Dracula: Origin is an adventure game you can really get your teeth into.
Dracula Origin is based on the Dracula story as penned by Bram Stoker way back in the late 19th Century. Stoker's Dracula remains the most famous and influential of the many vampire stories, including sadly the far less laudable teen vampire romances of recent years, in books and on TV. That's not to say vampires cannot be seen as a romantic characters ... but amidst all that teen angst, gack ... but I digress.
Dracula, as a character and symbol of evil, is well established in popular culture from the movies, good and bad, including those 1960s Hammer Horror classics with Peter Cushing as Van Helsing and Christopher Lee as Dracula. I have read the original Dracula novel, seen the Coppola movie and most of the Hammer Horror Dracula films, so had a strong sense of what I would be in for in in playing Dracula Origin.
The game opens with the familiar Stoker characters of Van Helsing (the player character), Mina and Jonathan Harker in London, although the game's narrative is more in tune with Copolla than Stoker in that Mina resembles the lost love of the Transylvanian noble Vlad (the Impaler) Tepes, now Dracula. The other character Stoker fans will recognise is Dr Seward, but his role is somewhat limited. There is no Lucy or her eclectic suitors to assist Van Helsing in his quest. Dracula has a sinister servant in London, an un-named bug eating fellow, reminiscent of Renfield.
It is pretty much a "cut to the chase" retelling of the Dracula story without dwelling too much on the narrative, that in the novel is developed by the letters exchanged between the key characters. The adventure shifts locale from London to Cairo then to Vienna and finally Transylvania, which more or less mirrors the Stoker novel.
The "action", or what passes for action in a point and click game, in the London segment largely takes place in a graveyard and knowledge of religious iconography is handy. The introduction of the a major narrative departure from Stoker to Egypt is both welcome and logical, especially given ancient Egypt's various cults focussed on the afterlife. In Egypt you will divide your time primarily between the Cairo Museum, the markets and an ancient desert tomb, more Petra than Valley of the Kings. From there it's off to Austria where Mina is in safekeeping with a new character, Duchess Orlowsky and Dr Seward, for more clues in a university library. Mina is abducted and it's off to sunny Transylvania and Dracula's castle where we meet the three brides of Dracula, albeit only one still "alive". There are some pretty challenging puzzles that must be solved inside the castle before the final, alas anticlimactic, showdown with Dracula.
Apart from Van Helsing's trip to Cairo the feel is very Gothic with much of the story unfolding under torchlight with appropriately theatrical "spooky" music, very in tune with the horror genre. Like Syberia, the artwork of the 2D backdrops is excellent, which together with the musical score adds to the immersian factor. The moody atmosphere of the horror genre is much better captured than I would have thought possible in what is essentially a 2D game.
Gameplay is typical point and click, well it's like Syberia in that aspect, although perhaps with less walking around as longer trips are handled by cut scenes. The on-screen icons were easy to follow: lips for talking, hand for opening doors or picking items up and placing them in the inventory (Van Helsing's medical case), and shoes for walking directions. There is much dialogue and thankfully, as with Syberia, the voice acting was quite good although subtitles are a must. Van Helsing collects lots of documents and all deserve at least a cursory read as some will indeed hold clues to later puzzles or challenges. Quite often individual items in the inventory need to be combined to make a weapon or other apparatus. We have just started playing Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (Remastered), also by Frogwares, and it follows an almost identical gameplay style.
The game is very much focussed on the hunt for Dracula, who always seems to be just one step ahead of Van Helsing, until the finale. There are numerous puzzles throughout the story and it is your success with these that is the sole way of advancing in the game. Some of these puzzles are intuitive and some foreknowledge of the Dracula story or vampire lore is helpful but there are many puzzles rely on logic. A knowledge of the notes on a piano keyboard is required for one puzzle and this led to our first of a few rare trips to a walkthrough. Anyway solving the puzzles without needing to refer to a walkthrough is quite rewarding, akin to a detection-free infiltration of a complex in Splinter Cell or a fatality-free room takedown in a Rainbow Six game, albeit without the adrenalin rush.
That said there are a few irritating gameplay elements, for example we thought we were stuck in a programming loop inside Dracula's castle having got all the information, the names and dates on coffins, needed to solve a combination lock puzzle but were told we did not have the information. While we, the players, had seen the information and noted it down and worked out the code, it was only after clicking on the names and the dates when the eye icon was active that Van Helsing noted the information in his journal and play could proceed. This may be par for the course for those who play many games in this genre but not so for us near debutantes. Apart from this the game played glitch free, that is, after we resolved the invisible character graphical problem on start up.
For me, the penultimate scene in the confrontation between Van Helsing and Dracula was rather disappointing. Having played numerous video games in different genres one has come to expect a "grand finale" cut scene that is in many ways a "reward" for the hours spent in playing the game. The ending of Dracula Origin is rather lacklustre, and as such "unrewarding". The final scene leaves little doubt that Dracula Origin may be the start of a new franchise of games. Like those Hammer Horror classics, in which Van Helsing finds increasingly more bizarre (or inventive) ways to destroy Dracula, you know that Dracula's minions will find an even more bizarre way to bring him back from the dead for yet another battle with Van Helsing in yet another sequal. A sequal to Dracula Origin sounds interesting, provided Frogwares doesn't mess with the system too much, and from the limited information around it seems that Dracula himself will be the player character.
I think adventure gaming, for me, will remain a non-core gaming activity when not playing the various types of shooter games that I prefer at present. Nonetheless the adventure genre is something that has brought my wife to video gaming and that is a good outcome. Plus I do enjoy a good puzzle and Dracula Origin certainly has some Mensa level puzzles to test your abilities.
The replayability of point and click games I guess is somewhat moot as there is only one solution, however I can imagine grabbing a crucifix, hammer, stake and garlic and revisiting the gothic world of Dracula Origin in a year or so, when my memory of the puzzle solutions has faded sufficiently. Anyway, the game is afoot with Holmes and Watson in The Awakened (Remastered) ... a review will follow in due course.
OVERALL: Dracula Origin is a fairly solid point and click adventure with a good balance of elements from the original Bram Stoker story and from the game designers themselves, especially the Egyptian excursion, to keep you playing to the end. The game is full of puzzles, many of which are steeped in vampire lore and symbology and others that are just plain difficult. The ending, for my tastes, was disappointing, although the promise of more to come may see me line up for the sequal, just like in the days of those Cushing versus Lee Dracula movies.