The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing Preview

Neocore Games’ The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is the subject of a new preview from Polygon, fresh from this year’s GamesCom. Here’s a snippet:

Layered on top of that are a ton of other customization options. Players can assign attribute points after leveling up, learn passive auras which boost their abilities, equip ward abilities which grant temporary defensive buffs and naturally equip tons of loot of varying types and qualities.

Where Van Helsing gets clever, and what I saw for the first time during a Gamescom 2012 demo, is how it allows players to change their powers on the fly. When you level up, instead of increasing the level of or learning a new ability, you can unlock a Catalyst for an ability you already know. Each ability has three pre-set Catalysts to unlock which change its various properties; a Fireball spell, for instance, can have its damage upgraded, or its area of effect, and so on.

But these augmentations aren’t always on. See, the player earns Rage, a resource separate from their standard health and mana, by killing large groups of enemies. They can spend that Rage on the Catalysts to activate them the next time their respective power is used. Each Catalyst is bound to the D-pad on 360, and can be stacked up to three times an occasion which results in a super powered version of whatever ability is being changed.