smaller project, especially with some of that time devoted to making 3D models they’d convert into 2D sprites that didn’t end up looking very good anyway. A rushed licensed movie game that turns out awful isn’t an unfamiliar thing sadly, meaning Van Helsing’s GBA game is not only terrible, it is unexceptionally so.