The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II Preview

Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s John Walker has penned a preview for The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II based on some hands-on time with Neocore’s action-rpg. Impressions seems to be mostly positive, though the game’s dialogue doesn’t come out well from this write-up:

If the level I’ve played is indicative of the general tone of the next game, I think they may have really found their groove. As someone who mostly can’t stand tower defence, I’m really impressed with how it implemented ideas from it into the level, while never making it feel overt. Although despite this, and despite the size of the area, it did become a touch repetitive by the end of its hour and a half or so.

There’s a great variety of enemy types this time a broad range of undeads, heavily augmented with mechanical parts and they require different tactics to kill: that’s all splendid. But between these were consistently spawning (arriving in pods dropped from above) were banal identikit bads who became a chore. Also, because you were dashing about sorting out defences on various fronts, what was ultimately an extremely brown and grey environment had to be retrodden an awful lot of times. It would be nice to see some interesting variety as things carry on more than just murky streets and dockyards.

The writing was as abysmal as the first game. Your spectral chum still interrupts with sarcastic remarks that never hit home, and the chatter from quest givers is over-long and overly-worthy. Then made infinity worse by horrible non-jokes, like being asked to (save Private Bryan). See, because it rhymes with that film, so it’s a joke. Oh, and (arrow to the knee) jokes have been verboten for a good two years already there is no excuse.