When vampires had a bit of mystery and class

The first thing that strikes you about about Dracula : Path of the Dragon Part 1 from Chillingo, is the ridiculously contrived title, particularly when you realise that it should have been ‘Dracula 3 : etc. etc.’, as this is a port of the third instalment of the PC series. The second thing that strikes you is the graphics and polish. They are both impressive. No doubt building from a previously released game has its advantages (as well as it’s challenges) but the developers should be given credit for the effort put in. It’s dark, clearly a requirement of any Vampire game, and its sometimes a bit too dark, but this mostly adds to an excellent sense of atmosphere. To top it off, both the sound effect and music are also top notch.

The area where a lot of good-looking games and ports on the iPhone fall down is the implementation of a decent control system. Fortunately Dracula once against does well; the interface is simple and intuitive. This is no doubt aided by its point and tap genre, but I’ve seen it handled a lot worse in other games of a similar nature. The story is pretty good, a tiny bit generic but you know what you’re getting into when you read the title, and shouldn’t exactly expect the priest to bust out a kayak and bazooka mid way through the game to liven things up.

So are there any down sides? Well, sort of, but if these are the sorts of things that bother you, you would probably have never clicked the buy button anyway. There’s a fair bit of reading to be done, as this is quite a character driven adventure. Also, the old moving around by clicking on the various options indicated is a little archaic, but, again, it’s the nature of the genre, at least how it used to be, and you manage to do away with ever-present movement controls cluttering the screen – you’re going to need all the screen space you can to see all the clues.

So if you’re harking back to the days when vampires had a bit of mystery and class and didn’t all look like they stepped out of a hair product advert, then this could be the perfect answer to your Twilight blues.

Developer: Chillingo
Price: £0.59
Certificate: 9+ (moderate violence)
Formats: iPhone
Release Date: 12th Jan 2010