What is a game? What is a Dracula game based on a film by Bram Stoker, that is. It sounds cool, but I must check if it's ok to play first. Has it got LJN on it?.....No! I deem it safe to play by any normal man, woman and child. Anyway, I never watched the Bram Stoker's film Dracula. I'm sure it's a good film, but I never really had interest to watch it (or read the book. I assume it's based on a book, right?). The game was lying around, so I decided to try it out and see how it compared with Castlevania. Yep, it's the other way round for me, when Dracula is mentioned, I think of Castlevania, so it would be impossible not to compare the two games together for me.

The game starts off with a pretty decent opening. The sky is pinky red, it's scrolling over a graveyard, and there's lightning. What surprised me was that there was no opening text. I would have thought a game based on a popular film based on a praised horror book would have at least some opening of story. Having never so much as touched the book or film, I don't know what the story is. Sure, there's Dracula in it, and someone is going to fight him, but what's the plot, what's the build up, what is happening? A lot of things could make the game more enhanced with a little background story. Sure, Castlevania didn't have much of a back story, but that's because the story was as simple as getting to the top and killing Dracula. Here, I expected much more. And in the future Castlevania games (most recent to this game is Super Castlevania IV), they had a cut scene about Dracula being revived from the dead. It annoys me when there isn't much story in the game, it seems so much less....lifeless when there isn't one. But eh, maybe there will be story in the game itself.

You get a choice of three difficulties: Trainee, Normal, and Hard. Trainee is where you can only play 2 levels of the entire game, and you can set your health and lives to max. Normal is where you can play the entire game, but you have a restriction on how many lives and health you can have. Hard is the same as normal, only you have an even higher restriction on your lives and health, and you have a butter knife as a weapon instead of the long sword you had before. This is one of the few games I've seen where Hard isn't just having less health, lives and continues with enemies that take many more hits to defeat, but rather (along with that) focus' more on how it can make the game more of a challenge. In this case, it's harder as you have a shorter sword. This means you have to be more careful with your game play and plan more on your attacks.....that's what I would be saying if the game play didn't suck more than 1,000 Dyson's. It doesn't really handi-cap you that much, it just means more enemies will hit you.

And I'm not just saying that because I suck at the game....erm, not that I do... '^^    The game play is cheap, spam-able, and feels unreal. You can easily use the sword in rapid succession, making you think you can plow through the game easily. The hit area for you and the enemies is pretty unfair. Enemies can just graze over you and you will get hit, but you need to either duck and stand to defeat an enemy accordingly. Sometimes I swear that I ducked to an enemy that can be defeated when standing up and it didn't land a single hit. What's more, you can't just tap the attack button to attack, you need to release it for the attack to work. You can hold the attack button all day long, but it won't attack until you release that button. This can result in you attacking and then turning back, but you will attack in the other direction. This kind of attack just doesn't feel right in a platformer. Add this to the "easy to get hit by enemies" and the spam-able mind set, this results in a game where you can die very easily if you are not careful.

That's another thing I want to talk about, being careful. The game requests that you be very careful through out the entire game. A spear might come up from the ground without warning, or a zombie might jump up without warning, or you might land on a rat while falling from a cliff and get hit, yeah, you land 50 foot from the edge, land on a rat, and YOUR the one who gets injured....There are traps practically everywhere. This might seem unfair and annoying and makes the game quite un-enjoyable, but the truth is it does make you be more careful, and the truth is, in real live, if you were hunting vampires, you would be very careful not to step on a trap and get hit from a spear from the ceiling. You begin to feel like the person in the game. I like games like that. However, because of the spamy game play with your sword making it think you can just plow through it, this really does make the whole "be careful" thing rather pointless and ruins the whole experience. You feel you are forced to be careful. In real life, you would just try and be careful, no one is putting a gun to your head and screaming "LOOK ON THE GROUND! LOOK FOR THE TRAP OR I'LL SHOOT!" There isn't a sense of achievement for dodging the trap, just annoyance.

And I have tried to be careful by nudging myself along the way, and it did work for a level. But then the spamy game play kicks in and I feel that it's just a waste of time to carefully nudge myself across a level, leg it and get hit. Then there's a point in which you need to rush though a level or risk death, and they have the nerve to have a trap there because they knew, they knew you needed to rush this part and get hit. At some parts of the game you need to find a man who thinks of a weapon and you somehow mind read his brain for it. You can pick up this item somewhere in the level before moving on. I don't see why this is needed for the game. The weapon he thinks of won't be the only level on the ground. He might be thinking of some bombs, and you could find that and a gun (this gun is not as helpful as it sounds). I tried bring the item back to him, but he does nothing. Just continues to think and think. This slows down the games place, but I highly recommend that you get these weapons, they help out at the bosses a lot.

Talking about bosses....they are a complete joke! They are easily readable to get their patterns, they don't require much skill, and (if you don't want to lose much health), they are very boring. There isn't even any build up to the boss. When you get far enough in the level, the boss health bar appears before you even spot the boss. No suspense, no waiting for the boss to appear, you just meet up with it. Top this with special weapons and they are extremely easy. The bosses are by far easier than the levels themselves. I can easily defeat the first 2 bosses without taking damage. When you defeat a boss, then a book zooms out and turns the page to the next chapter. No story in the middle, just a progression with the game. There is no cut scene for story, just the next level. I don't know how the game is progressing story wise. This is what I think for the first three levels:

Guy is in a bar, clearing the area of bats, rats and drunk zombies. He meets a guy and reads his thoughts. He then feels he has to exit the bar. He defeats a load of over-sized spiders and defeats a guy in armour with a whip. He then finds himself underneath some place and finds a dragon. he defeats that as well. He is then instantly chased by three ghost ladies and must run away from them, where he finds a wizard and defeats him as well.

Sounds right? well, I'll be surprised if that was indeed in the film in that manner. it doesn't even sound like a Dracula game. The only story in the game is at the very end, where there is indeed a cut scene, and text to wrap things up. The funny thing is, first there is not enough story, and then there is far too much at the end (which, by the way, has red text with a pretty red background). Let's move onto something else....

The graphics aren't that bad. They are pretty good, in fact. It rivals with Super Castlevania IV, in fact. It's got a similar style to it. Sometimes, it would use graphics to create an atmospheric level. A level might be misty, and you could find it hard to see what you are doing....actually, this is rather annoying and forces me to be careful once again. Although the style is much like Super Castlevania IV, it's got some sort of dirty charm to it that makes it seem muddy and much less attractive. They did a great job re-colouring the bats and rats. Real creative...Other enemies include the shadows of innkeepers, wolves, and zombies that jump out of the ground without a moments notice. The music is rather awesome. I love the boss battle music. And some of the music is rather catchy and pleasant.

Overall, I give this game a 5.3/10      I really don't like this game. It gives mixed messages on how you are meant to play the game, and gives out unforgiving punishment to those who are not careful. The game play is rather speedy and spamy, making you think it's a fast paced game, yet the game also has traps and stuff everywhere, forcing you to slow down what could have been a fast paced game. Although the graphics and music were very nice, it doesn't make the core game any more enjoyable than it is now. Come to think about it, it's a lot like Castlevania.....only without the Castlevania. If Castlevania went wrong somewhere, then this game would be the result.