The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II Preview

A vampire hunter’s job is never done. I say vampire hunter, but Neocore Games’ take on the Van Helsing mythos doesn’t actually have much to do with bloodsuckers. This story is more about grotesque monsters, with faces that not even a mother could love. Following on from Neocore’s first installment in the fledgling ARPG series, Abraham Van Helsing - along with his supernatural partner Catarina - returns to rid the world of anything with more than two arms and legs.

Along with the familiar premise comes a familiar game: Van Helsing II, it seems, hasn’t changed a great deal from the first iteration. My short hands-on plants me back into Borgova, the sprawling city featured at the end of the first Van Helsing. After a pithy - and still poorly voice acted - briefing from a deflated captain, I’m sent on my merry way through the city to quell an invasion headed by an unknown entity.

Right off the bat, Van Helsing feels identical to its predecessor in almost every way. Combat - which includes more or less the same skills and abilities from before - still feels enjoyable and deep enough to compete with the likes of the Torchlight or Diablo series. But where VHII differs is AI intelligence; this is still an early beta build, but enemies are currently mindless. Enemies use multiple types of attacks, but this matters not as, regardless of whether they’re long-range or melee attackers, enemies still swarm you as soon as you enter their line-of-sight. Again, Neocore seem to have tried to disguise this by bolstering the amount of foes that charge you at once: within seconds, you’ll be suffocated by a horde of mindless zombies that do little more than spam attacks in your face.

This is an unfinished build though, so there’s still a chance for Neocore to alter the aggressiveness and wander ranges of enemy types. Far more alarming is the potential structure of VHII. The obscure tower defence section from the first game seems to have been expanded upon this time around. Like that section in the first game, the beta build had me wandering around an enclosed section of the city, assigning different groups of soldiers the task of holding positions or going on the offensive into enemy territory.

There’s nothing wrong with using this system in an ARPG, but the genre is so successful because of its exploration and loot mechanics, and while both are evident in this build, the satisfaction from each feels diminished due to the constraint of having to constantly backtrack and secure pathways where enemies are converging. If it isn’t overused, then the horde system could be a good pacing mechanic, but I can’t shake the feeling that Neocore may be taking the wrong direction by focusing too much on this type of gameplay.

There are some neat, new additions to the sequel though. Characters that you’ve built up and customised from the first game will be carried over - skills and items intact - for use in the sequel, and if you haven’t played the first or just fancy a fresh start, you’ll now be able to choose from several different classes as opposed to the standard sword and board setup.

So far, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II doesn’t feel like it deserves the extra Roman numeral at the end of its name (1.5 would be more accurate). There’s still every chance that Neocore is saving VHII’s new content for the full release but for now, this sequel feels very much like an expansion rather than a fully-fledged continuation of the series.