Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

It is so refreshing to see a game that has said "no" to multiplayer and really got back to basics.
A nice solid story line, with the odd cliche here and there, but I suppose that is hard to achieve these days when pitting good against evil as its all been done before. However, Catlevania has some good references to myth and story with characters like "pan" and "frankenstien" giving parts of the story a familiarity as you embark on a epic quest across the land. Which will see you into the 20 hour region (as single player games should be, not 5-6 hours like other similar titles)
One let down to the story is the voice acting. Even with actors such as Patrick Stewart and Robert Carlyle the dialogue seems to be a bit flat and without feeling. I wouldnt say the voice acting is bad, I just expected a bit better from the talent behind the mic.

The gameplay is fast paced hack'n'slash adventure much like god of war. The more enemies you kill/puzzles you solve, the more points you earn to buy upgardes for your primary/secondary weapons and magic abilities. There is light and dark magic. Light magic makes your attacks return health points to you with every sucessful strike, dark magic makes your attacks more powerful. Also, you can link together blocks, dodges and successful hits to gain "focus". Whilst in focus every succesful strike will offer up and orb to help refill your magic. This gives the combat a nice mix of tactics as if you are low on health and light magic you really need to get your focus which means slowing down and getting your blocks and dodging perfect. As the game takes you on a large scale adventure you will come across plenty of differnt enemies in all shapes and sizes from little forest goblins to giant titans and everything inbetween.

The visuals in Castlevania L.o.S are stunning. The detail of the lands and structures, the lighting effects, the crisp textures. This is one very asthetically pleasing game. With the story being an epic journey across the map, the scenery is constantly changing from lush forests to snowy ice capped mountains, bubbling misty swamps to grand castle libraries. When it comes to tales of old/lord of the rings style scenery, Castlevania has pretty much got it covered.

This game does have its flaws however. Many people have experienced crashing and glitches. The only thing I witnessed was a few times during cutscenes the dialogue would mute for the odd sentance or two. Also, while the cameras fixed path does give you some breath taking views it can also be a bit of a pain when trying to negotiate a small ledge or balance beam as it decides to swing round to get a better view meaning you pushing forward is now you pushing up and off of the ledge your making your way across.
This is a big game, it comes on two dvd's. So to get the best performance from installing make sure you have alot of free space.
However, the experience and enjoyment of the game far outwiegh these teething problems.

If you like the god of war/devil may cry style of fast paced gameplay, then I highly reccomend this game. If you have never experienced one before, then this is a good place to start. Its not a sequel (so the story is fresh) and will give you plenty of hours gaming.

To like this game or not to like it is really to be honest- going to be, as always, a matter of opinion. Konami may not have pleased long term fans of the series with open landscapes and lush environments (no real castle environments- well not like the older titles) but what they have done is brave to reinvent the series in such a way that your either going to love this game or hate it.

Graphics

Graphics are crisp and environments are lush- ranging from forests to ice caverns to swamps- there really is a eye candy world on offer here and set your hd tv to full hdmi capability and your doing a little "hell yeah" dance inside- ok well maybe thats just me- but my point is it looks real nice. The voice acting and orchestral score is spot on as well, with dramatic scenes matched superbly with the soundtrack and voice acting from the likes of patrick stewart and robert caryle. To be honest the gameplay flows so well with the cinematic sequences and qte events that you feel really attached to the story and it becomes like a movie that your fully engaged in.

Gameplay

Fans of games like prince of persia, shadow of the colossus will notice here some gameplay elements will have been (ahem) taken and put into this game. You can do one of two things here...You can either let it massivley bother you and say the developer didnt really invent for themselves and should have done this and that.... or you can actually just enjoy the superb mixture of gameplay mechanics that have been created, even if ideas have been borrowed. Just play a game for what is was designed to provide- FUN. And thats what castlevania does- provides loads of it. Fast paced action.

Gameplay mechanics

The only gripe that some may have here with castlevania is it can be a tad linear with the option of just one path (sometimes two) to your destination/goal. However, downloadable content has supposedly been promised for this title from the developer, so we wait in joyful hope for that. The camera is also fixed throughout the game with no player control. This didnt really bother me too much throughout to be honest and it seems pretty intelligent- repositioning itself when needed. One playthrough on normal difficulty is going to take you around 15-20 hours but the beauty of this game is after each chapter completion you get a special TRIAL- with asks you to do a task to get a special acheivement. This may be from beating a boss in under 2 minutes or destroying an environment quickly- i dont want to spoil things here but the TRIAL mode basically warrants a second playthrough of the game so value for money is pretty decent.
Controls are simple and effective, allowing you to power up your characters special attacks later in the game with simple control combos that work very nicely. You should ever be having any difficulty pulling off combo moves or battling the undead with the simplified controls here.

Sound/ Story

This is real simple- it is awesome. A superb orchestral soundtrack backed with superb superb voice acting. Story is very strong with plently of twists and turns and a very good ending. Keep watching after the credits for more!!!!!!!

OK THE negatives...

The only negatives you may notice in this game are sometimes it can suffer from the occassional drop in framerate. I did discover if you change your hd setting to 1080i it can reduce this A LITTLE but you'll really want it set to 1080p for picture clarity. Frankly the framerate drop isnt that frequent so its all good- but its really something konami should have rectified before the game going gold. The camera as mentioned before, may be a gripe for some, but to be honest its not that bad at all.

All in all, in my opinion Castlevania was really worthy of the £40 i spent on it on its release. It wasnt really a game I was looking forward to or excited about I must admit, mainly because of it being massively overshadowed by other games around its release (i.e medal of honor, forthcoming call of duty etc etc) . But seriously dont miss this one! It just goes to show that if you look hard enough you find a gem once in while amongst all the crap that gets released.

In a nutshell Castlevania is = devil may cry meets prince of persia and shadow of the collossus came along for the ride.

98/100

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is an action adventure game, combining combat with puzzles and adventuring and it does everything so well. It's a reboot to the originally series(which I haven't played but I've read up about them and know how different they are from Lords of Shadow). The combat is excellent, fun and bloody. The more puzzles you solve and the more enemies you kill then the more XP you earn and with this XP you can purchase new combat moves and other upgrades for Gabriel. The puzzles aren't exactly hard but they do prevent this game from just being a hack and slash which is good. If you do get stuck with the puzzles, you can access your travel book (contains information about characters, monsters, weapon upgrades and from here you can purchase new moves and abilities) and click on "solve puzzle" to get the answer to a puzzle. Then there's the adventuring where you must climb, repel with the combat cross (Gabriel's weapon) and jump through exotic and beautiful environments accompanied by an epic score of music.

The boss battles are pretty good as well and always accompanied by epic music which just makes the battles even more amazing. There are 12 chapters and it'll probably take you 20 hours to finish them all and maybe 40 hours to finish everything (i.e, replay on different difficulty levels, complete level trails, find all weapon upgrades). What with Lords of Shadow being quite cheap now, you'll get more than your money's worth.

The story is quite average and begins slow with Gabriel seeking to resurrect his beloved wife (this story has been done so many times to death now) it gets more interesting in further chapters as you see that Gabriel has a dark destiny ahead of him and then during later near-end chapters it gets even more interesting but never truly reaches epic. The ending is not bad in my opinion but I did find it rather misplaced.

With that said, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow has many memorable moments - fighting the ice titan, scaling the castle walls (yes, the castle is in the game for 5 chapters although there is no Dracula), fighting advancing forces of vampires and travelling through beautiful environments.

If you're looking for a good game that will last you some time, then this is it and it was most certainly the best action-adventure game of 2010 and could even still hold this title for 2011.

P.S

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