A reboot that will likely please newcomers more than long-term followers
Format: PS3, Xbox 360 (version played) Dev: MercurySteam / Kojima Productions
Pub: Konami Out: 08/10/10 Players: 1
No matter how avid a gamer you are there are always titles and series that you have to hold up your hands and admit you haven’t played. There are many iconic games that I have missed out on and here is my confession. I’ve never played LittleBigPlanet, Flower, Uncharted… but then I don’t have a PlayStation 3, so this I think is fairly acceptable. More shameful admissions include Metroid, Zelda and even Street Fighter. Yes, I know, I’m a terrible person. Until Lords of Shadow, I’d never played a Castlevania game either. It wasn’t that the series slipped under my radar, it just appeared only at the very edges, as a fuzzy, insignificant blip, at least in comparison with the constant bombardment of fresh titles.
This perhaps underlines the Castlevania series relative decline. It’s a series that has until now always been preferred by the old guard of video gaming, and to newer gamers the series seems somehow stale, and the sheer amount of titles made it a bewildering series to enter. The decision to reboot the series though can’t have been the easiest decision. It’s a series that has successfully garnered a dedicated fan base. It’s been around since 1986, won countless awards, regularly appears on top games lists and Lily Allen sampled from Castlevania for her debut album. Even if you’re not a fan, it shows that the series has popular appeal.
The new game then is a departure in many ways from the series roots. It’s a 3D action adventure game that many have compared to games like God of War (another game I haven’t played). A large chunk of the game is combat, with your Combat Cross to hand you’ll have to slaughter your way through enemies from life-sucking Mandrake plants to Wargs and Trolls. The combat requires cool precision rather than a button-bashing frenzy, especially when it comes to the boss fights. Mastery of the controls and the various weapons and combos you have at your disposal, is crucial.
Clever management of resources is awarded. This mainly comes into play with light and dark magic, the former is used to heal your wounds and the latter deals extra damage. These can be regained through some statues but mainly through defeating enemies. The magic is scarce enough to prompt careful thought about when to use it, which also goes with the range of supplemental weapons which include throwing knives, fairies, holy water flasks and dark crystals. It’s tempting to use these elements to rush through some fights only to find that patience would have been a better strategy when you run smack into a boss fight.
Boss fights are central to Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, and there are periods of the game where you’ll encounter three or four bosses within an hour of gameplay. They include ancient Titans (think Shadow of the Colossus), a twisted crow-witch, an ogre-like butcher and a lightning fast Werewolf Lord. The fights are pretty well handled because whilst, like many other games, learning the bosses patterns is a major ingredient to success, there seems to be enough threat in some of the bosses to make them challenging.
Combat isn’t everything though, all of the levels contain strong exploration elements and some are devoted entirely to searching the environment for clues and upgrades. Usually this involves using Gabriel’s dexterity to clamber, shimmy and jump from area to area or the player’s perception to spot the gaps in the environment. The design of the levels have some flaws. Often you’ll see places you think are accessible only to hit an invisible wall. They’re not obvious walls rather the very edges of rooms and environments seem to stop you a few feet before the wall. Other times it feels that finding hidden areas seems a case of just running against the sides of a level to see whether you hit a hidden area. Generally though it does feel that the searching element is well designed, it just has a few flaws.
To say that Castlevania has a cast to rival a film may be a bit of an overstatement but in the world of video games it’s fair to say it’s star-studded. The big names include Patrick Stewart, Robert Carlyle and Natascha McElhone (Californication, The Truman Show). The voice acting is generally of a high standard for video games, although I would raise some concerns with Robert Carlyle’s softly spoken Scottish Gabriel Belmont. The script is solid with allowances for the usual fantasy hyperbole and you can feel some emotional attachment towards the slowly darkening Gabriel, who’s driven in his desire for revenge.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is a very good reboot of a series that I’ve never played, good enough in my mind to make players want to hunt down some of the earlier instalments. The mechanics are slick and precise, the narrative is engaging and there are lots of trinkets to find for those who like to wander off the beaten track. Castlevania is also a meaty game weighing in at between 10 and 20 hours depending on how much time you spend exploring – and you will want to explore. The environments range from lush jungles to deliciously dank castles. This is a game that knows how to inject spectacle without skimping on gameplay.
Adam Dixon
Tags: action, castlevania, horror, konami
