Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

[Scarecrow]

So... Who's playing it? My bro just got this game so I've been checking it out. Apparently they finally made a 3D Castlevania game worth playing They had to rip off a bunch of other games to do it but it looks really nice.

[GrubbTheFragger]

I am Currently playing it. Its pretty great. I am a huge Castlevania fan anyway but it may steal ALOT of ideas but its still fun

[Nate]

I'm sure I'll discuss this game at length on the next Gamecast, but I'll give a quick overview here.

1. Graphics - they're good, yeah, but I don't like one aspect of it. SHINY. SHINY EVERYWHERE. The beginning of the game has Gabriel ride in on a horse that looks like it's off a merry-go-round with how stupidly shiny it is. The levels also never feel "real." It's like I'm running around on a giant plastic mold of what the real world looks like because of how shiny everything is. If they'd cut that out, they'd be way better.

2. Music: Awesome. Totally awesome.

3. Controls: This is another place where the game becomes kind of annoying. The controls work fine, usually. However, putting the "absorb magic orb" button as the same button you use to move/dodge was a bad idea, so when you want to charge up your magic in the middle of combat, you kind of can't unless you're willing to take a hit or two.

And maybe I just suck at blocking, but unlike God of War, I can't seem to block if I'm in an attack. In GoW if I was attacking and I saw an enemy about to hit, I could tap the block button and bam, no problem. In this game, which it's more realistic I guess, not being able to immediately go into a block while I'm in the middle of attacking makes it frustrating (unless I just suck at timing, that's also possible).

The game also seems to have about fifty million moves. This isn't in itself a bad thing, I guess, I mean it's nice to have lots of options in combat. But, what ends up happening is there's this huge list of moves that require certain button presses, but when I'm in the thick of battle and surrounded, I just end up mashing square over and over. It's like, I'll buy a new skill, and try it out in a fight...until I start getting attacked by multiple enemies and forget all about the skill and mash square a bunch, and by the time I get into the next fight, I've forgotten all about what sequence of buttons to press to use that combo I just got, and resort to mashing square again.

None of the moves even seem particularly useful anyway. Maybe I'm using them wrong, I don't know. The only ones that seem worthwhile are the ones that allow you to grab/kick an enemy from midair.

4. Fun: The game is enjoyable, but I'm not liking it as much as I thought I would. I think the reason for this is that well, I suck out loud at it. I die CONSTANTLY in this game, I'm really not good at it at all, and when you're dying a lot, a game becomes frustrating and it's difficult to have fun.

I've gotten Platinum in all three God of War games, so it's not like I'm terrible at these kinds of games, so I can only assume that this game is a lot harder than God of War is. I think there's a few reasons for that. One, life gems in this game are EXTREMELY rare, so it's hard to build up your life meter. Two, health restoration in this game is pretty much nonexistent. You get a healing fountain every once in a blue moon, meaning your only other real method of healing is to use Light Magic...which drains horribly fast, and it's hard to recharge it in mid-combat, plus you only get a couple of orbs when an enemy dies. You can get more by using the Focus Scroll, but since I seem to be terrible at blocking, that pretty much never fills up for me.

Also God of War allowed you to make your weapon more powerful if you had enough orbs on hand. This game doesn't have any sort of weapon experience, and so far the game hasn't given me any upgrades to make my attack do more damage...except for Shadow Magic, which has the same problems as Light Magic as I mentioned above. Plus, GoW allowed you to permanently increase your weapon's attack power, Shadow Magic is only temporary. Maybe there are upgrades to increase attack power later in the game, but I'm at almost the halfway point of the game, and in GoW you could have your blades up to level 3 or maybe even 4 by that point depending on how much you focused on them.

Anyway. It's fun, I'm enjoying it, but it's not as good as I hoped it would be, outside of the music of course, that's fantastic.

[Scarecrow]

Ah yes... I know what you mean about the "shiny" problem. It wasn't a big deal to me but I did comment it looked like everything was either all wet and slippery or didn't have the right texture thus looked plastic...

Fighting hasn't been that bad for me though... I don't know the only time I have healing problems are on boss fights. Regular fights I do pretty decent getting plenty of orbs from filling up that bar on the bottom of the screen and using light magic to heal when I attack an enemy. Hardly ever use shadow magic except for like pushing things or breaking doors... if it's empty, it's empty, I don't usually bother filling it up unless my light magic is full. Bosses are another story though. I get hit too often to ever really fill up the bar and keep my light magic up. Still I don't do TOO bad at those though a couple have been quite frustrating. Don't really block, just dodge a lot. I tend to die the most on ledges or jumps though.

I've never played GoW myself though so maybe I'm not used to this style and adapted to the game mechanics a bit better? I dunno... but yeah I like it. I don't normally play games of this nature (reason why I've never played GoW even) but I liked the theme and the atmosphere. And I was actually looking forward to playing against Dracula in this but after I got the gauntlet, I have the feeling you are Dracula... or turn in to him at the end.

Anyway I'm really liking it. And yeah the music is awesome.

[Nate]

I was thinking/hoping that the Dark Lord of the Vampires would be Dracula, but turns out she's a chick, so...there goes that idea.