It is one of my favorite RTS games. It's not flawless and you may see complains that it's a Starcraft rip-off but I recommend to give it a try. What's really cool is that there are 5 depth levels so your submarines are able to move in all x,y,z directions. More importantly, whenever they are attacked they try to dodge the enemy torpedo/plazma blast/sonic wave by changing the depth level. It really influences the gameplay - a big cluster of submarines is pretty easy to hit: even if one submarine manages to avoid the torpedo it may hit another unit. And of course the submarine cannot dodge if there are other submarines above and below it. Two or three light submarines can easily destroy a turret without getting hit even once! I haven't seen stuff like that in other RTS games from this era. There are three different factions: two human - White Sharks (cheap units but without much armor), Black Octopi (Technologically advanced with expensive but better submarines) and one alien race - Silicons. Their units uses rechargeable power to shield themselves but you can run out of this resource (you get it from metal deposits) so be careful how you manage it. Each faction is significantly different. All three campaigns are rather hard but still manageable. You have to master all different aspects to succeed so despite shallow story the game should keep you entertained.
A good hack & slash game should have a replay value. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut, after combining three parts of the game into one, has it. The main campaign is finally long enough to be truly enjoyable. You can choose six different classes and each of them has a complex skill tree so you can specialize in various battle techniques. For a modest price you can reset skill points within the game so you may experiment which build suits you best. You can also choose how to develop your companion - Lady Katarina. She has less complex skill tree but you can adjust her behavior so that gives you a lot of possibilities as well. Fighting and looting system is solid. Nothing special but just good enough. Sometimes fighting can be a bit messy, especially if your enemies come from below as it’s hard to see them from a distance. Story and quests are also rather typical for the genre with tons of popular culture references. There are, however, a lot of side activities that keep things fresh: you can tinker with your items, enhance them, craft new artifacts etc., in some parts of the game you can position your troops to aid you, send your generals on difficult missions (choose wisely who is the most capable man for the task) or even send your pet chimera on a hunt. On top of that there are daily challenges and special missions that you can perform outside the campaign so there are a lot of things to do. The game doesn’t contain anything revolutionary but all these little things I mentioned earlier combined with solid mechanics give you a very enjoyable game without too frustrating moments. One thing is excellent: SECRETS! There are tons of them everywhere. Sometimes it’s just a special item that you can find in obscure area, sometimes you have to solve a simple puzzle but there are very complex secrets that take a few acts to solve. I love them with my whole heart and if you like secrets as well read the title of my review again. It’s an anagram :)
