Email: Castlevania

Greetings Malstrom,

I discovered your site some time around when Metroid:  Other M came out.  (Unfortunately I bought the game anyways because I’m a Metroid fan — now I am not sure if I am a fan anymore. I do not plan on buying any more Metroid games if Sakamoto is involved.)  I have been reading your posts and find them very interesting and enlightening.  Nice work.

I may have missed something so please forgive me if you have already covered Castlevania:  Lords of Shadow previously.  You write a great deal about the “big three” of Nintendo — Mario, Zelda, and Metroid — but I have not seen much comment about the Castlevania series.  To me, Castlevania is almost on the same tier as the others, so much so that it should be called the “big four” even though Castlevania is not really a Nintendo IP.  I think I speak for many gamers when I say that Castlevania I, Simon’s Quest, Dracula’s Curse, and Super Castlevania IV were as big a part of my gaming childhood as the other three franchises.  I would like to give some of my impressions of Lords of Shadow.

First, LoS follows the modern trend of ‘story’ being of equal importance or of greater importance than actual gameplay.  The story is a complete reboot of the series with the only remnant being that the main character is a “Belmont,” Gabriel.  Dracula is not even included (until the ending cut scene, which was the most intriguing part of the story).  There is an order of holy knights to which Gabriel belongs, and he is charged with defeating the Lords of Shadow, three leaders of the dark forces that have separated mankind from God.  One of the three leaders is a vampire but, again, not Dracula.

The story itself has potential, but the way it is told is mind-numbingly awful.  At the beginning of each level, the narrator, Patrick Stewart, gives a long melodramatic reading of what is occurring.  In the same fashion as Other M, the player is spoon fed what Gabriel is thinking and feeling and that deep down he is supposed to have conflicted soul.  The player is supposed to empathize even though absolutely nothing happens during gameplay to reflect any of these emotions as Gabriel is just obliterating monsters left and right.  It is a classic case of bad storytelling by not following the adage “Show, don’t tell.”  After a third of the way through the game, I seriously considered skipping the monologues, but in respect to Patrick Stewart, I persevered.

I have never played any Metal Gear Solid games but have read and heard a lot about them.  My curiosity was peaked when I noticed that when you boot up LoS, one of the companies that shows up on screen is Kojima Productions.  I thought to myself, “Is this the enterprise of Hideo Kojima, the force behind the Metal Gear Solid series?”  Well sure enough it was.  In my research, as best as I can tell, Hideo Kojima was invited to the studios of Mercury Steam and had a lot of influence on the character development of Gabriel Belmont.

Knowing this, it is hard to imagine Kojima not having an influence on the MG: S-like cinematics as well.  In LoS, we are introduced to a new character — a telepathic teenager, a child vampire, or an old hag — via huge amounts of insufferable exposition in an attempt to justify emotional relevance, only to move on to the next level or two and have the character either die or in some other way dropped from the plot completely.   Indeed, you never even know just who the final confrontation will take place against until the very last cutscene prior, where a character is interjected seemingly out of nowhere in a deus ex machina.  There is a severe lack of pacing with no build-up, so that when a climax does occur, the only time the player knows to feel anything is during Patrick Stewart’s proceeding monologue.  In these respects LoS is another example of a video game with poor storytelling.

Concerning gameplay:  Gone is the pure action-oriented platforming of early Castlevania titles, and in its place is a mixture of action, traversal sequences, fights against enormous “Titans,” and puzzles.  The action/battle system itself is pretty fun when you do get to participate.  (I have never played God of War but I gather the LoS battle system is a GoW clone.)  The system could use a little improvement — by making a larger variety of monsters to fight, for example — but the real problem is that the action is constantly interrupted by other mediocre gameplay.  

The traversal sequences involve climbing on ledges in an attempt to mimic Assassin’s Creed, but where AC excels with open-world, climb-anywhere exploration, LoS presents a linear pathway of “climb to ledge A to ledge B to ledge C…”  It is much like Uncharted, which I am playing now and find the traversal parts equally as boring.  Gabriel can use his whip as a grappling hook but you virtually have no freedom with where you can swing other than the intended passage.  While traversing each level, there are few deviations from the main avenue and the camera always tilts in the direction you need to look — you cannot control the camera, the right analogue stick is completely un-utilized in that regard — so you never truly feel like you are exploring what is otherwise a graphically impressive world.  You do not fight monsters during these traversal sequences either; you simply walk and climb in a straight line.  I do not understand why they included such boring gameplay; it is not very fun.

Battles against the “Titans” involve climbing up massive creatures and destroying their vital points.  Clearly this is an attempt to simulate the epic battles of Shadow of the Colossus, and again LoS fails to fully realize the greatness of what it has borrowed from another game.  In SoC, you have much freedom in scaling the Colossi and in exploring the immediate environment around them to use as an advantage; however, in LoS the Titans can only be defeated by climbing them in a predetermined manner and destroying the weak points in a specific order.  In at least one Titan battle you have a companion shouting annoying commands at you every ten seconds.  It feels shallow in comparison of what SoC had to offer.

Puzzles in LoS  involve a variety of things including rotating concentric circles to line up various markers or statues, playing a war game similar to chess, navigating several rooms with electric barriers, and finding your way through a music box while shrunken.  These are not dull like the traversal sequences, but I will say that if I wanted to play chess or solve puzzles, I would go to Yahoo Games.  I would not look for puzzles in a Castlevania game.

The action and battles of LoS are pretty fun, and most of the non-Titan boss battles are truly epic and challenging, involving quick reflexes and timing.  You eventually get a variety of special moves that give you more options in how to smash monsters, adding to the fun.  Unfortunately, the action gets interrupted far too frequently with the other types of gameplay.  There was one particular traversal sequence where I was actually jumping across some rotating gears in a clock tower, and I thought, “Now this is starting to feel like a Castlevania game.  All we need now is some flying medusa heads.”   At that moment I felt the developers had successfully translated the 2D action-platforming of classic Castlevania into 3D.  The feeling sadly did not last long.  LoS is a game that would have benefited greatly from focusing and perfecting its action gameplay, instead of incorporating many different types of gameplay and excelling at none of it.

The last thing I want to discuss is the music.  In the past, each entry in the Castlevania series would remix classic songs and also introduce new and exciting, hummable tunes, one or two of which would go on to become a series staple.  The original Castlevania gave us Vampire Killer and Wicked Child, while Simon’s Quest gave us Bloody Tears and Monster Dance.  Dracula’s Curse gave us Beginning and Aquarius, and Super Castlevania IV gave us Theme of Simon Belmont.  Even Symphony of the Night gave us great songs like Dracula’s Castle and The Tragic Prince.  These songs are all very hummable and even dancable, and they get the player pumped up and excited.

The music of LoS is absolutely nothing like this.  The LoS soundtrack is a forgettable orchestral score that belongs in the background of a movie and not in a Castlevania game.  The music was so generic it all started to run together and I felt like I was listening to the same two songs over and over again.  This is in stark contrast to the classic Castlevania songs which influenced me greatly in my childhood, so much so that I could tell you the name of every song and/or the level of which game it accompanies.   Not so with the LoS music.  There was only one song that stood out from the rest, but right now I couldn’t even hum it if you asked me.  Ironically, after I completed LoS, I read that there was actually a remix of a classic song in one level but by that point in the game, I was so completely disillusioned about the soundtrack that my mind was not in a state to comprehend a tame, hard-to-recognize remix of Vampire Killer.

I have been very critical of LoS so far.  The game did have its good moments, but obviously the series is now going the way of Metroid.  In the same way that Other M did not feel like a true Metroid game, LoS did not feel like a true Castlevania game.  I just do not understand what is so difficult about translating the good gameplay of the classic 2D games into 3D.  If anything, developers should be more able to immerse players in their worlds, but for some reason they focus on things other than what made these classic series great in the first place.  Imagine a Castlevania game where you platform in 3D and destroy a larger variety of monsters, uninterrupted by boring traversal sequences or scripted “Titan” fights.  Imagine a 3rd person, 3D Metroid where you could run and jump around with the Wii Nunchuk and at the same time zap enemies with the Wii Remote.  Imagine being able to freely explore the universe of Metroid in 3D by, for example, using Spider Ball to roll anywhere on ceilings instead of delineated paths!  I feel extreme disappointment for what could have been, and wonder if I will ever buy Castlevania or Metroid games again.

What are your thoughts on the Castlevania series?  What is the last Castlevania game you played?
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I get the sense that game developers are no longer interested in games but are interested in making digital experiences. Since many game developers are no longer interested in making games, we need a new name for them. How about ‘digital playboys’? It seems they are just playing around with every form of digital medium.

Castlevania is one of the great video game franchises. I remember when Castlevania III came out and the excitement of the players then. I remember when Super Castlevania IV came out.

Heck, I remember gamers discovering Castlevania I for the very first time. My memory is fading, but often the NES was played in groups as a sort of ‘house party’ where five people would be around the TV. (This ‘house party’ wouldn’t make sense to people a generation ago, but the Wii has reminded people how a home console is supposed to act inside the home.) I was at a friend’s house, and I was amazed at all the games he was putting into the NES.

One of them was Metroid. I was mesmerized by the tone, visuals, and gameplay of the game. I was only watching but I was in a trance. I had to rent that game immediately. He was popping in all sorts of games. Ghosts and Goblins. Gradius. 1942. It was a string of modern day classics.

Then he popped in Castlevania. Whoa! What a heavily textured game world. Today, that phrase would mean ‘many art assets’, but I mean the game world was very well realized with its Gothic theme. This was a time when video games were escaping their black backgrounds. Belmont running around with a whip was very distinct and different from other games. You had the evil castle with monsters that didn’t disappoint. The game looked scary.

I was so absorbed with other games at the time (there were so many great ones) that I never really got into Castlevania.

Castlevania has always had a high reputation and a consistency of experience (at least, in the 2d versions).
Even as recent as the DS, when Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow came out, DS fans rubbed it in to the PSP fans. PSP fans were very jealous that their handheld did not have Castlevania (at the time)! I did buy Castlevania: DS because I wanted a game on my DS to explore a world rather than just doing gimmicks with the touchscreen. I remember playing by an electrical outlet with my DS plugged in because I didn’t want to stop playing because the battery was running out. But that has been the last Castlevania game I’ve played.

It’s heartbreaking to see another great video game franchise be destroyed. When will this end?

I understand the frustration of the emailer (because I’ve felt it). When you see Castlevania, you want it to be Castlevania. Instead, you get something else. What is so hard about delivering a consistent experience? It’s not that hard.

Hello Game Industry! If you want a consistent brand, you must deliver a consistent user experience.