Van Helsing - More Previews

Almost every skill circle has three abilities linked to it that can also be unlocked – for example, your first skill is a basic melee attack, and linked to it are a stun attack, heavy attack and precise attack. Each of these can be activated in combat in exchange for Rage Points, which are accumulated by being in combat. You can have two active skills that can be activated by left and right clicking, and each sub-skill can have more than one Rage Point attached to it to power it up. Different combinations are subject to different effects, so it’s a system that lends well to extensive experimentation.

That’s probably good because combat quickly seems to come down to Van Helsing being surrounded by a mass of enemies and hacking away at them while Katarina chips in, with no real capacity for diversity. Your ghostly companion can be set to dive into melee combat while Van Helsing holds back picking enemies off with his ranged weapon, or Van Helsing leads the charge while Katarina supports from a distance. There doesn’t seem to be much movement on variations between the two.

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It's not just the enemies that are bursting with atmosphere, the land of Borgovia is absolutely full of character, walking through the village of Markovna you can hone in on snippets of conversations, meet strange and interesting npcs and just soak in all the little intricacies that the developers have lovingly added into the game.

Atmospherics and character aside, what makes The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing so appealing is that whilst the main quest of the game is very absorbing, there is a wealth of side quests and exploration to reward those that want to uncover that last bit of fog on the map, and we aren't talking grinding missions where you must talk to some guy, go and kill a bunch of things and bring him back the stuff that is dropped, oh no, we're talking taking down mini-bosses, solving puzzles, locating runestones, convoying merchants and even reuniting a dead man with hi

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