Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

Castlevania is no newcomer to the 3d scene, having had various attempts in the past. This newest rendition, however, not only succeeds in its task of being a decent game, but also acts as a complete franchise Reboot (like oh so many movies nowadays).

So we fall into the shoes of one troubled Gabriel Belmont, a whip (sorry, "combat cross") using bad ass with a Scottish accent who has serious rage problems against evil. It appears that evil has killed his wife, who's soul is now lost to limbo because a dark spell has cut off access to heaven. Thus begins his quest to travel across the entire map of the games 10 or so chapters for revenge and an attempt to return his wife to the land of the living.

Scenes are voice acted lovely, with Belmont's Scottish-y accent being fun, although I feel that Patrick Stewart's monologues while the chapter is setting up sometimes feel rather un-attached (although I do suppose it fits his character). Most of the animations are quite good as well, although there are some facial animations that leave a person wanting. Details in both the environments and the characters themselves are sometimes stunning, but most of the time your more focused on not dying to enjoy them.

That brings me to the first point, when you start the game fighting werewolves, you feel utmost bad ass - stomping and slaying left and right. At a certain point in the game, however, you start getting your red-garbed rump handed to you, wondering "what just happened?" It's not that the game is perma-hard or something, far from it, but sometimes the difficulty level ramps at a rate that its more like a stair than a curve - manageable, but could be quite the turnoff to the more casual, not super-great players out there. Puzzles are similar as well - some puzzles are no brainers, others you end up figuring out purely on accident just because you got lucky. In the case of one puzzle after a boss fight, you really have to be perfect in your timing or else you won't get the line of blood to reach its next "pool point", causing you to reset back to the last pool point. Considering there where only about 4 points to hit on the way, it took me well over half an hour for just this one tiny puzzle. Each puzzle normally, however, comes with hints in the form of scrolls, and you can "unlock" the puzzle's solution simply by forfeiting all the exp you would earn otherwise.

Experience is used to upgrade moves (better combo attacks, stronger special powers), although with how fights work out most the time you'll be using the default attacks and a few of the fancier relic-abilities. This is mainly just because it's rare an enemy (or pack of them) will let you get off a move that focuses on just one of them without interrupting with a dodge or smack to the back of your head, stopping you from what your doing. Bosses, on the other hand, will take the attack and punch your face to show you they don't want any of that. Most the time, its better to just hit with a few normal smacks and then dodge, rinse and repeat. Grapple moves exist, and result in a 'QTE' (quick time event) where you time the push to a large circle shrinking to the smaller circle, and ranges in results from kicking a imp in the crotch, causing it to explode to a simple stake through the heart of the vampire. Sub-weapons exist in this game, although they don't feel nearly as useful as they used to - this may be because they exist in an ammo-count variety instead of a heart usage setup. Silver knives work great against werewolves, and then quickly become something that you could care less about later on. Faeries distract enemies (faeries? Really? With so many sub weapons in the old games, we had to come with faeries?) and can be turned into exploding pint-sized fliers using your "light magic". Holy water is great, AOE (area of effect) weapons, can be used to shield you with the ole LM turned on, but is so limited you don't want to waste them. The last sub weapon is the "crystal" that summons a demon to beat crap up on the screen cut-scene style. Cool and all, but you need to collect 3 parts to get 1 crystal, and that's all you can hold. I think I used it once, just for fun.

The enemies are varied enough, ranging from staples like the wolves and the vamps all the way to ogres and giant dead dragons reanimated. Of course, the boss size is also as different, and a true scale check can be seen in the video version posted. Each boss may be tricky at first, but you figure out the pattern and what to do, and it becomes a breeze. Well, more a breeze than before anyways.

The music is there, but it doesn't, to me at least, feel as fun or memorable as the normal castlevania's of the past (with the exception of the theme showing up when you are put inside a music box in one level). The plot itself is nothing super elaborate, although it does have some good plot twists, some I didn't see coming, and one I did after the game's credits roll.

All in all, I enjoyed playing it, and it was a good use of time (talking 20+ hours just to beat the game on normal difficulty, not getting all the little secrets or bonus tasks). You end up having to revisit some stages to get upgrades to the amount of sub weapons you can carry, which I did, just to not really end up using them in the end, but the replayability is there for the devoted.

Just in time for Halloween this review is, how fitting?

Front Mission Evolved

Ah yes, Front Mission. I've known you for years - way back into the super nintendo days - as one of the first cool turn-based robot games. Developing yourself over the years with more robo-varioations, better storylines, fun characters, and of course better graphics.



In the particular case of FME, things take a strange twist (much like they did for Front Mission : Gunhazard), where the game is as a matter of fact NOT a turn-based RTS game. In this case, its a shooter type - technically a third person Over The Shoulder, but I still call it First person on accident more often then not. You know what though? Its still a pretty darn fun game. One word of warning though: I got nothing on multiplayer, as I haven't played it yet. So just a SP review for now.

Alright, so the nitty gritty. Graphically its modern - good looking. The environ's in the single player are varied enough - cities, space, some indoor on-foot missions (yeah, they make you get out of the wanzer!), and even a return to the much reknowned Huffman Island from the original FM game. There are some on-rail vehicle type stages as well, where you are placed on a dual-gatling turrent aboard an Osprey transport, gunning things down on your way to your landing zone, but all stages are experienced on mechanical foot at some point or another, even the arctic and desert levels.

The campaign's story is what you would expect from both FM and a square-enix title. What starts as a basic revenge part spirals up until it hits the point where its save the world save the girl. Honestly, it leads into the best line in the game (at least, my favourite) exchanged between the main villian and the main hero, and I'm goign to paraphrase it up a bit, you know, to save on forgetting names and what-not:
Hero:"Where's the girl?"
Villian: "The fate of the world is in the balance and all you can worry about is the girl?"
Hero:"I know where the world is, and it's not going anywhere, because I won't let you do anything to it OR the girl!"

Characterwise, the big show-stealer has always been the Wanzers - that is the giant piloted mech units. Customizable to an extent that makes it instantly familiar to the players of past FM games, one can swap out torso, leg, and both arms of their wanzer, then apply whatever 4 color patterns to the individual parts they want, including gloss levels and decals. Each part has different stats - armor, weight, skate speed (think rocket-boosted skating) for the legs, accuracy for the arms, and energy output for the torso. How it works ideally is that the energy rating of the torso can't be exceeded by the overall weight of the parts and weapons combined. This can be tweaked a little by equipping an energy producing backpack, or some quad-type legs (which are made for equipping more weaponry). Weapons themselves are FM classics - snipers, bazookas, missiles and rockets, robot sized 'brass' knuckles, bats and pneumatic pile-spikes, machine guns and shotguns. The names themselves will make a FM fanatic feel at home, being the same old names from back in the day.

From a gameplay standpoint, its nothing new. If anyone has played Armored Core before, they will catch on to the mech-based parts just fine - shoulders and bumpers assigned to weapons (arms and shoulder mounts), left stick click activates the 'skate', right stick the 'precision aim', and classic jump, dodge, and bullet time-esque 'E.D.G.E.' mode to the face buttons. When it comes to the non-mech section, it plays out like a typical shooter game.

Difficulty-wise, its not bad, although having played through on normal, the second to final boss proved quite problematic, taking about 10-12 attempts just to beat him, allowing me to continue with the rest of the mission and fight the final boss (who was a pushover compared to the other). The stage's are all pretty linear, which never bothered me since I get too easily distracted on a wide-open course. Overall, the game gives you enough of a challenge that it makes you wonder why it just ramped up so bad, but not undefeatable in difficulty.

The sounds are good, and I find the almost transformer-esque noises made quite amusing. I enjoy it, and maybe sometime I'll spend a little time with the multiplayer so I can share my thoughts on that. I mean, heck, its probably got less people playing that other games, but they cant possibly be as bad as the crowd that plays CoD, right?