Focus Home Interactive, Frogwares and The Adventure Company all teamed up to tackle Dracula. But did they have the tools and the intestinal fortitude to take down the king of the vampires? 

Dracula: Origin from Frogwares has an interesting storyline but overall just wasn't interesting enough to be engrossing. At most I could play between 30 and 45 minutes before my attention was drawn away due to lack of interest. Now I like point-and-click adventure games, but this one was just not able to maintain my attention for various reasons. The story, or perhaps the gameplay, became more interesting when I reached Cairo in the game. In Dracula: Origin you play as the intrepid Van Helsing who is attempting to save MIna Harker and the world from Dracula. Following a trail of clues leads you to a confrontation with the vampire lord himself...or does it?

Graphics: 70% (lost points for poor character animations)

Like CigDangle stated in his recent review of Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis, this game is also lacking in the graphics department. The character animations are horrible. Everyone moves like a poorly controlled marionette whose strings are tangled. Meanwhile the environments themselves are well made and aesthetically pleasing. The puzzles in the game are well drawn as well. But the almost mechanical movements of the characters and inappropriate random actions they make from time to time really just broke the immersion factor. Throw in the poor voice, lip synch and it jerks you out of the immersion. The game uses the AGIEA Physx engine to animate some things with some success at the price of resource usage.

Sound: 80% (lost points for not really good voice acting)

While the voice acting isn't perfect, it's also not horrible. It's not so bad that I was groaning anytime someone spoke or laughing at the horrible dialog. Actually the dialog in the game is kept to a minimum as you only interact with a handful of people on your way. Meanwhile, the repeated statements of Van Helsing to get mildly annoying at times, 'this looks useful. I'm taking it!' The music which played almost constantly through the game was good and appropriately set the mood of the game. At first I thought some environments were lacking sound but when I turned down the music I realized a rich array of environmental sounds were in the game. Be sure to do that and you'll be well pleased.

Controls/Interface: 90% (nothing special)

The controls in the game are nothing special but they are configurable to a degree and work perfectly well for the game. The included 'press space to see action areas' is refreshing as it allows you to quickly see all the possible things to do on each screen. The controls are simple as they should be in a point-and-click adventure game. Really there's nothing more to say about them. The game also tells you what item you are currently holding in your hand so you know. Tapping I opens the inventory which is in the form of a doctor's black bag and you can manipulate the items in there when necessary for example when you need to combine the spool of thread, tape measure and wooden spoon to make a measuring device. The other areas of the interface are dialogs, reports and documents so everything is organized and easy to access.

GamePlay: 70% (sluggish story, flawed puzzles, forced step-by-step format)

The game is sufficiently long and the puzzles are interactive and interesting. I daresay even challenging at times. But some puzzles had flaws that I just cannot abide. For example in one you have to pick and activate the 'wolves' in the puzzle. There are creatures that look exactly like the wolf head which is the button to push at the end of the puzzle but are wearing collars and so are considered dogs. As if dogs and wolves are exactly the same. It took several retries and was slightly frustrating. Little things like this pile up over the course of the game and seriously began to drag down my will to complete it. With around 20 or so locations the game is full enough to feel complete but the story moved so sluggishly at times that I thought I might actually fall asleep. Many of the puzzles were extremely easy and took only a matter of a few seconds to figure out as well making me lose interest from time to time.

The game does utilize the AGEIA Physx engine which does start chewing up system resources quickly and lag things down at times. This only happened on bigger, exterior scenes and not on scenes taking place in a building.

There is also this strange logical progression where you MUST do all steps before something to do the next step even if you could guess the answer. For example there is a safe. You must get the two halves of the code from various places and then go and input the code. At each you must make a note of the sequence in the game. You cannot randomly guess the code and open the safe door. Well you could randomly guess the code, but the game will not let you succeed without doing the previous steps properly.

Cut Scenes: 50% (clumsy, unsynched, not very pretty)

Clumsy animations, unsynched mouths and words, flat textures...need I say more? While some are rendered in game others are cinematic in nature. Unfortunately they all have the same clumsy animations for the characters and mouth movements seem to have been an after thought as sort of a 'oh I suppose we should attempt to synch them' sort of thing. They do move the story along but are few and far between luckily.

Summary: 72%

Overall Dracula: Origins is pretty good, but not fantastic. The story is slow at times and not always so interesting. I was never fully engrossed in the title like I have been with other PnC adventure games. The controls are good but the graphics are lacking and drag the title down considerably. While the sound manages to do quite well the Physx lag was distracting at times. For hardcore fans of the genre this will probably be entertaining. For those who are looking for a first time point-and-click I might recommend looking elsewhere.

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