World of Van Helsing: Deathtrap – Review

Did you ever play the Diablo-esque Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing and think to yourself, “All this running around, killing monsters and gathering loot has me beat. I wish the monsters would just come to me!”? Well, you’re in luck. World of Van Helsing: Deathtrap was made specifically for you.

World of Van Helsing: Deathtrap is an offshoot of the dungeon crawler Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing with the same monsters and minions as well. Set in “The Ink”, an ethereal realm suspended between life and death, players must choose between three generic classes to stave off the impending invasion of monsters, demons, and minions. No matter which one you pick, the heavily armored defender, the magic spamming sorceress or the bullet-spewing gunslinger, the combat feels just as over-the-counter as the rest of the game itself.

In true tower defense style, players don’t have to run off to engage the enemy. Instead, players will have to plan out their defensive strategies to guard a series of crystals using various traps and devices, which doesn’t take much planning and effort at all as the game shows you where the enemies will be coming from on the map and what enemies you’ll be facing. At each end of the map, portals vomit forth monsters and bright red lines mark the enemy’s path across your map and players must lay down traps in corners and bottlenecks in attempts to keep the monsters from destroying the player’s crystal. The majority of the combat revolves around standing there and laughing while hordes of monsters walk happily into the meat grinder of your elaborate trap set up.

However, don’t be fooled by the game’s simplicity. Every map has a series of waves and players have a resource pool, called Essence, that they use to spend on constructing and upgrading traps. Spending too much Essence on traps in poor locations or blowing your entire Essence Pool on a single, powerful trap is often the cause of an early Game Over. Each map also comes equipped with its own set of challenges as well. Unique and challenging enemies dot the landscape of the maps away from the merry mayhem of the trap induced carnage.  These enemies often possess rare keys which allow bonus loot to be obtained at the completion of every map which drop anything from extra gold to better gear and weapons.

Each of the three classes has a series of unique skills, traits, traps and equipment which can be upgraded and modified only between matches. You can upgrade your skill and trap trees for more powerful skills and traps which cause devastating damage to the unwitting enemies who never seem to stray away from those wonderful red lines. Players can also customize and upgrade their hero by equipping better gear and weapons as well as craft new gear from recipes they find on the battlefield. In game currency is in drastically short supply, paving the way for microtransactions which allow you to purchase crystals to upgrade and modify equipment for some hard earned cash.  

Once you’ve reached level 10 on any hero and are tired of the incessant waves of enemies walking haplessly into your lazily strewn traps in the campaign, you can take your fight online in one of two modes;  Cooperative, where you and other players join forces against the same shambling hordes of single-minded minions or Versus, where you can either take control of the defenders and lay, even more, traps yet again or the monsters themselves. As a monster, you have the choice of freedom and can run around the map at will, making for some surprisingly interesting and fun gameplay. Monsters come equipped with four totems that you can place just like a trap which acts as a buff tower, making the hordes of enemies stronger or impervious to some types of damage, allowing your team of darkness to overpower the traps laid out by the defenders.

Despite its many shortcomings, World of Van Helsing: Deathtrap is actually quite fun to play and you can usually end up spending hours in a session before you even realize it.The depth of customization for skills, traps, and gear almost makes up for the lack of depth and originality in the remainder of the game. While the heroes and minions feel generic and unimpressive, the familiarity of the playstyles and ease of use makes the game a quick study and easy to master, lending more time to stand there with your friends and laugh as monsters keep walking into your traps.

World of Van Helsing: Deathtrap was reviewed on the Xbox One.