E3 ’10: Hands On with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

Konami’s booth had a variety of games to show off, and even a rapper or two to entertain the masses, but for me the center of that stage was the playable Castlevania: Lords of Shadow demo. Lords of Shadow represents the first next-generation foray for the venerable series, and as such, has quite a load of responsibility to bear. Fans have been unhappy with previous 3D installations, and even yet balk at any attempts to move a side-scrolling adventure in to the realm of rotating cameras.

Developer Mercury Steam has taken the challenge, however, and what they’ve crafted for us E3-goers is an impressive showcase of combat and cinematics. The real question I found myself asking by the end of my playtime was: does this feel like a Castlevania game? I’m still not sure I have an answer, but here are at least a few of the impressions it left on me.

The first part of the demo finds Gabriel Belmont traveling to a small village. Outside of the cinematics, the game tells its story aspects by presenting players with an open book and words that appear as one reads down the page. These background information bits also serve as the loading screen, a fact signified by the chain whip loading bar progressing along the bottom. After a beautiful cut scene where Gabriel fantasizes about his missing wife, we get to the action. In typical new game fashion, the first area we get to is mainly used for tutorial purposes. Werewolves are attacking a village and Belmont shows up just in time to save the pathetic villagers’ lives before they are eaten. Right from the get-go, Lords of Shadow feels like a God of War clone. It seems like we’ve been saying that about many games this year, and while it’s never an insult, one does wonder how many of the same game we can play through before the mechanics become stale.

Lords of Shadow mixes the formula up slightly. Where most God of War clones take a light attack and power attack approach, Lords of Shadow uses instead a regular attack that is centered on one enemy, and an area attack that hits multiple enemies but for less damage. I liked this, even if I found it difficult to manage in my short time with the game. Nonetheless, with quick thinking I can see some major situation-handling potential possible with such a system. Also familiar to action fans is the act of grabbing on to enemies for throwing attacks. What Lords of Shadow does differently is offer a shrinking circle that must be timed right with a button press in order to actually kill something, unlike, let’s say, God of War which just makes you press a button to rip something in half. Castlevania has you playing somewhat of a timing mini-game in order to do it. After slaying a few werewolves with these simple attacks, I am shown an ever-present icon in the Castlevania games: daggers. I pick them up and proceed to one-shot several more werewolves with precise throws (and this is definitely an M-rated game because these simple daggers frag wolves into hundreds of gory bits). The exhibitor that was handling my playtime explained that there was no lock-on feature to the game, but that Belmont would always hit the closest target. With ranged weapons, it seems that there is an auto lock-on, or at the very least a very forceful aim-assist feature because my daggers never missed the mark, making meaty chunks of my canine oppressors with every throw. While limited, the daggers seem slightly more powerful than they should be even if fun to use.

Somewhere around this time I was also given the rundown on experience points. Much like other action games in this vein, Belmont gains experience for his kills. This experience is collected into a pool that he can pull from to upgrade various things. In this particular demo I could only use it to buy a new skill, but you will also be able to obtain upgrades to Belmont’s whip, upgrades to magic attacks gained later in the game, and secondary weapon upgrades later on. All this is kept track of in the Book of Knowledge menu screen, where item and skill descriptions can be found and skills and upgrades can be purchased.

Once I’d gleaned this useful knowledge and purchased a skill that I actually couldn’t figure out how to use (I followed the description and nothing proper happened), I found myself face-to-face with the big baddie of the demo. It was another werewolf, but where the previous ones were not even the size of Belmont himself, this one was the size of a small house and a sight more upset than any of his brethren had been. His first attack was a brutal one, and I found myself amidst a quick-time event. Moving past my inner groan (I’m not a QTE fan at all), I smashed repeatedly on the X button and kicked him away. He then charged, the game then told me to block, and I did so without hesitation. I blocked a few of his attacks, which caused him to run off and charge up something nasty. The game blasted me with a message about how the incoming attack could not be blocked and kindly let me know that I could dodge with a left trigger, left analog stick combination. I was glad to do so as dodging is generally my preferred form of defense in action games. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough because I soon died to the beast’s claws and had to restart from the checkpoint. Luckily for myself and future players, said checkpoint was directly before my confrontation with his ugliness. My second attempt was flawless as I employed my rolling to great effect and managed to slay the beast without a scratch. It was then time for the grand finale, which occurred as the giant wolf scaled a small projection so that it could leap on me from above. To Belmont’s happy surprise, he happened to be standing next to a giant, broken piece of wood. The game gave me the option to either get pounced, or pick this piece of wood up, plant its butt end into the ground, and let the wolf impale itself on the end. I did this. It was very gruesome and looked amazing and it just plain satisfied me. My handler informed me that later on the fatality sequences would get more complicated than the simple right trigger press that this one required.

The second portion of the demo featured a riding sequence. It involved a spirit horse of some kind and more werewolves, and I’ll admit the finer portions of the story were somewhat lost on me, no thanks to the booming noise and crowds from E3′s show floor. The horse sequence was a race/chase of sorts where Belmont was forced to whip to the sides and slay the giant werewolves being used as mounts. As soon as he lands enough blows, the uglies turn white and players can jump from the horse to the backs of the beasts and perform grisly finishing moves. Again, this all felt fairly familiar to me as I played God of War 2. This portion of the demo was definitely a lot shorter and easier.

I walked away from the demo satisfied with the game, but also feeling as though it was a familiar game in Belmont clothing. Is this necessarily a bad thing? No. God of War clones succeed because the formula that they’re based on is almost perfect. Lords of Shadow putting this type of action into a vampire-laden, spooky setting could be wonderful. And we can bet that this title will change things up a bit. If it didn’t, I doubt Konami would ever let it out the door. I am definitely a fan of the gorgeous aesthetics of the game. Everything looks fantastic, and the voice acting, is just about second-to-none. The only thing that remains to be seen at this point is how engaging the game will be from start to finish. Will it separate itself enough to make players feel like they’re coming to something original? I was told there would be plenty of Castlevania-style backtracking, plenty of puzzles, and even companion helpers along the way. If that all holds true in an entertaining fashion, we might have a winner on our hands. Right now I’m fairly sold on the idea and may even go back for another playthrough. We’ll all know soon enough as the game hits shelves later this year. Below you’ll find the first five minutes of the actual demo I played through, though this wasn’t actually me playing. Forgive the camera work.