Castlevania: Lord of Shadows - PS3 - Demo - Review

OK, I really need to take a short break from calling palin a POS so I decided to give this a review.

Alright, first things first, I really hate castlevania games. I have no idea what my problem is but I keep getting them and then they keep pissing me off and I get rid of them. I think I really love the idea and thats why I keep going for them then... I start playing them and remember that I hate the game play. At least this time I'm poor enough so that I'm only trying the demo :D

OK, start thing out and we go right to right to a "press start" screen. hmph... I think this is the first PS3 game that really means "press start" instead of "oh, you can use X instead of start if you want to". After following instructions, a book opens up and tells you "Demo is not representative of final quality" and you can choose to accept that... no other option, heh, thats pretty funny. After accepting, we get a screen adjustment screen. Next up we choose difficulty, I'll go with the easiest, "Squire", natch. Now we start getting a story... wait... is that Jean Luc Picard? If not it's someone giving a damn fine impression. blah blah blah, can I skip this? YES I CAN :D Ack, more story with just a black screen... Can I skip this... No. oh...wait, it's going into a movie that I'm still not really paying attention to but it looks nice. A bunch of people wandering down a dark rainy road at night. WTF, why don't they wait till day so it's warmer... I don't care, I'm going the other way. Around this time I'm thinking it would be nice if I had had the option of knowing the controls before now but whats this... I'm carrying a cross of some type that has all the ends sharpened... Nice!

I've reached a dead end and start getting control instructions, ah, about time. Some werewolves start climbing over the walls and I kill them following the instructions that keep coming up and stopping the action until... I get to the "How to grab an enemy and give him a special move" instruction. I blow the grab and decide to just kill him but thats a mistake... it really wants me to do the special move... alright, alright, I'll do the stupid move. I kill a bunch more werewolves and learn some more moves when out of the dark comes a big ass werewolf. Oh joy... the "how to fight a boss monster" explanation. I whittle the big guy down until he jumps up onto a big rock and the game goes into a cut scene showing him getting strength from the moon, then a cut down to me and a big glowing stick on the ground with the instruction to pick up the stick. As it transfers from cut scene back to game play, I try to pick up the stick but am to slow and get stomped on by the boss. I then spend the next 20 minutes trying to pick up the stick and do something... anything with it but all I seem to be able to do is run around with it. Finally, I decide to drop it and just try killing him again. As I get it almost dead... yup, you guessed it, back up onto the rock and more moon power and another 10 minutes of running around with the stick before trying to kill him again. The third time, light dawns on marble head and I realize I have to pick the stick up at the exact right time to impale him when he jumps down off the rock... grrr... ok, at least he is dead.

I wander into the forest before being given a chance to drink at the restore health fountain... grrr... and get treated to some more story telling by Captain Picard. The gist is that I'm going in search of my girl friend because I was in denial of what she was... huh? Anyway, she was executed it seems and I'm going after her... I probably should have listened more to the story at the start.

So this unicorn wanders up to me and offers to bring me to what I'm seeking, so I jump on him and it is off we go. Riding down a forest path and up comes some big ass werewolves with some small werewolves... riding them... WTF? Whatever. I start flailing away with the attack buttons until I no longer have control and I go rolling head first off the unicorn and onto the ground... and off goes the unicorn... Hey douchebag! You wanted to help me, remember? I guess not. I fight off some werewolves that crawl out of the forest until the unicorn comes chargeing... from behind... what does he teleport? Why didn't he teleport us out of danger? Stupid unicorn. Anyway, I jump back onto him as he runs past and off we go down the path again with more werewolves chasing us. Same shit happens, I take a nose dive, unicorn runs off, I kill bad guys, unicorn has teleported back again and I jump on again. As we run off this second time it goes into a cut scene where a bunch of bad guys are blocking our path to a chasm, the unicorn runs them down and jumps it while telling me he has no more energy and must go, dis-appearing as I land on the other side... WTF? No more energy? Who was doing all the fighting.... Not you fucker. I dust myself off and resolve to go on... Demo ends.


Graphics - meh. The animations of the characters are nice and they look pretty good but the background look like screen savers. I hate to say it but perhaps the poorest looking game I have seen on the PS3 yet. I hope their disclaimer at the start meant they were still giving it an over haul.

Game Play - Castlevania. I hate it but if you don't it's here and you will like it. This plays very much like a 2D castlevania in a 3D world... A very good translation of the 2D castlevania into a 3D world.

Bottom Line - It pissed me off. I hate Castlevania... I wonder when the next one is coming out... Back to GD to call palin a POS some more :D

He was watching me as I was playing/writing that while doing shots, we had a lot of laughs doing it :D Glad you liked it!