Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

The writer was inebriated during the writing of this document and cannot be held responsible for its energy.

Castlevania is one of those franchises. As of the date of this writing, it's still hard to imagine a world where the franchise isn't important to games, regardless of its general absence from the big-budget 3D space. When Lords of Shadow was announced, there was much collective anxiety abound - of course Castlevania may rule the 2D adventure roost but its other attempts at bringing its famous gameplay system into 3D have largely been considered miserable. In fact we know that when this game was originally developed, staring Simon Belmont, Konami themselves stripped the Castlevania franchise from the title. Just call it Lords of Shadow they said... and... enter the bizarre 2008-2009 marketing campaign for this game, where it was confused for everything from a Metal Gear Solid game to a horror mystery. Some time in that period it was Hideo Kojima who, during an executive meeting, expressed excitement over the title and it was re-branded/un-branded back to Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. I heard he said: "This game is like a snake in the grass. We need only remove the grass and eat the snake." Or something like that..

In any case, lo and behold, here we are, three years and six months after the release of Castlevania: Lords of Shadows and only a few days after the release of the official sequel. Like I said, 3D Castlevania's had a reputation and it really took a few years for the good word about Lords of Shadow to spread. Aka Vinny. For me, I had played the demo when it first hit PSN, and loved the whip combat, but the middling reviews, price and supposedly lame unfinished ending shook my conviction (ending: not that lame, but edge of lame). I bided my time until the Ultimate Edition (which includes the 2 DLC download travesties) hit Steam for a reasonable price.

Oh excuse me for a moment. Speaking of reasonable prices... this game could not have been made for one. There was a sequel, so, I guess it paid off. But oh my goodness. The production in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is fucking unbelievable. The book which serves as your menu is one of the nicest in-game books I've ever seen. Every ability has a little hand-drawn preview, which is pretty darn cool, though it makes you wish the game looked like that and was 2D instead. Then you've got Captain Picard narrating the whole thing and playing a major character. And, for a game that came out in 2010 (2 discs on 360) it looks a-mazing. The levels are amazingly detailed, and very gorgeous. Incredible sense of style in all the architecture especially. Really, truly this game has some of the tallest, coolest looking towers - the payoff level, the Castle, really is awesome. Whoever directed the art and all the artists who built the pieces are real masters. But it's just one setting in a long ass game. 25 hours or so. But the actual play space? The path you run? Not so much. Very linear, very straightforward, very not Castlevania. Well, I guess it is sort of Castlevania, but the point is no one wants to go back to play the old levels in the game. Trust me. The whole shtick of going back to find items because you have new abilities that allow you to reach different places entirely falls apart due to this ultra linear structure and the enemy patterns which plague the game. The fact that more than half the levels tend to be packed with gimmicky mount-this-enemy sequences and mirror/crank/lever/tile/clock puzzles pulled from the dark age of design and you've got a game you'll barely want to play once, much less backtrack through. More than once killing a mount you need to ride to proceed will break the game, forcing you to manually restart from a checkpoint. If there's a fail state that can't be escaped the game should clearly restart and it's not like it happens once. The flow of of whip combat to mount riding is also just really off. The thing that bugs me about this is that Castlevania has some great abilities locked away in this game. I wonder if it was an inspiration for DmC Devil May Cry? That game is all about the dual magic concept that is introduced in the last two boss battles of LoS. If only double jumping, sprinting and the magic system were introduced earlier, and if only they halved the puzzles, you would have had a tight, great looking action game. Instead you have this bloated pile of gamplay. So much of it so well done but it's so wasted. And the camera... oh the camera..

So why did I play Castlevania then? Because the whip is awesome. That's all. And I think the developers knew this. At some point, between all the prototypes, someone had together a masterpiece of whip satisfaction. Unfortunately, the enemies feel like they're just their to spoil the fun rather than increase it. While there are a decent number of varieties, you encounter them all far too often and the first third of the game is entirely populated by creatures that it feels a waste of time to fight. Seriously, those Chupacabres? The goblins? The.. plant people? On top of that, nearly every boss type enemy behaves the same way. Except for the Shadow of the Colossus style ones, which are then all the same in their own poor imitation way. And yet... it's not bad, combat wise. The whip is just great. It covers a huge part of the screen, you have lots of moves, it's relatively precise and has some satisfying feedback. You never really get another weapon, though you do have this fist they try and get you to use but really it's just excessive. There are too many combat moves in total when you count the magic modifiers, who's going to remember all that? Too much everything in this game. Too many levels. Too many mini-game puzzles. Too many jumping puzzles. You replay the same situations over and over and over again. You're trying to tell me a story about how a great warrior is turned from light to darkness and yet you keep forcing me to play this hide and seek mini-game with a Chupacabre where I lose all my powers and have to run around chasing a small imp who I don't even get the satisfaction of smashing into dust like every other living thing in the game?? If the game was half it's length and 10 dollars cheaper it would have gone done much easier. It feels to me they knew the whip was excellent, couldn't find more than three ways to apply it, and so just stuffed the game full of random shit to keep you busy and not get bored doing the one fun thing it can offer. But they erred, violently. They want way, way too far.

Playing Castlevania: Lords of Shadow took me back many years. Like the fixed-angle camera games of yore, it too is fucking annoying sometimes. Were you holding up on the stick when you left this room? Because now up is down so back you go! Oh now up is back up I guess you are stuck in a loop you fool! ... However, getting past that annoyance can be a really satisfying feeling. It's a strange game. Incredible production value, good combat, godawful camera, pathetic puzzles. It's too long. Normal difficulty is too easy. Hard is unbalanced (easy bosses, hard enemies, bullshit fall damage). Some of the levels are so bad you'll wish the designer never makes a game again. Then you remember they are human and forgive them :( but come on really? The DLC is a sham, so there's that to too. The first one has substance but the cinematics and story are just nonsensical and unexciting, as well as plainly convenient rather than compelling. It's just such a conceptual failure to have the most emotionally part of this story - A MAN'S TRANSFORMATION INTO DRACULA - reduced to some 2D animation (no offense 2D) of a DLC of a game that had high production value, released months later. Even without the time of release getting in the way the seperation of that story and it's visuals just makes it seem like an offshoot rather than what I think was supposed to be a really important moment. Anyways, the story of the main game tries hard but it's just not great other than Zobek's narration and appearances. Well props to Gabriel guy, he did good too. But still, every now and then you feel something in the combat, and in the environment, that is just spitting distance of being really great. I didn't have a lot of fun playing this game, but, it's weird - I felt like I was fighting the game entirely. The camera. The stupid puzzles. The controls. The camera. And, there's a unique feeling that comes from beating a game that is actively persuading you to put it down. It reminds me of the broken games of my youth. Strong in spirit, but frustrating to maneuver. If that sounds good to you.. well, godspeed. Otherwise? Well, you could do worse than Lords of Shadow, and it does shine now and again through the mist of blackness that surrounds it.