Dracula Resurrection, like its sequel, is chock full of content but not nearly as big a game. And almost in direct opposition to its sequel it is very open world, and while for the most part you have to approach the puzzles in a linear fashion it never seems forced and you always seem to have many avenues to explore at the same time. In fact, the game is so open world that it is separated into just two main areas both of which are so big that I would be surprised if you did not get a little lost at times. This world features Dracula's castle as well as the surrounding village and underground tunnel system, with some parts of each being shown in both games. All of these locations with great looking horrific visuals.
One of the main things you will be doing, of course, is solving puzzles; And while there are no action sequences this time around there are still a wide variety of logic and inventory based puzzles. I found these puzzles to be simply fantastic, mostly understandable (with really no place I got stuck at in the entire game), challenging, and quite unique at times. Some puzzles are also obviously a little broken, but happily not in a way that should impede your progress (but as far as I know these puzzles could have been fixed in some patch).
Like its successor it has an unimaginable number of cut scenes, and for almost everything you do you will see a new one; Travelling to a new location, there is probably a cut scene; Opening a particularly important chest, another cut scene; Pulled some lever, even more cut scenes. Not that this is a bad thing, the cut scenes are great, with improved visuals and of course a different perspective giving the game the ability to better convey emotion and action. This time around there is the obvious improvement of less arm flailing, but with a slightly more corny dialogue. And the plot is not really anything to get excited about with far too much stereotypical over confidence by Dracula (expectantly considering how incredibly easy it is to defeat him and his minions at every turn).
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| The most important (and quite iconic) object in the series and the best wallpaper I was able to rip from the game. |
Technical:
Getting it to Run (on a Windows 7 x64):
Run it in Windows 98/ME compatibility mode.
Windowed Mode:
Not supported.
Alt+Tab:
Hard to accomplish but no ill side effects. It seems that when the game senses that focus has been lost it automatically brings the game back into focus. To get around this you must have a window open behind the game (either setup beforehand or by opening Task Manager) and when focus is lost (by either Alt+Tabing or by opening the Task Manager Window) instantly click this window and then you should be able to use your computer like normal (just don't close the currently focused window or it might reopen the game). This can be tricky to pull off, I rapidly click almost instantly after initiating the focus loss, but if it does not work just try again.
The one area of the that Alt+Tabing does not work well is during change CD screens (only happens once). If focus is lost during this screen the game with crash.
My mini-review of Dracula Resurrection.
