Digging into the annals
By makari 1 Comments
Being a poor man, I tend miss out on playing alot of games. I'm sure alot of people can relate to me on this one. Anyway, while taking a break from GiantBomb for a little bit, I went down to the local pawn store (Cash Converters, a shitty place to sell, but a great place to shop!) and found a bunch of old games. Well, some of them aren't so old, but you know. I'll write about em as I play through them all, so without further ado heres the first one the list:
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA)
Picked up this game for 5 bucks. I was never really a huge fan of the old Castlevania games on the NES, and i hired Castlevania 64 back in the day (ironic that it doesn't have a game page?), so I was a little on the fence about buying this at first. From what I had read, though, the Castlevania games have become very Metroid'y, which is a series I really do like, so I thought 'why not?'. I guess I wasn't disappointed.The game is pretty solid, a nice length, some pretty challenging bosses, a great soundtrack, some pretty nice visuals for the GBA, and one of my weaknesses: a huge list of collectibles. I played it over the weekend, it took me about two days to finish the first run through, although I only ended up getting about 97% map completion and probably only about half of the collectible souls (which make up your inventory of abilities). I can't really find a place to fault it, even though it isn't an outstanding game by any means. The story is fairly thin, and the different areas in the game, while labeled when you enter them for the first time, meld into eachother after the initial finding, making it sorta hard to discern how near or far a certain area is from where you are. Could have used with some better labeling of the areas, but the game does do a pretty good job of nondescriptly guiding you to the next place of contention when you gain a new ability. It does this by showing you all the places you need to go in a previous area you've been pretty explicitly and vividly, so you won't find yourself thinking 'goddamn it, where the fuck do I go now?'. Because it does this unobtrusively makes it a standing point. The recent 2D Metroid games have had a habit of going 'hey dude guess what? Go here!', which is the sort of hand holding that can dumb down the experience a little.
In the end, it didn't make me a Castlevania fan, but it's still an enjoyable experience.