One Life Left - "Castlevania: Lords of Shadow"

The Castlevania franchise is one of those franchises that anyone who spends any of the time in the realm of gaming can instantly recognize, but it has little to no splash in the mainstream. By diverging from its 2-D sidescroller/ Dracula-hunting predecessors, Lords of Shadow hopes to change this obscurity with all-too-familiar gameplay and level design.

The game puts you in the shoes of Gabriel Belmont — no, not the Belmont fans of the series have grown to love. This Belmont is completely unrelated, a fact that the game never really ever explains.

Gabriel is employed by a pseudo-Christian organization that dedicates itself to hunting down vampires, werewolves, demons and other nasty things. Gabriel is on a quest to bring his dead wife back to life (because, you know, situations like this always end well.)

Along the way Gabriel will be exploring various landscapes, cutting down monsters along the way — all for the sake of love.

The game’s biggest strength are its graphics. All the characters look incredibly sharp, as do the enemies, who have some fantastic design and art direction going for them. Even more so are some of the landscapes you will be running through. Sometimes the game will have you running in a long, straight path for a while as the camera slowly pans away from the player, showing just how big some of these areas really are. It’s almost breathtaking

The gameplay has Gabriel swinging around a massive cross with a chain inside it ala God of War. Like your typical action game, the player gains experience points that can then be used to buy new combos. Gabriel also has access to “Light” and “Shadow” magic. When Light magic is activated, Gabriel will regain health with every hit. When Shadow magic is activated, Gabriel will do more damage with each hit. This adds a very thin layer of strategy of when engaging in combat.

Occasionally the game will throw an enormous boss at you, which the player will then have to climb to attack its weak points and hold on for dear life as it tries to shake you off. Sound familiar? It should, because its blatantly copying the entire formula that Shadow of the Colossus created.

This is where Lords of Shadow’s greatest flaw becomes apparent. While the game is polished from a technical perspective, it brings absolutely nothing new to the table in terms of gameplay design. The story has been done before, the combo/weapon system has been done before, the story has been done before and even the “epic” boss fights have been done before (not to mention Light and Shadow magic — really?)

But what I find interesting is that, despite all these flaws, I’m hesitant to give Lords of Shadow a particularly low score. Whatever it does, it does very well. It’s also well put-together, and there are some truly memorable moments. Sure, they’re very far apart from each other, but they’re still there, and in a world where eight hour story modes have become commonplace, its refreshing to see a 20+ hour adventure on the shelf.

Lords of Shadow gets a 7/10.