The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing starts off on the right foot

You know the early stages of a new game, when you’re trundling along, hoping that it won’t do something wrong and reveal that it is, in fact, a bad game? You’re basically muttering to yourself, over and over, pleasedon’tstartsucking, pleasedon’tstartsucking, pleasedon’tstartsucking, pleasedon’tstartsucking. That’s where I am now with Van Helsing, an action RPG from a small studio with middling to big ideas, but since they’re still a small studio, the game only has one class instead of five. The class is a Van Helsing with his feisty ghost wench as a sidekick. Her idle animation is basically struggling to keep herself in her, uh, whatever you call the top part of one of those old timey dresses.

Fortunately, it hasn’t started sucking yet. I’ve already been through about three or four things that could have sucked. And I felt like I was in good hands early on.

After the jump, getting the first impression right

Here’s the pop-up message when you select a difficulty level:

Can you tell I’m still bitter about Torchlight?