Operation Backlog Completion 2025

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Dracula: Love Kills

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  6 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 232023
 

Two years ago, we talked about the adventure game Dracula: Origin, which I got in a bundle of adventure games years ago.

Now it’s time to discuss the sequel, Dracula: Love Kills.

Dracula isn’t the antagonist this time around. Instead, he’s the one you’re playing as!

After the events of Dracula: Origin, Dracula wakes up to find that the world is in danger from the Queen of Vampires, and so he sets out on a journey to find the artifacts he needs to gain the power needed to defeat her… even if that means working together with his enemy.

Unlike the first game, which was a standard point-and-click adventure game, Dracula: Love Kills retains only some of those elements and instead is mostly a hidden object game.

You’ll inspect each environment, play hidden object sections that give you a cluttered array of objects to search for the listed items, and solve puzzles to progress. The gameplay is fine, although it gets a bit repetitive. What makes things a bit more interesting is that you also unlock new vampire powers as you go, which you must use to find certain items as long as you have enough blood.

It’s really just a matter of having a different way to interact with certain key spots, but it was still nice to get new powers.

At certain points, you also have a choice of whether or not to bite someone, although there are plenty of blood vials scattered around if you choose not to. It’s mainly there for story purposes, as there are two different endings depending on your actions.

The story is pretty basic, and I found Igor more annoying than funny, but I enjoyed the premise of Dracula and Van Helsing joining forces against a greater threat. Overall, Dracula: Love Kills was a decently enjoyable vampire game with a good theme for Halloween.

Celebrating All Things Mysterious: Adam Wolfe – A Paranormal Conspiracy in 4 Parts

 Celebrating All Things Mysterious, Reviews, Video games  6 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
May 242023
 

Adam Wolfe is a 4-episode hidden object game in which you play a paranormal detective solving cases while searching for his missing sister.

The first three episodes each have a self-contained supernatural mystery, but they’re all connected by a conspiracy that reaches its conclusion in the fourth episode, which brings everything together.

It is a hidden object game at heart, although one that leans more toward being an adventure game. Using a point-and-click interface, you’ll need to investigate areas to find key items and use them to solve puzzles. You can travel between locations using your map, and occasionally you have special interactions available (such as making a phone call or using your gun).

The puzzles tend to be quite simple and straightforward. Early on in the first episode, you obtain a watch that lets you look into the past (oddly enough, this isn’t the first game with such a mechanic we’ve discussed this May), so occasionally you’ll have to do that in order to proceed. Strangely, these segments require you to move present-time objects to their correct placements in the past in order to see what happened.

While the first episode also has a handful of sections that are more action-oriented, the later episodes minimized these in favor of simple puzzles.

And of course, it has hidden object sequences. What makes Adam Wolfe stand out compared to other hidden object games I’ve played is that the majority of these have narrative significance. Instead of grabbing random items from a list, you’ll be hearing the words to an ancient ritual and need to click the corresponding items, for example. One humorous section has you pick up tool after tool in order to break into a locked box.

Sadly, the last two episodes had some regular hidden object sections instead, which was disappointing, although they didn’t abandon the format entirely.

In terms of its story, Adam Wolfe is interesting enough. While the individual cases aren’t too thrilling (although the first episode is by far the most interesting in terms of the standalone mysteries), I was invested in the overarching plot by episode 3. Unfortunately, the ending was anticlimactic. After everything else that had happened up until that point, the end disappointed me.

Nevertheless, if you enjoy hidden object games, Adam Wolfe takes a bit of unique twist on the formula while telling a decent story, aside from its conclusion.