Dracula Origin is a Point and Click adventure game that immerses the player into the dark, gritty, beautiful, Gothic and alluring world of Bram Stokers Dracula.
Combining a dark and blood stained world full of deadly puzzles and demonic horror with an amazingly in-depth story that will keep you wanting to know more, the game will make you cry out with horror and disgust while forcing you to marvel at the beautiful but sinister environments.
It is a prime example of how well point and click games can be brought into the next generation and if your wanting to bring this undying genre back into your life, this is the game to do it.

You play Professor Van Helsing, a scientist who is sworn to defeat Dracula and free the innocent souls that he has turned into creatures of the night, and as Helsing you face all the forces of hell and evil, fighting evils beyond the reach of mortal man, from Vampires to Demonic Monks.

The game play is smooth, varied, but slow, a general trait among the genre, and while the story is very gripping, there will be times when the player will be tempted by hints and guides, just to get passed the mind-numbing and incredibly frustrating puzzles. All the puzzles are incredibly well designed with even the most minor of details are refined to the points of perfection, but thats whats wrong with them, they are so well designed and so well thought of that the common man is going to struggle significantly to figure them out, a perfect example of this is a puzzle found later on, you must figure out the combination to a safe which you hope there is a key inside, though to do this you must solve a huge and highly complex puzzle, you are given a piece of music, some piano keys each with a chemical formula on, a list of colors that each corresponds to a chemical, and each color corresponds to a number, with this you must spend your evening scrutinizing each piece of information to figure out the combination to move on.
That puzzle has to be one of the most evil and frustrating puzzles ever devised by man, especially to people like me who know nothing at all about music, notes or piano keys, but all the puzzles are doable, and when you have the solution you slap yourself for not seeing it sooner, even if it still doesn’t make any sense to you.

With the game being as dark and gritty as it is the puzzles are forced to follow suit, while some are standard puzzles like the one i mentioned earlier, some are Gothic masterpieces which will turn your stomach as much as it turns the cogs in your head, blood, torture, satanic rituals and mutilated corpses are but the very tip of what this game has to offer, no pretty colors and friendly crosswords here, instead you will be forced to kill demonic monks and watch them cannibalize the corpses of their fallen, or uncover the graves of innocent young women to find out how many times Dracula has made love to their possessed bodies before finally letting their destroyed minds and tormented souls rest in piece.

No matter how hard you find the game and its increasingly difficult and horrifically gory puzzles, you will be constantly pushed on by the powerful and emotional story, the game is so involving that you begin to share Van Helsings passion to destroy Dracula, pushed on by the thoughts of such human misery he has caused you are unable to leave your computer until justice is served, with Van Helsings travels taking him all over the world in completely different locations you will never be able to get bored of the scenery, from a haunted London to the magnificent temples of Egypt and even to Transylvania to breach the cursed castle of the count himself, each location renewing your enthusiasm and drawing you closer to the final confrontation between the Dedicated and Rightous Van Helsing and the Cursed and Evil count Dracula.

The only thing that will draw you from this magnificent yet shocking world of death and torment is sadly the character animation and dialog, it seems the games creators have spent so much time making the game play perfect for every point and click fan, and making sure every little detail of the story is well planned, that they have neglected aspects that would of truly brought this world to life, the facial animation looks clunky and unrealistic at best, humorous at its worst.

The dialog seems very cheesy in places with some characters being not well thought out at all, there are times when Van Helsing contradicts himself, such as “No, its nothing, at least i think not. All will be well; i will return this evening and we will dine… if I’m still alive”
or the pure jewel that is “May guardian scarabs enter through his fundament and devour his entrails slowly with small spoons that are bent and rusty”…
yes, the game does try to be funny even in times when, from a moral standpoint, it shouldn’t, through out the game you will find yourself laughing at things that normally you wouldn’t do, and feeling dirty for doing so, as though your soul has been tainted by the games dark humor.
The majority of the voice acting is very good, especially compared to the animated lips which the sounds come from, though the characters constantly repeat them selfs to point of pure annoyance.
With all that said, no matter how much i try i cant find any animations in the scenery which are flawed, birds fly round with precise strokes of their wings, water swirls with elegance, and objects shatter with detail in every fragment.

If the facial animations and somewhat cheesy dialog was to put you off this game then you would be missing out on some truly chilling audio, it will be a cold day in hell before i forget the magnificence of the haunting music which has been carefully chosen through out the game.

As a conclusion i must highly recommend this game to any fans of the point and click genre, and all though people not so keen on slow paced point and click games may find it boring, i do still insist that they at least download the demo to make certain they wont enjoy it, i assure you its no ordinary adventure game.
I would also like to point out that this is a game where using a walk through will ruin it, cheat and the game will be over in a few hours, but if you play it with out cheating there is a good few days play time in it and some puzzles which will keep you captivated for hours, all building up to an ending well worth earning.

Gameplay: 9/10 - Magnificent puzzles and i cant wait to forget the solutions so i can play again.

Graphics: 7/10 - All the 2D scenery is brilliant, its a real shame that the 3D characters isn’t as good.

Story: 10/10 - Perfect, every slight detail is included with no greyspots or flaws, just as expected from a game based on one of the worlds most famous novels.

Sound: 7/10 - The music is brilliant, though some dialog will kill the atmosphere slightly.

Controls: 8/10 - The inventory and puzzle screen system could have been much better, but apart from that its a mighty fine point and click.

Overall: 8/10 - Well worth buying if your a point and click fan, if your not then its still worth checking the demo out, who knows, this may be the game to convert you.