I saw some videos of Dracula - Undead
Awakening and I thought it looked interesting, and with Playstation
Minis, that's about all you need to know to give one a try since they
are so cheap. It's fun for awhile, and before I started playing
Minis, it's what I would have expected a good Mini to be. Of course I
now know that Minis (like Alien Zombie Death and Velocity) can be stellar games.
Dracula is a twin-stick shooter,
although the PSP doesn't have two sticks, so you'll be shooting by
holding down the face buttons in the direction you want to shoot:
triangle for up, circle for right, square for left, and cross for
down. Diagonals are achieved by mashing two buttons at the same time.
For example, to shoot diagonally north-west, you hold down triangle
and square at the same time. This sounds a little awkward, but it
works well with the exception of when you try to shoot in circles
quickly with the machine gun or flamethrower, which can be a little
rough on the wrists. The PS3 doesn't let you use two sticks either, you'll still be mashing face buttons when playing on the big screen. You switch weapons by pressing the shoulder
buttons to scroll along your collected weapons which are displayed at
the bottom of the screen. You'll use these simple controls to run and
gun the entire time you're playing since you can (and have to) move
while you are shooting.
And what are you shooting, you might
ask? This is a gothic, Victorian time period game (I think), so you
play as this guy wearing a cool hat blasting tons and tons of
monsters that are under the control of Dracula himself. Giant
wolf/rat creatures and mummies are the main baddies that are lining
up to get blasted by the thousands (literally), but there are a few
others as well, like creepy worms and these bipedal amphibious guys.
There are also palette swapped angry versions of most monster types
that are faster than their normal counterparts. All of these monsters
rush you in huge mobs and attack you if they get close enough,
draining your health bar.
There are three levels and four game
modes, which you can mix and match as you please. There's a
graveyard, a castle, and a frozen outdoor area. The level determines
what enemies you'll face, but not much else. Survival mode (the main
mode, in my opinion) has you blasting away at endless and
increasingly numerous and angry hordes while periodically giving you
a choice of a random bunch of powers. Each time you earn one of these
perks, you can press select to pause the game and choose one. Each
time you get to pick one out of a list of four that are pulled
randomly from all the possible perks. They are pretty cool. There are
a lot of them, and picking out the best one for your current
situation is fun. There are some that increase your damage or armor
in certain situations, some that add to your score, and some that
improve weapons, plus many more. My personal favorites include the
telekinesis power that makes power-ups, ammo, and weapons slowly
creep toward you, and any of the handful that increase your running
speed in some way. Getting the right perks will help you go the
distance, as you start out facing a lot of enemies and it only gets
worse. You'll soon be facing close to 50 on the screen at once with
armies more rushing in as each one dies. Despite the high number of
on-screen enemies, the game runs without any hiccups and without load
times once you get to the title screen.
Enemies also drop health potions,
weapons, ammo, and the occasional random power-up, such as one that
freezes time for a bit and one that increases your rate of fire for a
few precious seconds. There are a bunch of weapons (I want to say 8+)
that range from a pistol to a rifle all the way up to a flamethrower
and a rocket launcher. Each one handles differently, and they are all
pretty fun to use. .
After awhile, Dracula will show up and
shoot lightning bolts at you. Killing him gets you an omen. A running
tally of how many of these items you have picked up is shown on the
high score screen, and collecting enough of them will change your
portrait and title on said screen. Getting new portraits was my
motivation to keep playing for awhile, as I liked the art style of
the pictures, especially the grizzled old man one. Dracula can appear
multiple times in a round if you are able to survive long enough, so
you can potentially pick up multiple omens.
Super survival mode is... I don't
know. I can't tell the difference between this and survival. Maybe
it's slightly harder or there are less weapons? Nothing too
noticeable though.
Wave attack mode has you facing set
waves of enemies and collecting the gold they drop. When a wave is
over, a little shop appears where you can buy weapons, ammo, and
health before moving on to the next wave. You also can choose
upgrades to your health, damage, reload time, or gold drop amounts in
lieu of picking perks. I don't think Dracula appears in this mode,
although I didn't play it enough to really confirm that since I was
mainly into survival mode.
Rush mode is really cool. When it
starts, you get to pick either a machine gun, flamethrower, or a
giant buzz saw as your starting weapon. You then immediately get
attacked by a huge horde of monsters as if you were really deep into
a survival mode run. These rounds are usually over really fast, but
you take out a ridiculous amount of monsters. I just tried it out
again to refresh my memory, and I killed about 200 hundred mummies
before they killed me... in a 51 second game. Unless I'm mistaken,
this mode is the only way to get your hands on that buzz saw, and
it's cathartic after a long survival mode run to jump into rush mode
with the buzz saw and shred hundreds of enemies in seconds.
I stuck to survival mode for most of
my time with this game so that I could try and see as many portraits
as possible. I wish you could earn omens in the other modes some how
(maybe you can in wave attack, not sure), as I only really felt an
incentive to play survival mode in order to earn more omens. I would have
probably played the other modes more if you could earn omens in them
too.
The graphics are pretty cool. The
enemies seem to be 2d images with a few frames of animation. I liked
the design of most of the monsters and the way the graphics are done
gives them a unique look. Dracula himself looks a little weird, like
his head is really small or something. The player character also
looks a little awkward when he pivots the top half of his body around
but keeps walking in the same direction. He can actually pivot 360
degrees at the waist, which is a little scary. The backgrounds look
nice, but there's nothing really special about them.
There are two music tracks in the
game. The title screen theme is ok. The song that plays during
gameplay is better. It's fast-paced and has a synthesized electric
guitar and a death metal voice part that both chime in from time to
time. I thought the vocal part (which I can't understand at all)
really adds to the atmosphere for some reason, even though it's only
2 seconds long. It would be cool if there was a different song for
each stage or mode, but what's there is good.
I had fun with this game, but I also
didn't play it very long. I was motivated to get the first few
portraits, but the gameplay didn't compel me to keep going after that
and I lost interest after awhile. It's a thrill for a few days, but I
was ready to move on after killing Dracula 21 times (along with
thousands of his minions). It's a tier 2 mediocre game since what's
there is good, but it would need a lot more content or something
additional to motivate the player if it were going to be a great
game.
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