365//365: Day 284 – Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (360)

"A lesson on how not to reboot a franchise."

(Check out Phire’s take on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow before you read through this review)

Lets think back to the late 80′s, when Castlevania made its debut….what were the most notable features and figures? A Belmont, a whip, undead adversaries, stiff jumping mechanics, epic soundtracks, Dracula, sub weapons, and balls to the walls difficulty. For the majority of its existence, each Castlevania game has featured all, or at least most of the above in some form or another. When the series made its jump to a third dimension on the Nintendo 64, the concept of a whip wielding protagonist lived on, while the gameplay, music and entertainment value was as dead and bare bones as a random skeleton in the series. Hell, Castlevania Resurrection for the Sega Dreamcast was put down before it was released. Subsequent releases followed years later, with Lament of Innocence providing a modest challenge, though the camera system was too inhibitive, and Curse of Darkness feeling more like an arcade hack and slash than a castle dwelling adventure. While the 3D side of the franchise was faltering, the continued 2D titles on the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS maintained many of the celebrated features of Castlevania’s past, while tweaking the experience enough to steer the franchise to new territories, while maintaining its core.

A couple of years ago, a trailer was released by Konami for a game titled Lords of Shadow, featuring an unknown lead brandishing a quasi-whip contraption. Obviously this was going to be a new Castlevania game, though it was denied briefly, to prevent any spotlights being removed from the already dim bulbed Castlevania Judgment for the Nintendo Wii. Soon after it was revealed to be a reboot of the franchise, having no prior connection to the timeline of the previous titles. What little I played at E3 was pretty impressive, both visually and the comfort of the mechanics, and quickly became a must buy for me when release day came around.

Oddly enough, when I got my hands on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (LoS), I apparently received something closer to the lines of Shadow of the Uncharted God Raiders.

LoS is an enigma of sorts. Never once will you full realize what it wants to be. Is it trying to reclaim its former glory in a new setting? Is it trying to be Uncharted 3 or the next Tomb Raider game with the wall climbing, shimmys and other acrobatic feats? Is it showing its contention to be Shadow of the Colossus 2 with some of the large scale boss battles you partake in? Regardless of what kind of identity crisis LoS has going on, there’s one thing that’s shines above any kind of comparison — the fact that this feels almost nothing like a Castlevania game.

A vast majority of this 15-20 hour adventure deals with what could be considered unconventional locations to a Castlevania game, including forest runs in broad daylight, outdoor rocky surroundings and scenes that could have easily been pulled from an Uncharted title. The rogue gallery is just as obtuse, with a heavier emphasis on werewolf type creatures and random nonsensical critters as opposed to the familiar skeleton legion, Medusa heads, mummys and poltergeists. It’s quite a system shock to play through large portions of the game and deal with recycled werewolf creatures with aggressive AI patterns and nothing particularly enjoyable about combating them. Granted, AI patterns were never intelligent in previous games, but if you’re so gung-ho about rebooting a franchise and adjust things that shouldn’t be adjusted, why not at least make the AI competent enough, with actual AI patterns?

Previous Castlevania titles in the 3D world have had multiple issues with camera and character control. With LoS, you have no camera control, leading to even more haphazard situations than there should be. As with another title that forgoes any sort of camera control (Metroid: Other M), the camera automatically follows Gabriel Belmont, without the ability to check certain dead spots, or readjust for a more proper perspective that doesn’t hinder your progression. Moving Gabriel around provides no fuss, but platforming sections will. In a bit of an oddity, just like Dead Rising 2, if you hit the jump button while in the air, you perform another jump once you land. Why this happens, no one knows, but luckily that aspect to jumping doesn’t throw you over the edge. Having to jump from platform to platform might, as your obscured view of the platform ahead, will occasionally throw off just how close to the edge you are, short changing your jump and sending you down to the pit below.

Strangely enough, pitfalls don’t kill you in LoS. They will take a portion of your health and return you to the platform above, giving the player another chance to make that leap of faith. This does remedy the cheap death situations that have plagued platform jumping segments, as well as being knocked into pits by your enemies since the series since its inception, but certain other aspects have not changed for the better. Even on a normal difficulty, you’ll find yourself dying constantly at certain points from any number of enemy set ups that lie ahead of you. It’s not completely due to this combination of combatants so much as it’s the utter lack of health replenishment points.

More often than not, you’ll pop up from a death at a previous auto-save point with a diminished state of health. You can replenish your health at designated heath fountains (which appear 0-1 times per stage, usually having its returns rendered useless quickly afterwards) or use your Light magic powers to drain health upon each successful hit upon the enemy. Both Light and Shadow magic (Shadow allowing a more destructive nature to your physical attacks) require essence to refill separately, which doesn’t fill up easily enough, so your methods of regaining your often dangerously low health are extremely limited. Most deaths come from the combined aspects of limited health replenishment, auto-saves that save with your health near expired and encountering the larger enemies that are surrounded by their underlings. Replaying what should be elementary situations time after time becomes tiring and beyond frustrating.

While the heavy emphasis upon establishing a fresh take to a somewhat dated approach is appreciated, the approach LoS takes doesn’t necessarily add new elements to the franchise so much as it takes previously used concepts from several games and throws them into the mix, just to come off as something that it could have been without. While the Tomb Raider-like wall climbing and shimmy action adds to the Castlevania world in a positive manner, the larger scale battles, such as the ice and rock golems, don’t fit the bill as well. It’s a commendable method of dispatching a boss, but this Shadow of Colossus-like boss battles feel less meaningful when you’re not tackling a massive skeleton, or an over-sized Frankenstein monster. The effort to gain a larger fan-base by introducing a plethora of workable and unnecessary additions, while eliminating the emphasis of elements that made the franchise so memorable, could turn out to backfire, alienating veteran Castlevania enthusiasts from the lack of familiarity and hook.

The franchise reboot is far from misguided though, as there are some solid adjustments, boosts and tweaks to be found. While the audio production doesn’t necessarily fit the bill to a Castlevania game, the musical interludes fit the situation at hand. These are well composed orchestral pieces as a whole that coincide with the action on screen, though again, do not feel as if they match the franchise properly. The voice acting is serviceable, though lacks emotion from everyone other than the Patrick Stewart narratives, which brighten up the experience considerably. No matter what role or what game he is involved in, you can rest assured that Patrick Stewart can ans will make the most mundane into something magical.

LoS has a rich visual quality to it, with some well detailed worlds to explore. Putting aside the issues with the predominantly sunlight locations, the shading, lighting and quality of scenery and Gabriel Belmont himself can be stunning at times. One minor hiccup is a somewhat choppy frame rate on occasions. There’s so much detail going on with foliage, shadows and other minute distinctions, that the frame rate will chop down a tad, though it’s never anything that adversely affects the gameplay, nor does it seem to happen during battles. Any visual oddities remain secluded to the closer up shots with the wealth of detail, for the most part.

Combat is a peculiar blend of Devil May Cry and God of War, with a weak and heavy attack and the ability to unlock new combos and perks from experience points you gain throughout your journeys. Quick Time Events make an appearance in LoS in a non-frustrating manner. Unlike titles such as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, which mainly forced you to press several buttons in succession, LoS is a healthy mix of rapidly pressing one button to corral a larger adversary and take them as your mount, or a Lost Odyssey-like approach, where you’ll need to press any face button at the appropriate time. These are brought upon in an infrequent manner, so the whole QTE inclusion is never an abrasive one. Fighting ground based enemies offers little in the way of detract ions, easily being able to whip around any which way you choose, but applying this to airborne enemies while there are ground based adversaries, then you’ll come into some unnecessary frustrations. Landing a hit while on the ground, or while airborne, becomes a bigger chore than it should be, especially as you progress further in and have to deal with numerous flight bound adversaries, making your life difficult. The lack of a lock on button or toggle of some sort can be a source of scrutiny for these combat woes, as it would  have alleviated this problematic scenario significantly.

Keeping in mind that this is a reboot and that certain aspects would be tuned, adjusted and such, LoS seems to go out of its way to totally forgo crucial elements to the franchise, while tweaking what they kept to be something far less appealing to both the genre and the series as a whole. The sheer amount of infuriating moments compounded into a short amount of play time is baffling. Health replenishment is a main factor in this overbearing difficulty at times, but the lack of lock on targeting when dealing with either a near dozen aerial enemies or several larger enemies that give you no time to attack or counterattack. The fact that that the enemy line up doesn’t match what we’ve grown to love over the years is a downer as well. There’s plenty of opportunity to take a new turn on such an old road. J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot kept many of the longstanding Star Trek lore, scenery and feelings, with adequate, well thought out tweaks here and there, all while both remaining faithful to the franchise while giving the series a needed turn involving the flagship characters. Adding infrequent and overly saturated aspects like QTE’s, context sensitive whip swinging locations and a myriad of gameplay elements from far more successful titles screams derivative more than successfully delivering.

Sadly, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow doesn’t take the approaches that other successful reboots took — taking what’s familiar and breathing a new life into them, while not completely alienating the source material. While it might sound like the complete game is a massive downer, it’s more towards the fact that the changes are so radical, that the end product feels more like a generic third person action/adventure game that wants to imitate every successful franchise from within the genre. The game picks up considerably when you exit the bright outdoor areas and enter more of the interior sections, including Dracula’s Castle, though it’s a painful first half getting there. Combat can be thrilling on some occasions, but the lack of a lock on system and the oppressive number of enemies at once, combined with the paltry number of health replenishment moments take a deep bite into the neck. While not an out-right abhorrent title, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is an excellent rental for someone who wants to play a long, often involving, barely above average third person action/adventure title with some commendable eye candy to guide them through. As a Castlevania title though, it’s about as familiar and welcoming as steak in your own heart.

Rating: 5.8