With Hugh "rack off" Jackman playing one of Britain's original cool dudes (Van Helsing) at the cinema, its nice to see a movie tie-in arrive simultaneously. And, brace yourself; it's not that bad. With the exceptions of games like the Lord of the Rings tie-ins (from EA), games based on films have never had that good a reputation, especially from a certain Lucasarts license, which I dare not even mention (Star Wars).

   

 The first thing you notice about VH is style. From the moment the game screens load up the game oozes Gothic style. No, there aren't pre-pubescent teens with bad hair, pale skin, and dodgy make up on in the title screens, but it does a good job nonetheless. A nice touch presentation-wise comes right at the start; the titles have a black and white background scene (which is moving a little), and when you select to start the game the titles disappear, the scene turns into colour, and the game starts - with nearly no loading time at all, which means Van Helsing is definitely off to a good start.

 The first level climaxes in a showdown with Mr Hyde (Dr. Jekyll's less pleasant half) in a Paris Cathedral, complete with high pillars, stained glass, and extremely buffed and shiny floors. Van himself looks very nice (thanks to some modelling from the film license), as do the environments, which are very dark and archaic, but still very beautiful. The only problem with this is that the game tries to be too beautiful at times, which I'll come to later, and that the PS2 tends to chug an awful lot as it struggles with the frame rate when you get to some nice areas, and sometimes when you don't, which starts to get annoying.

   

  The gameplay is so Devil May Cry, that if you shut your eyes (besides playing badly) you could imagine that you're playing it. The Van gets two weapons- starting with some tasty twin pistols and some nice spinning blades and progressing to some extreme weapons such as a gatling gun and some lethal twin scimitars. The aim is to beat up various undead (or just plain ugly) characters using variations between shooting and slicing them. The more impressive the combos, the more magic orbs that spring out of the bodies after you've defeated them. These orbs are used to buy powerups and new abilities. This is lifted nearly directly from DMC, and some moves, such as flipping a bloke up into the air and holding him dangling there with your pistols, are just plain stolen. It's just lucky that the ideas were stolen from such a class game as DMC.

 But, as with other successful tie-ins, such as the LOTR games, Van Helsing does have some nagging flaws, the most crippling being the longevity and replay value. The gameplay, however fancy, using smart combos, is still essentially repetitive hack and slash through a load of enemies. Repeat until you get to a boss. Defeat. Then restart remarkably similar gameplay in a different setting. If the simple button-bashing gameplay seems to be a little shallow to you, then it'll be a definite turn-off to hear that most of the time you only need two buttons - the "fire projectile" and "dodge" buttons. Nearly every enemy, including some bosses, can be beaten by simply firing a shot and rolling, and repeating until they're dead. Most enemies don't even have to be killed, as you can simply run past them and onto the next area, which kind of removes the point of fighting them.

   

 And after you've worn all of the skin off your thumb, the only thing that's left for you is to play through the game all over again, but in hard mode! The enemies are a little different and certainly a little harder to kill using the dodge-fire method, but by the time you start hard mode, every weapon and skill you have unlocked in normal mode is available to you, so you can simply chaingun everything, right through until the end. The only extras that are left for you are a few challenges, which unlock such great cheats as "multicoloured cloak Van Helsing", and "untextured environment cheat". Now you can call me finicky, but I certainly didn't play all the way through the game to see it in an unfinished state, disguised as a cheat or reward.

 Another problem, which I mentioned earlier, is the game's tendency to focus on style and beauty rather than gameplay. This comes in the form of some very nice fixed camera angles, which can either be perfect, or potentially the cause of several joypad->TV-related incidents. Because the camera angle is fixed, it usually focuses on Van Helsing, not the enemies, so you find yourself getting beaten up by something that you can't even see, which becomes very frustrating, especially on the boss levels. Another thing that happens is that you run past a camera, and it follows you, but doesn't zoom in or change angle, so you end up becoming a very small spot in the distance, suddenly getting beaten up by some other little spots…

   

 Van Helsing is a fair game, with good use of the film's license. It looks lovely most of the time, with great authenticity, atmospheric sound, and some very enjoyable gameplay. Its problems lie in the fact that it gets stale quite quickly, and when it's over, there isn't much to bring you back to play again. However, fans of the Van Helsing movie, Devil May Cry, or a simple quick fix of fast, fun gameplay, should give this a look.