Dracula 2: The Last Sanctuary

The opening of Dracula 2: The Last Sanctuary looks fairly promising. A few slick cut-scenes, which pick the storyline up nicely from Dracula: Resurrection, see our hero Jonathan Harker escaping from the Count's clutches with his recently cursed girlfriend Mina and high-tailing it back to London. Cue a bit of macho posturing from el toothy, who looks more like Marilyn Manson than Gary Oldman, and a vow to get back his woman. Pretty much the kind of stuff you'd expect from a classic story that had a thousand bosoms heaving in the night. Unfortunately from there onwards this adventure/puzzler, despite being much better than its predecessor, starts a rapid decent to the grave.

The puzzles are more taxing than in the original game, although, most of them involve trailing the pointer over dim parts of the screen for ages. Many life or death puzzles have a time limit, but the annoyingly un-detailed inventory and the difficulty in selecting items makes the game stilted and unrealistic, as you tend to have too much time in pressure situations to compensate for the clumsy interlace. Only a blind, arthritic werewolf would wait for you to shoot the lock off a door, open the door, go into the next room and close it behind you, before he made a move.

In all fairness though, the cut-scenes are by far and away the best aspect of the gameplay and if the entire game had been raised to that standard we'd be talking more along the mid-70s score line. Instead, the majority of Dracula 2 remains depressingly static, your mouse pointer being virtually the only on-screen movement, and as you can only go in the direction and interact with the objects the game wants you to, that won't be a hell of a lot. Sadly, it's another adventure/puzzler that goes quietly into the night.