The vampire is the ultimate antihero. Human yet bestial; chthonian yet empyreal; living yet dead. Two parts David Bowie and one part Sebastian Bach, he is the rock star of the underworld. As such, he deserves to star in great video games.
Dracula from Mforma, now available on Sprint Vision phones, brilliantly merges the gameplay of the highly acclaimed GBA Castlevania series with that of Silicon Knight's Legacy of Kain legend. The result is a gameworld inescapably evocative of Konami's flagship series, played from the perspective of the enemy. Instead of playing as the famous Belmont Clan, you're sucking its blood...or that of a thousand, stake-toting, Belmont look-alikes.
Dracula's backstory is delightfully macabre. Ol' Vlad has been defeated and dismembered, each of his limbs locked away in a different location. As his daughter and heiress, Eve, you must recover the pieces of his mangled body and reunite them so that your forebear can be reanimated. While the buxom Eve might be considered is a little too "female" to be a true vampire, she brings some welcome sex appeal to mobile gaming.
Dracula's gameplay is highly satisfying. You get to dodge whips and stakes, occasionally turning the latter against your assailant. Suck blood to recharge your health meter, while your curvaceous butt jiggles as you do so. Turn into a vampire bat to fly over large, unjumpable chasms. As silly as this sounds, Dracula succeeds, mostly because bloodsucking is so damn fun. It never gets old. A fang icon appears on the screen, letting you know if you're close enough. Then it's one press of the 5 key and bam! Feeding time.
Despite its simplicity, Dracula is one of our favorite mobile platformers to date. Get geared up for the gothic. Here's hoping that Dracula becomes to Sprint Vision what Castlevania is to the GBA.
