Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Boogie
More than all that, it's the fact that enemies will often just ignore attacks and hit me anyway. I can understand some of the larger enemies doing this, but all of them? The worst is when you pull off a perfect block, but you still get hit in the midst of your celebratory bonus damage combo.
Agreed. I liked SotC a lot, but it's really more of a puzzle game, in that once you've solved the puzzle (i.e., killed the colossus), there's not much reason to go back and do it again over and over again. It's a fun game, but I wouldn't pay $60 to play it.
That's just it; you can tell they wanted to make their own thing here, so why did they just throw in a handful of irrelevant names just to make a connection to Castlevania? The only answer I can come up with is that they wanted to suck in some of the fans of that series, and just having vampires and werewolves wasn't enough.
It kind of reminds me of Marvel comics doing Marvel 1602 as a sort of reinvention of familiar characters in a different setting. The thing is, LoS isn't reinventing Castlevania characters; it's just making a completely unrelated storyline and using a handful of borrowed names to establish a flimsy connection with an established to get the title some free press. I get that starting a new IP is hard, but don't piggy-back in such a blatant, ridiculous fashion.
I think that's a bit of a stretch. If this game was just called "Lords of Shadow" and featured the exploits of Gabriel Studebaker, I think people would be more fixated on how similar it was to GoW and Dante's Inferno. Like I was saying earlier, it features a few creatures in the Castlevania universe, but werewolves, vampires, and the like aren't unique to the series.
One of the biggest reasons I don't like the game is that it has Hideo Kojima's stink all over it, in the form of his design doctrine that holds presentation as being far more important than actual gameplay. I know he was only attached in an advisory capacity, but I can't help but think of MGS4 when I'm watching cinematic after cinematic after cinematic.
Also, the story isn't done all that well, either. Everything we know about Gabriel as a character comes second-hand from the diary of his gay stalker. In the actual game, he's just a standard action hero out for revenge, occasionally belting out some angry line at a big villain. We're told he's seething with rage and that he no longer has any compassion, but this doesn't come across at all in the game.
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To cut the whole thing short: Youīre right about most things IMO, sure and I agree on most of them, though I still like the whole thing a lot.
Concerning the replay-value, itīs nowhere near any classic Metrovania title, thatīs for sure but the question at the time was "Castlevania or Enslaved" and after playing Enslaved last Weekend I know I made the right decision
Is LOS as good as the 2D Castlevanias? Fuck no. Is it a good game? Yeah, I think so and as an additional Castlevania Sub-franchise, Iīm okay with it.
Oh and once more about the heritage-thing: Iīm sure younger, typical gamers would compare it more to GOW and Danteīs Inferno, but show me a dude that uses a whip against something supernatural and Iīll scream CASTLEVANIA without even thinking about it :D
Itīs the whip, thereīs only two beings that use whips, Dr. Jones and a Castlevania Protagonist