@Raven10 said:

@Hunkulese said:

Who cares? SOTN is what he wants from a castlevania game and LOS is nothing like that. Why does it bother you so much?

This. Yea, obviously there are more Castlevania games than SOTN and its followups but many people find those games to be the best. LOS isn't those games, so it isn't what many fans want. It's not like LOS is anything like the NES/SNES games either. That said, it is easily the best 3D Castlevania game. That isn't a big compliment, but let's face it, what Konami was doing before wasn't working.

Bullshit. Super Castlevania IV is the best Castlevania game.

Eight-way directional whipping. Think about that. Your whip attacks in eight directions.

A lot of people who say LoS is garbage never got past the opening chapters, which is too bad honestly. As bullshit as it is, once you get on to Chapter 5 (where Vampires are first introduced) things start picking up as you start killing vampires by staking a fucking cross through their heart. Then you get to Dracula's Vampire Castle and it really feels like a Castlevania game with the Doctor Frankenstein steampunk business and what not. That whole castle is one giant love letter to Castlevania's old school European gothic design, and it shows in the loving detail of every room. Then you get past the castle, and from there on out it's the best Castlevania game I've played since Super IV which, as I just explained, is the best Castlevania of all time. That's indisputable.

@Oldirtybearon: You seem to have missed the words "many people". I'm not stating my opinion, but the opinion of certain people, including Jeff, who feel that SOTN is the best Castlevania game. That's the point really. He likes SOTN best. This is not that so he doesn't like it. It's called an opinion. He doesn't like this type of game (character action) and so he doesn't like this game. Maybe you think Castlevania IV is the best, but he doesn't. That doesn't make his opinion invalid. There are good things about the older Castlevania games and good things about the newer 2D ones. It just depends which style of game you prefer. Personally I thought LOS was a good game. It suffered from trying to do too much. It ended up doing a ton of things well but nothing exceptionally. They should have cut a third of the game/mechanics out and focused on really polishing the remaining 2/3 to perfection. They ended up biting off more than they could chew and the game suffered because of it. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. That's my opinion as someone who likes character action games and doesn't much care for Castlevania. But for people who don't like this genre, the game is never going to be as good as previous ones.

I played Lords of Shadow for maybe 30 minutes but I don't see myself saying it has anything to with old Castlevania either. I mean let's face it, this game is based on one and one thing only, God of War and other blah on-rails action adventure games that imitate it. It's not Castlevania, it's modern gaming through and through. At best you can say it's "Castlevania type 3" --The introduction of a new formula that has little in common in previous games, much like how SotN introduced a new formula.

@MooseyMcMan said:

You know, Jeff's particular tastes about specific things tend to be odd. I think we should all know this by now. I mean, he doesn't like Red Dead Redemption.

Makes sense to me!

@Raven10 said:

Maybe you think Castlevania IV is the best, but he doesn't. That doesn't make his opinion invalid.

It is invalid considering Super Castlevania IV is the best Castlevania game. I even said it was indisputable. As in, you cannot claim otherwise without being pelted with tomatoes and hopefully some rotten celery.

All I know is that Jeff likes and talks about TrackMania a lot. He may occasionally like something that I like, but he's the last person I'd use for a litmus test if a game is good. He's entitled to his opinion, regardless of how bad it may be to some, so there's no point in worrying oneself over it.

I don't have much love for the Castlevania franchise but I thought that Lords of Shadow had some cool combat concepts with the combo system and the mix between dark and light magic/orbs. Cool idea and I really don't see why the crew is kind of shitting on the game., I think it's hyperbole from their part. It's totally okey to not like it but they really seem to hate it and to say that it works like shit and stuff like that, I don't feel that's true. It's a competent game. You know a 7-8 range kind of game. I think they talk to much crap about it and they don't back it up except with hyperbolic sentences without need to explain that "hate". I felt the discussion during the first Unprofessional Friday was really onesided and none gave a good argument WHY it was bad to that degree that they seem to think it is.

I feel that's one of the biggest reasons people dislike Lords of Shadow.

@Nottle: I hate to be "that guy" but until you get a certain item, water does kill you, albeit slowly, in SotN.

Remember when Jeff said MGS2 & 4 were better than 1 & 3 (which were "garbage")? Oh how we laughed and laughed.

Basically, at this point, you should realize that when Jeff states a negative opinion on the Bombcast, he often goes into exaggeration mode. He's not going to like every game! And he might as well make his dislike entertaining.

I'm pretty sure Jeff recognises that it isn't necessarily a bad game or anything, he just ante ups the negativity to rile people up. Similar to his 'thoughts' about Doom 3 or the Souls series or Resident Evil 4 or RDR.

Yeah, Jeff just doesn't like character action for the most part, I think Bayonetta is the only one to really connect with him.

@Oldirtybearon said:

@Raven10 said:

@Hunkulese said:

Who cares? SOTN is what he wants from a castlevania game and LOS is nothing like that. Why does it bother you so much?

This. Yea, obviously there are more Castlevania games than SOTN and its followups but many people find those games to be the best. LOS isn't those games, so it isn't what many fans want. It's not like LOS is anything like the NES/SNES games either. That said, it is easily the best 3D Castlevania game. That isn't a big compliment, but let's face it, what Konami was doing before wasn't working.

Bullshit. Super Castlevania IV is the best Castlevania game.

Eight-way directional whipping. Think about that. Your whip attacks in eight directions.

A lot of people who say LoS is garbage never got past the opening chapters, which is too bad honestly. As bullshit as it is, once you get on to Chapter 5 (where Vampires are first introduced) things start picking up as you start killing vampires by staking a fucking cross through their heart. Then you get to Dracula's Vampire Castle and it really feels like a Castlevania game with the Doctor Frankenstein steampunk business and what not. That whole castle is one giant love letter to Castlevania's old school European gothic design, and it shows in the loving detail of every room. Then you get past the castle, and from there on out it's the best Castlevania game I've played since Super IV which, as I just explained, is the best Castlevania of all time. That's indisputable.

It's kind of hard to say a game is good if you're saying the first 10 hours are bullshit.

@Hunkulese said:

@Oldirtybearon said:

@Raven10 said:

@Hunkulese said:

Who cares? SOTN is what he wants from a castlevania game and LOS is nothing like that. Why does it bother you so much?

This. Yea, obviously there are more Castlevania games than SOTN and its followups but many people find those games to be the best. LOS isn't those games, so it isn't what many fans want. It's not like LOS is anything like the NES/SNES games either. That said, it is easily the best 3D Castlevania game. That isn't a big compliment, but let's face it, what Konami was doing before wasn't working.

Bullshit. Super Castlevania IV is the best Castlevania game.

Eight-way directional whipping. Think about that. Your whip attacks in eight directions.

A lot of people who say LoS is garbage never got past the opening chapters, which is too bad honestly. As bullshit as it is, once you get on to Chapter 5 (where Vampires are first introduced) things start picking up as you start killing vampires by staking a fucking cross through their heart. Then you get to Dracula's Vampire Castle and it really feels like a Castlevania game with the Doctor Frankenstein steampunk business and what not. That whole castle is one giant love letter to Castlevania's old school European gothic design, and it shows in the loving detail of every room. Then you get past the castle, and from there on out it's the best Castlevania game I've played since Super IV which, as I just explained, is the best Castlevania of all time. That's indisputable.

It's kind of hard to say a game is good if you're saying the first 10 hours are bullshit.

The first "ten hours" (it's more like five which isn't a whole lot better but hey) aren't bullshit so much as mediocre. Average. Middle of the road. I wouldn't say Lords of Shadow is the greatest Castlevania game (as that honour rightfully belongs to Super Castlevania IV) but it is definitely a lot better than people give credit for.

Why do they do anything? Why do they complain about not having any new games to play and then all completely ignore the only big release last week (DMC) which is highly endorsed by Brad, in order to play iOS games or tidy up their closets or whatever? The Bombcrew is full of contradictions and surprises and I've learned a while ago to just stick around for the funny banter because their views on games are so completely different from my own that if I didn't approach the Bombcast as a casual convo between friends then I'd be frothing at the mouth each week yelling obscenities on the bus.

That's crazy. The reason I didn't like it was its alarming lack of fun.

We all know Jeff's taste in games is somewhat crazy and I have no problems with that. However, his reasoning for shunning LoS seems hypocritical to me since he told people to drop their animosity towards reboots such as Syndicate because "they weren't gonna make a real sequel to it anyway. Enjoy this new good game!". And LoS is a damn good game which shouldn't be disregarded just because it isn't a 2D Metroidvania (classic Castlevanias weren't Metroidvanias either, btw).

@egg said:

I played Lords of Shadow for maybe 30 minutes but I don't see myself saying it has anything to with old Castlevania either. I mean let's face it, this game is based on one and one thing only, God of War and other blah on-rails action adventure games that imitate it. It's not Castlevania, it's modern gaming through and through. At best you can say it's "Castlevania type 3" --The introduction of a new formula that has little in common in previous games, much like how SotN introduced a new formula.

Unfortunately you wouldn't know that LoS is not at all the generic LoS clone that you believe it is because you only played 30 minutes of it. So there's that. Same with Brad and Patrick. Or Jeff and Ryan who only looked at it for a few minutes and somehow felt that was enough to pass judgement on the game.

The game brings back a lot of classic Castlevania things that got lost during the course of the Igavanias on DS. Mainly the European vibe, art style and lore that was increasingly replaced with Anime crap. In that sense, LoS is a truer Castlevania than the recent games on DS.

@Hunkulese: The beginning of the game isn't bad at all. In fact, it's pretty good... but rather slow (second chapter should've been shorter). It's just that the game really takes off after the third chapter and combat becomes more fun the more powers and moves you unlock.

• He gave Syndicate 5 stars. I read the review, played the game and tried to see it from his perspective, and just couldn't. There was very little going on there to make it different from most other shooters. In fact, almost nothing was.
• Same thing with Trackmania. I just don't see what he likes about that game.
• He didn't care for Grid, which I think is the best racing game for all time.
• Monster Hunter - oh man, Monster Hunter. He's never ever gonna give it another chance, let alone even consider discussing what's great about it.

Of course, none of this invalidates his opinions (he genuinely liked the first two, un-ironically). But it does pose a huge problem for me when I see his reviews; they're pointless for me, personally.

On an unrelated note, this is why I prefer listening to Vinny on the podcast and in quick looks. As hilarious as Jeff can be, his cynicism can get really grating. Vinny is far more positive and just fun to listen to. In short - Jeff makes me laugh harder, but Vinny makes me laugh more.