Dracula Resurrection, a taste of... horror point-and-click!

Developed by Microids, which, as Troy Mclure from The Simpsons would say, you may perhaps remember for wonderful gems such as Amerzone about which I will one day speak to you at length, this title represents one of the most successful iterations tied to the gothic world created by Bram Stoker and his vampiric imagination, a sort of unofficial sequel that takes its cue precisely from the ending of the iconic novel: Mina has returned to London with Jonathan, the player’s alter ego, but Dracula’s influence and his enchanting spell continue to haunt the mind, and the heart, of the beautiful Londoner, so much so that she leaves the city in a great hurry to reach the creature in Transylvania.

Ma is Dracula really dead? This is the question that lingers in Jonathan’s mind, but the more important question he should ask himself is another: can a human being, under the evil and ancient influence of an eternal creature, free himself from its supernatural yoke and return to living a normal life?

To answer this question, we will make our way through the forests of former Wallachia in search of ancient artifacts of dubious origin, sinister characters, and gloomy legends, as well as dangerous and deadly ones, destined to return to life to claim glory and one last breath of life… taking it from us!

Delightfully point-and-click in its purest and most enjoyable form, Dracula: Resurrection boasts pre-rendered backgrounds (around the turn of the millennium, this was common practice even for PC titles, due to the limited computational power of the machines of the time) that convey the dark atmosphere of Stoker’s novel: the night has never been so dark and full of terrors, to quote someone else who knows a thing or two about fantastic nocturnal creatures, and there will be many times when you stop to admire what the PlayStation will deliver to your eyes, clicking here and there to discover where to slip that object in to unlock that passage, the beating heart of every respectable point-and-click adventure, as you can imagine.

From a purely technical standpoint, there is no reason to shout miracle, and certainly not because of any shortcomings of the game: by its very nature, a graphic adventure is not meant to be a benchmark in terms of visual power or complex gameplay, even though Dracula is a game that will keep you glued to the screen for many hours as you try to make sense of the many mysteries scattered along the tortuous path that separates Jonathan from his unfortunate beloved. Unlike many of its illustrious predecessors, in Dracula: Resurrection there will be no possibility of revisiting areas already explored and “solved”; on the one hand, this somewhat diminishes the game’s exploratory aspect (which, we repeat, was never intended to be the developers’ ace in the hole), but on the other it allows players to keep moving forward with the main storyline main storyline without any unwanted branches, with the risk of making gameplay feel more scattered, gameplay that, it is worth being aware of, could become frustrating when we find ourselves stuck in front of puzzles and mini-games that we simply cannot solve, though they are very well made and challenging.

Certo, there is internet today, but can you compare it to the taste of victory in making it on your own?

In conclusion, with a meticulously crafted story and all the pros and cons of a point-and-click adventure, such as environmental puzzles and more that are truly inspired, and the need to have Superman’s eyes in order to discover objects and mechanisms that are sometimes impossible to find (in other words, “if you don’t move the mouse pointer ten thousand times over that exact spot on the screen, you’ll never find it”), Dracula: Resurrection is what you’d call a must-have, to own, play, and finish!