You may not want to marry one of them, but you will take her home and ravage her in bed.  This type of carnal pleasure is not random – it’s Kojima Productions. Continue Reading

For the three of you out there that have somehow stumbled upon the Glitchoris, let me just state that this is the final post regarding Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.  Once you finish reading this second opinion review, we will have proverbially driven the last tetanus-infested nail into the pun-intended coffin, and laid this fucking game to rest.  By no means am I saying it sucks; in a few seconds you’ll see it’s just the opposite.  I just am sure you all are sick of seeing more posts on Lords of Shadow, and you know what, I’m kind of getting sick of writing them.  So without further adoo, on to the BLUF.

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Gabriel Belmont is one tough dude.  Sure, he’s sticking to his Christendom, but the way he swings a cross-chain makes Indiana Jones look like a stunt double.

Glitchoris BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)

If you play video games to stimulate the squishy puzzle-solving neurons in your brain, then Castlevania is right up your alley.  Add visually stunning graphics and an interactive grapple aspect to fighting, and you have yourself another solid installment to the series.

Paging Doctor Kojima

Get used to playing within cutscene-quality graphics because Kojima and the dev team know no other way to construct this graphical force majeur.  Too many times in our past, we wait in anticipation for the next installment of a hit series only to be disappointed with the lack of evolution.  This is not a problem with Lords of Shadow.  Whether you are scaling a seemingly  impossibly high mountain, decimating a titan, or running upon the chains leading up to the castle (this is Castlevania), watching Gabriel turn into the size of a peanut while maintaining the daunting visuals of the behemoth-sized constructs is truly amazing.

Aforementioned, the puzzles wreak havoc upon your ADD.  Want to tune out?  Sorry.  Want to put on autopilot and run-and-gun?  Sorry.  While the puzzles all have logical answers, they will become more of a challenge than even the final boss himself.  Now, you may cheat and find the answer, even in-game, but if you play this for the challenge, then you will get your money’s worth.  Kojima plus Castlevania equals cerebral gaming.

Judge The Game By Its Cover

Gabriel is a man hell-bent upon bringing his murdered wife back from the dead.  He ain’t here to pluck daisies.  The game invents itself with its color hues of dark blues, dark reds, and that one very dark shade of black.  It won’t take many chapters into the game (twelve total) before the player realizes that the dark nature of Gabriel’s actions are beginning to consume his very own soul.  And this makes for an excellent story line.  Gabriel is an archetypal dark hero character.  He is a man of good intentions who ends up fighting for a cause not of his own.  So, he will play like Kratos from God of War one minute and Link the next (he fights with fairies, c’mon now), but he always ends up as Gabriel Belmont.

Castlevania does not deviate from it’s predecessors.  It is merely injected with current-day technology and fantastic voice acting.  We still get to visit the clocktower levels and beat ghouls up with a fucking chain whip.  And holy water actually does something in this game.  Although I just don’t understand how Gabriel can make it all the way without one scratch on his face.  Seriously, he has a perfect complexion.  I didn’t know they had ProActive back in 1047.

Final Thoughts

Lords of Shadow reminds us of how potent the original series has remained over time.  It’s challenging; no doubt about it.  The puzzles and continuous search for the right camera angle will either prove cumbersome or delightful, depending on your point of view.  Regardless, Castlevania is an excellent addition to any collection of games.

Oh, and the final cutscene?  I bet even those of you who choose not to play this game will Youtube it.

Leave it to Hideo Kojima to take a defunct series, albeit one that lives in the hearts and minds of many of us late twenty-somethings, and bring it back to life.  Castlevania: Lords of Shadow reminds us of why we loved video games in the first place.  We can stare at a screen and think (or shout out loud) to ourselves, “Holy shit, did you just see that?!”

If you have had the opportunity to read Raffman’s initial thoughts about this game, you have probably taken notice that Castlevania: Lords of Shadow plays and feels like the God of War series.  It does.  Why?  Because nobody models the shitty games if they want to create a new classic.  Although there is something daunting and haunting about conveying that Kojima and the dev team decided to stick a new frame over an old chassis.  It’s comparable to your old Economics teacher that taught you the true genius was not creating the first wheel, but creating the other 3.

The first thing you’ll notice is how fast the game moves.  And you better be able to block, because you can’t Dynasty Warriors yourself through every battle.  Lu Bu can kill more Japs than a 1940′s Marine platoon, but this is not your job.  You need to strategically time your blocks and barrel-role the likes of which Star Fox would be jealous.  Sorry, no kermit to tell you to “Do a barrel role!”

A major element from the originals that the developers stayed true to form with is the linear fashion of Gabriel’s progress.  I’m not talking side-scrolling here.  With the inclusion of a few forks in the road and the ability to backtrack to earlier levels at later points in the story, you know where to go to move forward, but you also can look forward to backtracking to familiar territory to reach previously unreachable areas.  For those very few Soulblazer fans for the SNES, you know what I’m talking about.  Who didn’t love teleporting back to Dr. Leo’s paintings and massacring those metallic floor-squids?  Not this guy.

I’m looking forward for some more play time over the weekend.  It seems Raffman has taken all the good games to review, but it’s high time I jump back on the beaten path.  With a fucking chain whip.

What were you doing in 1987?   Were you watching Red Dawn on VHS?  Or were you cuffing your jeans and bedazzling your White Snake jean jacket? Probably neither, considering the majority of you probably hadn’t even reached sperm phase yet.  I know you most definitely were not on Glitchoris, because I was only five years old, and I had much better things to do at that age than blog: like hit on girls, beat Super Mario Bros for the umpteenth fucking time, and play a new game from Konami called, “Castlevania”.   Alright, so I wasn’t quite playing Nintendo at that age, but two years later I was, and loving it.   I actually remember watching my friend play as Simon Belmont for the first time, and the music in that game still creeps me out today.   It’s hard to believe it’s been twenty three years since Konami’s original hit store shelves, but you know what’s even tougher – that it’s newest effort at the series, Lords of Shadow, looks like it will finally be that Castlevania game that we’ve all been dreaming about.  Check out the trailer right here, then the link below for Glitchoris’ full preview.

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