Speaking of gameplay, Van Helsing’s will seem all too familiar to those of you who have played games like Devil May Cry. Van Helsing adds nothing new to the third-person action-horror genre, and will probably only be enjoyed by fans of the movie. This is a "shoot, shoot, pick up power-up and shoot some more" type of a game.

Van Helsing uses the same horrible fixed camera as Devil May Cry, which prohibits any control over the camera angles. It’s hard for me to believe that developers are still using fixed cameras in third-person games, as it’s not only annoying but tends to interfere with gameplay as well. I found myself getting stuck behind pillars and on other objects just because the camera angle was so bad. Many times, I couldn’t see where my character was. Thankfully Van Helsing does feature an auto-target button so you can lock onto those enemies that are out of camera range. To some gamers the fixed camera may be a small problem, but for others (like me) it’s a glaring problem and gets really ugly when someone who isn’t even on screen is shooting me.

Van Helsing features a pretty nice assortment of weapons to meet your monster hunting needs. You start out with dual pistols and two tojo blades (spinning saw blades). As you progress, you will acquire a shotgun, crossbow, twin swords and a powerful lightning gun. Pretty quickly you’ll discover which weapons are best for making mincemeat of specific monster types. The game’s arsenal also includes a very cool grappling gun that can pull Van Helsing out of the way of danger or can be used to reel in an enemy for a close range attack. With some practice you will discover there are some nice combos that can be pulled off by switching between melee and ranged weapons during attacks. Unfortunately, the boss battles are mostly forgettable button-mashing sessions followed by a cut-scene of the monster’s death. There are no blood effects in Van Helsing and it really seemed strange that when I chopped off a monster’s arm just above the elbow, he didn’t bleed one drop of blood. Maybe the blood and gore was reduced to keep the "Teen" rating, but there should have been an option to turn on the blood for us "post teens".

Van Helsing graphics are mostly unimpressive. The animated cut-scenes have a dark and grainy look to them; which could be said for the entire game. The environments are just too bland and are lacking in any details. Some may argue that the game is supposed to be dark and gritty to reflect the gothic feel of the movie. Well, at least the movie showed some blood. There are also some clipping issues that should have been fixed before this thing hit store shelves. Overall, Van Helsing wouldn’t win any beauty contests, it’s more like that plain-looking neighbor girl you were afraid to admit you had a crush on.

Well, at least the audio is well done in this game. The soundtrack is very fitting for the gothic settings, the actor voice-overs are fairly good and the weapons all sound, as they should.

Van Helsing feels like just another game that was rushed through development so it could be released about the same time as the movie it was based on. Proof of this theory is that the game can be completed in about three and a half hours by the average gamer. After completing the game on normal difficulty, you will unlock the hard difficulty level. This will allow you to play through the entire game again with all the weapons and moves you unlocked the first time around. So you may be able to squeeze seven to eight hours of gameplay out of this title if you play through it twice. Even if this game had been a budget priced title I would still have felt like it was over priced because of its extreme brevity.

In the end, I can only recommend this game for only the most die-hard fans of the Van Helsing movie, with the caveat that they wait until this game hits the bargain bins. I really don’t expect it will be long until the bargain bins are overflowing with copies of the Van Helsing video game.