Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
After Patrick Stewart speaks at you for a bit, the game starts…
He’ll continue to pop up throughout your adventures, but it has to be said; it’s always relevant, both to the story and to the game for technical reasons. You can tell there was a point earlier in development where the load-times lasted longer, since loading is usually done halfway through a speech. You can skip the speech once the loading is done, but it’s rude to cut off a man mid-monologue, isn’t it?
Whilst enjoying Sir Patrick’s dulcet tones you’ll notice: The game is ridiculously gorgeous! Before now, had you heard of Spanish developer MercurySteam? Under the care of Kojima Productions they’ve created a visual masterpiece. This is a game guaranteed to have your jaw agape, early and often, no matter how hard you are to please. Without irony or hyperbole, this game has points where you have never seen a game look better.
The voice acting doesn’t begin and end with ‘that bloke from Star Trek and X-Men’; your character, Gabriel Belmont, is himself wonderfully voiced by Robert Carlyle. Always sounding sincere, he deftly avoids the over-acting trap often seen when screen actors lend their voices to games. It’s accurate to say every character is well-voiced here adding to the enjoyment of the experience and it’s just nice that those who speak most often do so without ‘phoning it in’.
A boon then, that the music and other audio beautifully complements the drama of your exploits. Never as cheesy as the opening to this paragraph, but definitely full of drama.
The first of the game’s clear influences is in the main gameplay style, which is very much in the God of War mould. However, Kratos in all his anger forgot about staying power; you could complete the God of War ‘trilogy’ in less time than it takes to play through Castlevania. Yet, there’s no feeling of a saggy middle here, since you’re constantly thrown into new environments, given new toys and met with new revelations.
Is what we have here a well-paced God of War clone, albeit with everything you see and hear done to high standards? No, there’s more to it than that. The puzzles here are much closer to true puzzles than God of War dared venture: With an ingenious get-out clause; if you can’t be bothered, forfeit the (hefty) experience reward.
Also, at the end of every level, you’re shown a percentage and unlock a trial. The percentage can reach 110% if you’ve done all of the following; found all the collectibles in the level, completed it on the highest of four difficulties (which you have to complete the game to unlock) and complete the trial. Does any of that make you groan? Well it needn’t:
1. The collectibles are upgrades of some kind, not just some arbitrary fetch-quest that rewards you with nothing other than a trophy here and there.
2. The game rewards every kill with experience, which is used to buy new combos and abilities.
3. Levels often have avenues you can’t explore because you get the required abilities later on.
4. Those trials can be quite fiendish, but elegantly showcase how many different ways there are to do things. One is even for [spoiler redacted] in a minute and a half!
5 to Infinity. We won’t spoil the rest.
There is, perhaps, one note of caution to issue about C:LOS, and it concerns the Castlevania part. If you love the series, this game will toy with your emotions mercilessly! Devotees expecting that the Koji Igarashi formula will finally be done polygonal justice, think again. What we get are a lot of courteous nods, but MercurySteam were clearly making their game, not someone else’s.
So while we want a 3D Symphony of the Night as much as anyone, we’re delighted beyond words with what we got.
