A decent adventure game with challenging puzzles. But it never stands out in any way.

User Rating: 6.5 | Dracula: Origin PC
Bram Stoker's Dracula is probably the most famous vampire story of all times. Then why not make a game of it? That apparently is exactly what the people from Frogwares thought. And behold: Dracula: Origin was born.

The first thing that stands out is that you take on the role of the famous vampire hunter Van Helsing. Where you normally play a younger person in an adventure game, Dracula: Origin decides to stick to the original story, which leaves you at the controls of the somewhat aged vampire hunter.

Van Helsing's voice is one of the shortcomings of the game. Not only is his accent awful, but the voice acting in general is quite concerning. Not to mention the little jokes he tells every now and then, which will sooner get you crying than laughing. Luckily, many of the other voices in the game are a lot better. But the voices in the game, clearly aren't the strongest point of this adventure game.

And neither are the graphics, although they are quite nice. They do capture the dark atmosphere very well and the drawn backgrounds are nice enough, but again nothing really jumps out.

Then what does make this game tick? The puzzles. If you're a fan of puzzle-based adventure games, then Dracula: Origin is right up your alley. Most of the puzzles can be solved with logical thinking, but there are a number of very difficult ones, which will keep you occupied for quite some time.

Although the inventory system might take some getting used to, it works well enough. Conversations however, are sometimes a bit illogical. Not that you have no idea what to do, but when you want to ask a NPC something about an object, to me it seems rather illogical to have to use the object on the NPC first, then get a dialogue box and then choose to ask about the object in that dialogue box. However, this is nothing major and chances are small that this will stop you from playing the game.

The story is okay, although not great in my opinion. Luckily the puzzles make up for that. Also, you don't have to fear that you might miss an object or anything on an important location: when you haven't collected everything, Van Helsing simply refuses to leave. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I will leave up to you.

All these elements combined make Dracula: Origin an entertaining game which will keep you occupied for a day or three, because of its challenging puzzles. On the matter of story, graphics and sound however, the game is certainly passable but never great. If you want puzzles in an adventure game, buy this one. If it's mainly a good story you're looking for, wait until you can borrow it from a friend.