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.

Call OF Duty: Black OPS

Call of Duty has always been made up of two key elements: a blockbuster single-player offering and a balanced, entertaining multiplayer; and Black Ops is no different. In years gone by though, a third element has reared its head, and that’s co-op play: in Infinity Ward’s case, Spec Ops, and in Treyarch’s case, Zombie horde. So then, it’s no surprise that Treyarch tried to kick things off with a bang in terms of story and spectacle then. Taking in the length and breadth of the Cold War, including key moments in Cuba, Vietnam and Russia, the story weaves around the interrogation of protagonist, Alex Mason, as he talks about his career in special operations.


The set up is a clever one, but it also feels a bit forced, as if Treyarch had a bunch of cool ideas and locations, and needed a story element to bind them all together. Things also unravel slightly once you arrive in the latter third of the game, with the inevitable plot twist proving to be kind of lame, rather than the almighty revelation you were expecting. After that it seems like things are rather going through the motions right up until the supposedly shocking ending. The story is by no means terrible, but it feels mightily contrived all the same. At least the fine voice-cast and much improved character models do a good job of conveying the necessary emotional impact, even if it doesn’t quite always hit home when it should.
Having said that, the individual missions - when taken at face value - are a lot of fun. You’ll find yourself battling through bustling Cuban streets, Vietcong infested jungles, a Russian launch base and a forbidden Gulag for instance, with nothing but your own wits to call upon and maybe a bunch of allies to watch your back. There are a few neat touches along the way as Treyarch try to shake up the gameplay, and guiding a team to safety from above is certainly a highlight, not to mention piloting a Hind and using TOW missiles to bust up some tanks. The action is thick and fast as you would expect, although at times, it seems that the combat is more about making it to the next big set-piece than anything else.


The game unfortunately is fairly short and the levels are surprisingly linear too. If you play on the easiest difficulty, then you’ll probably breeze through the game in a few hours at most, but by cranking up the difficulty to Veteran, you’re likely to bring out the worst aspects of the game. The main issue is the unwelcome return of the infinite respawning enemy closets, which most often appear in areas with narrow chokepoints and a lack of cover. These sections become increasingly frustrating and you’ll eventually rely on sheer luck to get through them, rather than placing the emphasis on skill. More often than not, it’s about luckily snaking from one point to the next and hoping that a stray grenade doesn’t flush you out of cover along the way. Enemies also have a remarkable ability to totally ignore your allies and focus their fire entirely on you; even scoring freak headshots while blind firing from half the map away. When you’re often being killed without even knowing the root cause, it’s only a matter of time before your controller starts to fear for its life. It doesn’t help the realism either when enemy forces run straight past your fellow soldiers to stand right next to you before filling you full of bullets, nor the fact that your AI buddies are so oblivious to them doing so.


The multiplayer arena is probably where most series regulars will spend a vast majority of their time anyway, and the number of tweaks and modes on offer will satisfy even the most ardent fan. As ever, you can expect the usual suspects in terms of game modes, with the typical array of team and free-for-all death matches, etc making a return. Plus, there are a whole host of fun killstreak bonuses in Black Ops, like exploding remote control cars, attack dogs, spy planes and strike choppers, all of which are a barrel of laughs to use – even if slightly overpowered at times. While some of the maps seem fresh, well laid out and original, others seem a bit more placid and offer a lot less options in terms of tactics. Having said that, some of the best times will come when you hit up the newer game types.


As a package, Black Ops offers a lot of content and an impressive bang for your buck, but it’s still frustrating to see the single-player campaign artificially stretched out by poor checkpoint placements, infinite respawns closets for opposing forces and shocking AI - problems that should have been tidied up years ago. The real strength lies in its multiplayer and the co-op side of things, which is perfect if you have a bunch of clans ready to come along for the ride. Party chat, a few lag issues and the fact that newbies can get stacked against veterans may mean it’s less fun for a lone player, but on the whole, there’s little to fault the game on when it comes to multiplayer. If Treyarch can get rid of those same tiresome issues from the campaign, then the next offering could be something pretty damn amazing. As it is though, Black Ops is more than good enough to be a worthy successor to the best selling title of 2009 and is undoubtedly Treyarch‘s best Call of Duty yet.