Shadow of a Doubt

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Castlevania has always been a favorite franchise of mine. Simon's Quest was one of the first games I remember playing on my NES and it was one of the last games I played to completion with my dad (although Scott mysteriously picked up a Counter Strike habit somewhere in the past decade). Super Castlevania IV and Symphony of the Night certainly need no introduction to this audience. Yet despite dominating - and continuing to dominate on the handheld consoles - the 2D platforming era, Castlevania has only made half-hearted attempts at 3D on a couple of forgotten releases on the Nintendo64.

With this history in mind, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow deserves at least a modicum of respect for not being completely terrible. That being said, it is also not very good.

Lords of Shadow is shamelessly derivative and manages to rip off every notable game of the past few console cycles. Kratos's hack-and-slash chains are re-appropriated as the Belmont family whip. Action sequences are broken up by infuriatingly touchy Uncharted scenic explorations. Even the Colossi of Shadows make brief cameos as completely incongruent boss sequences.

As Lord of Shadows is such an unwieldy amalgamation of so many disparate games, the control set-up is frustratingly obtuse. All of the stolen - I mean creatively repurposed - special maneuvers equals a myriad of different button combinations to memorize. On multiple occasions over the course of the 20-hour (yes, it is that long) game, I had to pause and lookup online the keystroke to some skill that I had never used before to solve an impassible puzzle.

Worse yet, the level design is simply lazy. Linear corridors fork and then re-emerge in non-sensical directions. The developers didn't even make an effort to hide power-ups organically in the environment. Instead your simply encounter a wall with a notice that you will have to return with some different upgrade later in the game. Lowest common denominator gaming at its finest.

This might all sound like I hated the game -- but I didn't. Lords of Shadow has the makings of a decent first step in the franchise, which would have lent me some hope that we might see a more polished sequel on the horizon (such as how Among Thieves fulfilled the promise of Drake's Fortune.)

Unfortunately, the game ends with a twist, which while interesting, completely negates this possibility and makes me question why they even bothered heading down this High Gothic direction in the first place if they were just going to reboot with the next one.

Grade: C+