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Win95/98

Dracula Resurrection

Review

Our Score 8/10

Your Score 3.5/10

Review

The game begins with a gorgeous cinematic of the defeat of Dracula, a la the end of Bram Stoker’s novel. Then it skips to the “present,” London in 1904. You play Jonathan Harker, and your wife Mina has suddenly left London for Transylvania, so you know that Dracula has somehow returned. You follow, and the real play begins when you reach the Golden Crown Inn near the Borgo Pass, not too far from Castle Dracula (presumably the very same Golden Krone Inn as in the novel). The first thing you have to do is figure out how to get past Dracula’s minions and reach the castle.

Plus: Graphics. The visuals in the game are marvellous. It’s not quite as spectacular as Myst, but it is still a very nice looking game. The cut-scenes are fabulous, and the 3D environments are rendered with amazing detail. And since you get 360 degrees to look around, you can see every bit of that detail. It’s very atmospheric, and totally suited to the story. Even the moving-from-place-to-place graphics are nearly as sharp and lovely as the standing-still-and-looking-graphics; no motion sickness inducing transitional graphics here.

Minus: Linear. This is really not a very big minus, since I really, really hate it when I’ve been playing a game for hours only to find that I need an item I missed ages ago and have no way to go back for it. That doesn’t happen in this game, since you can’t move on to Castle Dracula without having done everything you need to at the Inn and the surrounding countryside. In that sense, the linearity was a good thing but it would have been nice if it didn't feel quite so linear.

Plus: Storyline. Some games I can think of use something that resembles a story merely to string together the puzzles. Others allow an immersive story to develop with the puzzles as a logical and plot-advancing part of it. Dracula Resurrection is one of the latter sort. Although I can’t quite imagine it forming the basis of a short story or novel, the developers have skilfully used the storyline to pull the player into the game and keep them there.

Minus: Difficulty (or should I say “Ease”). One of my main disappointments with this game was that it was a tad too easy, so I was able to finish it in about six hours (also see “Length” below). I don’t really want to criticize it too much, though, because some of the reasons the puzzles were easy were also things I really liked about the game. All of the uses of inventory items and solving of puzzles could be figured out by the application of reason. It’s marvellous to have logical puzzles but it’s really, really hard to make logical puzzles with a reasonable level of difficulty. To be fair, the puzzles do get harder the further into the game you get, but they don’t get quite hard enough.

Plus: Assortment of puzzle types. Besides being logical, the puzzles are of a good variety. There are some straightforward use-an-item-here problems, and some in which you have to figure out the clues and then do things based on those clues. No endless box pushing or running through the inventory trying everything.

Minus: Length. Like the other minuses I’ve listed, this isn’t really a big one. Adventure games like this are very graphics-intensive, since each environment is unique and not composed of endless variations of the same few shapes. It would cost huge amounts of money to make an adventure game of a good long length, which would translate into one very pricey game for consumers. And wishing a game were longer, as I very fervently did when I got to the end, really means that it was so good you didn’t want to stop playing. Even after sitting in my rather hard chair for nearly six hours (with a few breaks for snacks and peeing, of course), at four in the morning, I was still disappointed that is was over. “My eyes are so puffy I can hardly see the screen and I can’t feel my legs, but never mind, I don’t want to stop.” A minus that is really a plus in disguise.

Plus: All of the items were fairly easy to spot once you got to the right area. A few times I did miss things the first time I was in a location, but usually it was because I was clicking my way through too quickly, eager to get on to the next thing. There was only once when I had to do a slow scan with the cursor over the screen to find something.

As soon as I finished this game (yes, at four in the morning), I pulled my paperback copy of Dracula by ol’ Bram Stoker off the shelf and started reading. Anything that makes me want to read up on stuff has got to have something right about it. If you love adventure games, buy Dracula Resurrection. The sequel is already out in Europe; I’m hoping that Resurrection sells well enough that Dreamcatcher will publish said sequel here in North America.

Niko Silvester

BACK TO THE REVIEW SUMMARY

Reviewer:
Niko Silvester

Game Developer

France Telecom Multimedia/Canal+ Multimedia

Publisher

Dreamcatcher Interactive

Key Genre Words

Adventure

Review Date - 2000-12-19

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