If you’re a fan of the cheesy elegance of the Hammer horror films of the 1950’s & 60’s or the wonderfully addictive Dark Shadows soap opera featuring Barnabas and Quentin, then boy have I got a game for you!

Dracula Unleashed is a full-motion-video game that unabashedly and without apology employs every imaginable vampire cliché. It is an interactive horror movie that is a sequel to Bram Stoker’s classic novel. You assume the role of Alexander Morris - brother to the late Quincy Morris from the original – as you follow a blood-drenched trail of decapitated corpses, vampire brides and wolf sightings in your search for your brother’s supernatural killer.

If after playing this game, you think Dracula is doggedly persistent after innumerable resurrections in books, movies, stage and video games, then consider this – it took me almost 8 years to complete Dracula Unleashed! Like its counterpart Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, Dracula Unleashed was originally released circa 1995 during a period when full-motion-video was in vogue and cd-rom drives were a hot, new commodity. Unfortunately, as was too often the case, these new fangled games were sometimes impossible to configure and, more often than not, were incompatible with existing sound cards. So, was it worth the wait?

Well, yes and no. If you are a patient gamer who does not mind backtracking or replaying certain scenes innumerable times then you will relish hunting literature’s most famous bloodsucker. But if you are easily frustrated, then put your fingers in the sign of the cross and stay far away!

Dracula Unleashed plays out over the course of four days. Over the course of your adventure you can acquire numerous inventory items, send telegrams, read the daily paper, sleep in the hopes that your dreams might provide clues and most importantly, study your Journal for invaluable information. The scenes between the full-motion-video episodes are static pictures of a carriage that will transport you to your next destination or a pocket watch to keep track of time, but these are necessary evils to advance the storyline. My biggest beef is a save system that requires the gamer to transcribe as many as 16 different symbols (I honestly lost count) and then re-enter each symbol in the correct order to load a saved game. Believe me, this cut down immensely on the amount of times I chose to save a game.

As with any full-motion-video game, there are some inherent problems. The game can at time feel very disjointed as each day is broken into sections by time of day and until you discover through trail and error the correct order to visit specific locations, then most of your time is spent either foreshadowing an event that has yet to occur and which you should not yet know about or, becoming discouraged by discovering that you have neglected to do something earlier in the day. Worse of all though is that you can actually play almost halfway through Day 3 and be unable to advance any further if you earlier missed an invaluable manuscript. Not only is this blatantly unfair as you are then unable to go back and retrieve the manuscript, but if you did not save immediately before the scene where you could get the manuscript (and why would you if you don’t know about it), then you must start over from the beginning of the game The beauty of this though, is that once you have determined the correct order of events, everything falls splendidly into place.

The acting is better than is usual for this type of game and the main character is actually quite good. Of special note is Professor Van Helsing; whenever Alexander finds himself in a dire situation, the professor often appears brandishing wolf bane or a cross from inside his suit pockets sort of like a Victorian Batman’s utility belt. The music is missing that Dan Curtis touch of eeriness that made Dark Shadows so memorable. It cues and swells at all the appropriate places, but it does not linger afterwards and is quickly forgotten.

There are a few bonuses on this DVD version of Dracula Unleashed that were not available with the original cd release including a wonderful ‘Making of Dracula Unleashed’ video and audio and video outtakes including bloopers. These alone are worth the price of purchase and it is hoped that other publishers and developers will follow this example on their DVD releases. What would have been the ultimate bonus though would have been the opportunity to unlock the game after beating it and watching it from start to finish as a coherent movie

Though I thoroughly enjoyed Dracula Unleashed, I readily admit that it is not everyone’s cup of tea. Patience is the keyword and even at that, if you play on your DVD video player as I did, it is often difficult to press those small buttons on your remote. Still, it would make a great family game or a must-have purchase for any horror film/game buff.

Dracula Unleashed can be purchased for $19.99 through the Infinite Ventures website.

Final Grade: C+

System Requirements:

PC DVD-ROM

• P2-300
• 64MB RAM
• DVD-ROM