Game Review Castlevania: Lords of Shadows

Game Review
Castlevania: Lords of Shadows

It’s a dark stormy night, there’s a full moon out. Disgruntled villagers gather the town center torches and pitchforks in hand. Enter Gabriel Belmont, lead character and hero of this installment of Castlevania. Finally breaking free from their 2d side scrolling gameplay, Castlevania makes its debut on next gen consoles. Our hero is to track down the 3 pieces of the “God Mask” from the Lords of Shadows.

The God Mask is said to give almighty power to any who wear it and perhaps it can even bring his dead wife back to life. Why and who killed his wife is one of the twisted mysteries in this dark gothic masterpiece.

With a stunning fantasy setting, Dangerous and vibrant environments, and more vampires you can shake a crucifix at, Castlevania: Lords of Shadows is hands down an epic one of a kind Action/Adventure game. But this time around it’s not only about the vampires. It’s about the Lords of Shadows. From lycans and trolls, to skeleton warriors and oversized spiders. Castlevania: LoS has almost everything a fantasy game needs.

Having a fixed camera can sometimes be a problem, occasionally obscuring your view, leaving you susceptible to attacks by off-screen enemies, but it's an issue that we rarely encountered. Usually, the camera does a pretty good job in giving you a decent view of the action, although the camera is slightly less successful during some of the platform-jumping sections – of which there are many – with the game preferring to create an epic sense of scale and show off some of its sweeping vistas, rather than give you the optimum angle on where to jump next. Again, this is a fairly rare occurrence, but when it does happen, it can be a teeth-grinding annoyance. There's also some illogical directions when you're jumping between vertical ascending platforms, so when you think that you should be pushing the left stick up, you should be pushing down and sometimes the direction switches, causing you to fall and lose a chunk of health. Still, at least you're not killed outright when you drop.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is a truly astonishing action adventure. In terms of ambition and epic scale, it rivals the best the genre has to offer, and while the story is a bit of a slow-burner, once it gains momentum towards the end however, it's genuinely compelling and engaging. Its sprawling landscapes and breathtaking visuals are the very definition of epic and the boss battles are outstanding, as Shadow of the Colossus-sized Titans give way to huge knights, vampires, freakish demons and more. Rest assured too, that all of your effort is paid off with one of the finest epilogues we've seen in a game in a long time. In short, Lords of Shadow is simply stunning, with only a few minor quibbles to speak of to taint its successful return to the top.