STEAM LIBRARY EXPLORER: CLAIRE (INDIE HORROR GAME)

At time of writing, my steam library has 736 games in it. Over 600 have never been played. I have decided to correct this. So please join me in my adventures exploring the vast eldritch passageways of my steam library, as we experience marvelous wonders, discover treasure troves I didn't even know I had in there, and flee from the occasional hideous monstrosity I most possibly introduced to my list in a time of vulnerability and grief.

To start this thread, here is my first exploration report:


Summary of this review: Amazing game. Get it. Nice. Good game. Awesome. Woo.

Alright. Long version.

I've had this game in my library for a while now, and I was very wary of installing and finally playing it because somehow the expectations about the game I built in my mind for myself were too appealing to risk spoiling them by actually playing it heh, but anyway, I finally decided to install it several weeks ago.

I managed to play 35 hours before I beat it. If I had cared enough for all of the sidequests, extra content, and multiplayer features, I'm sure I'd have reached at least 100 solid hours of gameplay if not more.

I didn't know what to expect from this title other than what I saw on a surface level on the steam store: A diablo/torchlight 2/titan quest-like with a nice, easy to digest standard plot of Monster Hunter vs Monsters. What I got was fortunately something better. Much better.

Here's a thing about those games I mentioned; I've never finished a single one of them. Nothing personal, they're just not my cup of tea. They tend to get excruciatingly boring very very quickly for me. But why does this happen, like why are they boring to me? They're not *Bad Games* at all. This game showed me why I found all of those boring as crap and why I found this one so entertaining that I even considered doing another story run with a different "class". I didn't do it though.

On the outside, Van Helsing plays almost the same as all of those games I mentioned. You choose a "Class" at the start of the game with your selection of Melee dudes and Long-rangers and the Summoner of minions and the inbetweenie one, all of which have different skill trees and abilities, the view is "isometric"-ish, you have a minimap which you fill up by exploring the map, there are people with floating question marks and exclamation points to indicate quest-givers, and if you've played any of the games I mentioned above, you know the rest.

Where this game differs GREATLY from the rest of the bunch though, and here is the important bit for me, is in the fact that you're playing a CHARACTER this time. Unlike the other games where you are a random generic dude who's an empty shell without soul so that you can allegedly place your lame self inside of it as you project, your character is ALWAYS Van Helsing here. You can choose his first name, sure, but you'll always be the legendary Farts Van Helsing and people will refer to you as your last name always.

This means that your character actually has Writing behind him, a Voice, and Agency, and Things that he Will and Will Not do. He communicates with NPC's, has a personality, and when his aloof, sometimes over-the-top sense of heroism starts to grate, it is neatly brought down and foiled by a snarky retort from your sarcastic companion ghost waifu. Did I mention the ghost waifu? You have one at your side at all times, that's right everyone you get TWO appealing characters with WRITING behind them for the price of one! Howbowdat?

Lady Katarina is a beautiful ghost noblewoman bound to servitude to Van Helsing's family, her role as a companion gameplay-wise is to either turn into a wraith and enter "combat mode" when an enemy comes near, either clawing at them in close-range attacks or attacking at a distance with ghost ball magic bullet things (you have behavior settings on the menu), or turn ethereal to give Van Helsing certain passive boosts. She can pick up dropped items that you can configure in her behavior window in case you don't want her to pick up things, or want to pick up specific things only. You can tell her to go shopping (although personally I found that to be a waste of money since she rarely brought me better items than the ones I had by then). She has her own health bar (she doesn't "die" but gets defeated still and has to respawn after some time), equipment and inventory, skill trees (of which she has several subcategories) and stats that you can manage and put her points into when she levels up.

The whole skill thing in this game was interesting to me because Lady Katarina and Van Helsing kind of have to combine skills to make the most out of each other's attacks, so there's a wide variety of methods and skill combinations you can discover to approach things with. Resetting skills and stuff is something that can be done very very easily, so the game encourages you to try out different combinations. By the endgame, my final stats made my character and companion so pleasing and fun to use in tandem that I was sincerely sad the game was over.

At this point I should mention I played on normal mode (because there are difficulty settings, like the other games), and chose the Monster Hunter class because in my personal opinion, what kind of loser would pick anyone other than the modern portrayal of Van freaking Helsing? No, more specifically, what kind of lame loser person chooses the generic amor dude with a sword and shield?? Even the game itself was like "Ohh this class has kept the ancient tradition of sword and shield alive by baarghbah(...)" in the class description window like it knows it stands out like a sore thumb when the other three classes are a Sorcerer Scientist Witch Doctor, A Dude in a Mech Suit, and Van Motha-Fukkn Helsing. Like seriously had they made a toyline of this game the armor dude's toy would be the type to be dropped by the hundreds in the discount bin.

Anyway, this game is a lot more forgiving than the ones I talked about before at least in it's normal mode, because your health regenerates not only in combat, when it does so slowly and under certain conditions, but when you're out of combat for a couple of seconds your health bar will fill up right quick. This doesn't mean the game is a breeze though, I got my fair share of deaths because I lowered my guard and allowed enemies to close in too much. When crowds of enemies gang up on you, your resistances drop a lot, so what can seem like a situation under control has the chance of turning very grim in a few seconds if you're not careful. Of course, the more you play the more skills you unlock which will cover some of your blind spots until you're playing almost moba-style when things get frantic and dangerous.

I had a lot more things to say about this game but I want to go back to the writing, because honestly what kept me going was the fact that Van Helsing and Lady Katarina make for an entertaining double-act. At all points in the game walking around will trigger conversations and banter between the both of them, often commenting on the situation, what's around them, or giving a bit of background and character development, usually loaded with a bunch of funny snark between them. This, I believe, was The Thing that separated this game forever from all the other snorefests.

This game doesn't have a particularly "happy" plot, but it doesn't take itself so seriously that it feels above being goofy at various points, or filling itself up with shoutouts to other games and media. Not only did I want to continue playing to know what happened next (unlike say, titan quest or torchlight 2 where the objective was often so god damn far away most of the time I didn't even feel like there was an overarching goal at all) but I also wanted to see what the next reference or shoutout would be. Almost all of them were funny to my admittedly simple sense of humor, only a few made me go "ehh", which reflects well on the writers too I suppose.

Anyway, yeah, fun game. I recommend With Great Force.
Ghost waifu.

Thanks Cap! It really is the definition of an adventure.
Next review coming soon.