E3 Preview: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Preview
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 23 June 2010 / 3,763 Views
Castlevania is a series that is struggling to find its own identity. Ever since Symphony of the Night on the original PlayStation, Castlevania games have adopted the Metroidvania style, where game progression relies on you finding new items to unlock previously inaccessible paths. Lather, rinse, repeat. Besides the N64 flop and a few 3D PS2 games that went largely unnoticed, the formula has lived on in the DS games for over twelve years. It's time for a shake-up. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow seems to be that shake-up.
What does LoS do to reinvent the franchise? Well, it makes it play more like God of War. Oh well... so much for a new experience. Yet, is that really a bad thing, a Gothic God of War? Instead of the Chains of Olympus, you have a whip. Instead of Kratos, you have a dude with hair. Instead of QTE attacks to kill the big monsters, you have... okay, so you still have QTE attacks to kill the big monsters. It's not bad; I just hope it uses the Castlevania universe to deliver some surprises instead of just giving us a Gothic skin on a GoW clone a la Dante's Inferno.
So the demo starts out. It's raining, and everything looks shiny and cool. Dark. Lights bounce off the soaked cobblestones and play tricks on the eyes. Zoom in on the protagonist's face. He looks mad. Then start with the killin'! Here come some wolves, big ones. They're charging! Quick, hit A to dodge! Yeah! Then whip whip whip. Looks a lot like Kratos's blades hmmm...
Here's some dudes with fire! Whip whip whip. Experience! Learn a new combo! Innovation! Ahhh...
This game is for the action game crowd. Prince of Persia, God of War, Jak and Daxter... it seems like Konami has decided to break the series in half, leaving it's 6-player, 2D, online Metroidvania-style Harmony of Despair for the old-school crowd (well, new-old-school Castlevania crowd - real old-school would bring us back to the NES days of uncontrollable parabolic jumps), and this one is for the Generation Y kids. Unless we're up to Generation Z now. Are we? I feel old.
It's definitely not bad, but is moving away from what made the series relevant again in 1997 really the best idea? The second dimension seems to be where it's at nowadays - just look at the Mortal Kombat revival. Still, people thought Symphony of the Night was God's Gift to Gaming when it first released, and that was a huge break from the Castlevania mold. Maybe this will do something similar? It's so hard to tell in a five-minute demo. Fingers crossed for something worthy of the Castlevania pedigree!
You can check out some gameplay footage here, or just wait until the fall, when you can play it yourself on PS3 and Xbox 360.
