Hands on Castlevania Lords of Shadow

During the Japan Expo event at the early July in Paris, a demo of the PS3 version of Castlevania Lords of Shadow was playable at the Konami booth.

Developed by MercuryStream and produced by Hideo Kojima, “father” of Metal Gear hero Snake, this game is the first instalment of the series as an action game with some RPG elements. We were able to play the first stage of the game, more like a tutorial, to learn the basics of the game: the different attacks with the whip, the secondary weapons (such as daggers), how to dodge or to unlock combos and other attacks.

The game truly is an AAA title made like a movie with some incredible cinematic scenes as good as Hollywood movies, as usual with Kojima productions. Graphics are smooth and pretty good, but darker than usual. The game takes place (as usual) in the surroundings of Dracula’s Castle, in a village by a stormy night. This game surely looks like a mature one. There’s a new hero, Gabriel Belmont, who looks like a virile and muscular men breaking with the “tradition” of young and quite androgyne men. Gabriel just want is sweat heart to be brought back to life. As Gabriel arrives at the village, villagers are all afraid of something scary and the village is soon attacked by werewolves.

So you can jump into the action. The whip has a wide range, is easy to use and can maintain enemies to distance. So werewolves are very easy to whip off. There’s just one annoying thing: graphics are so dark that enemies aren’t easy to find. Fortunately, you can see the red spots of their eyes, the only way to spot enemies! Gabriel gains XP points by defeating enemies and can unlock many things later on. The game is very fluid, easy to pick up and fun to play. But when killing enemies, it is hard to try and read all the indications that pop up, informing you of how to use items, heal, grab the enemy and so on. At the end of the stage, there’s a huge beast to defeat as you can see in the video (and the cinematics too).

I had no time to play the second part of the demo version, where Gabriel rides a horse to escape. I just wanted some impressions on this game and it looks really promising. Sometimes, villagers will come and try to help you, but don’t expect too much of them!

Castlevania Lords of Shadow is a very pleasant game and has everything gamers ask for a good title: good graphics, good scenario and realisation, good music and dubbings, very mature background. Let’s hope this game won’t be too easy: the Castlevania series is famous for being difficult but this demo version seemed less difficult than normal. Gamers have to play this game when it is released for the XBOX 360 and PS3 by the end of the year.

Konami E3: Castlevania: Harmony of Despair

Konami Digital Entertainment announces an exclusive Castlevania title to be released as downloadable game on XBOX Live Arcade, entitled; Castlevania: Harmony of Despair.

This game is created by the producer of the Castlevania series: Koji Igarashi, and the game will be the last title of the franchise. Players will recognize a familiar character; Dracula, who appeared in almost all of the Castlevania games. The game will also feature familiar controls, fluent 2D-scrolling action, and a new 6-player multiplayer mode.

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Happy Halloween! OverClocked ReMix Does Castlevania!‏

OC Remix just released their 16th album, “Castlevania: Sonata of the Damned” This one’s our first ever SOLO project by long-time OC ReMixer Joshua Morse and it’s perfect for cracking the Belmont whip to! Read more

E-Nature does it again! Here is his latest Castlevania Trance Mix!

Castlevania: wicked child – club trance remix

More about E-Nature:

My name is Dominik Erbsland aka E-Nature, I’m 28, from Switzerland and for almost 10 years I make trance music in my little home studio. Usually working on original own songs – but sometimes I like to remix some catchy video game soundtracks from the eighties! The Hard Man Theme really had a fantastic melody to make a trance remix from it. Of course there was no better time to do that remix than only weeks before the hyped release of Mega Man 9!

Hope you guys enjoy the tune. Let me know if you have any suggestions for future remixes!