CAUTION: INCOMING FANBOY GUSHING
Ah, I’ve finally been asked the golden question: “what are you favorite games of the past generations?” Well, to make this an accurate list, I can’t limit each list to just five games…so, in a shameless attempt to flaunt my favorite games, I’ve assigned a number of games with the corresponding number of the respective generation (i.e., 5 games for the fifth gen, 6 games for the sixth gen, and 7 for the recently-deceased seventh gen). Mind you, I absolutely adore and cherish a lot of the games that are
not on this list, but the following ones you’ll see are games that I absolutely
cannot part with, and cling to with obsessive talons to preserve in my gaming collection.
Now, only read this if you’ve written a sizeable will, and are ready to clean your dentures and check into your arthritis appointment afterwards, because I can’t guarantee you’ll be the same age once you’ve finally reached the end of this post’s absurd length.
5th Generation
5. Bulk Slash (Sega Saturn)
This game is one of the best unsung gems of the woefully-overlooked Sega Saturn. For all of its 3D failures like
Sonic R, the system had some really awesome 2-D games…and this is one of them. One of the biggest things that draw me to this game is how much like a Star Fox game this is. Your fellow pilots buzz in repeatedly through comm. transmissions, and you have specific targets and objectives to destroy in each stage. But the biggest similarity can be found in its ship transformation mechanic. Remember how your Arwing could transform into a mech in
Star Fox 2? You can do that in this game. The game is kind of rare, and was never released outside of Japan…but if there’s any worthy import to be found on this list, it’s this one.
4.
Suikoden II (PlayStation One)
In a lot of ways, this game is the closet we ever got to a
Berserk: Golden Age Arc-themed RPG, and I honestly can’t say what I love about this particular title without spoiling everything in the story. You really have to experience the game for yourself to immerse yourself in the dynamic tension, camaraderie, and medieval-political drama that makes up the plot. Now, a while back, I would’ve never recommended this game because, well…this game is rare and outlandishly expensive. Seriously, this game was only released for the PSOne (unless you live in Korea, in which it was ported to the PC), and you’d only be able to get ahold of it by auctioning off your Neo Geo and donating a spare organ. However, by a sweet stroke of fate, the game has FINALLY been released to PSN, so it’s a lot easier to pick up. Do I recommend the game? Let me answer that question with another question: Do you know of any other RPG’s where you can recruit over 108 characters?
3. Star Fox 64 (Nintendo 64)
Well, we all knew this was coming...although I can’t really elaborate on this game in ways that haven’t been done by other people. The game is considered a classic, even the best
Star Fox game by some people…but I don’t. I think it’s a fun game, and it was the reason I bought my first N64, but I don’t think it’s THE best. I’m also in the tiny fraction of the
Star Fox fanbase that don’t think the voice acting and dialogue have aged particularily well. Regardless, it’s probably the slickest balance between arcade dogfighting and brutal shmup difficulty that you’ll find. And although I find it somewhat inferior to both past and future
Star Fox games, I still love it to this day.
2.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PlayStationOne)
Many people remember this game as the entry that ushered in a new era for
Castlevania, and I’d be compelled to agree—but in my experience, for all the good things this game brought about, this game also brought about a new generation of repetition. Outside of a few brave ventures on the PS2, almost every single
Castlevania game after this fell victim to the REAL curse of the series: every single game playing like
Symphony of the Night. And in the midst of over-hyepd nostalgia and ridiculous anticipation, every Metroidvania-type game had the horrendous burden of living up to the magic and wonder of
SotN—kind of like when EVERY James Bond game after
GoldenEye was neglected and left to rot, because it wasn’t everyone’s favorite clunky, blocky first-person, hilariously-overrated multiplayer N64 game. Ironically enough, the only game to tower above all the games spawned by this lustful Metroidvania craze was the very same game that started it. No other game has managed to match the immense scale, weapon variety, replay-value, and game length of
Symphony of the Night, even after almost twenty years. The graphics are superb, the music is a legendary monolith even amongst the PSOne’s library of awesome VGM’s, and it’s the one
Castlevania game that I’ve actually only beaten once due to its immense length. I just hope that Konami releases an HD remake or something to shut people up, and the series can continue to go to new places…like it did recently, but we’ll get to that later…
1.
Super Mario 64…
…on the DS
Yes, Captain Obvious, I know…this is technically
not a 5th-Gen game since it’s on the DS. You’re very perceptive…but here’s the thing: the DS Remake retains the mechanics of the original game. The platforming, the jump physics, things like the level arrangement and obstacles are unchanged from the original N64 game. So by definition, it’s a 7th-gen game with 5th-gen mechanics…so it’s virtually the same game, minus some graphical tweaks, and the addition of new characters. I can still recall playing this on my friend’s N64, and then abducting my sister’s Pink DS Lite and remaining hunched over this game for every hour of one entire summer. The game was and is my favorite Mario game, which is ironic considering I almost never play as Mario whenever I go back to play it. And why would I? It’s
Wario who can turn into metal and wreck everything in one hit.
6th Gen
6.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: (PC)
There’s a lot of praise and bowed heads for the “untold majesty” of
Doom, Quake, and the original
Wolfenstein. And each time I hear all the gushing acclaim for all three, and how they “revolutionized shooters as we know it”, I think to myself: “Yeah, that’s nice and all…but they’re no
Return to Castle Wolfenstein.” In terms of old-school shooters devoid of modern traits like sight-aiming and quick-scoping, this game wins. The shooting is meaty and empowering, the weapons get bigger and more ridiculous with each level, and there are even levels that require actual stealth. Oh, yeah…and then there’s that
RotcW multiplayer that’s still actively modded and supported to this day.
5.
ToonTown Online
None of you judge me: this was an awesome game and you know it. Why have a Buster Sword, or an Elemental Summon when you can obliterate all before you with a water hose and a birthday cake? And Disney can bathe in pirhanna-infested waters for shutting this down.
4.
Soulcalibur II (GameCube)
A little-known fact about myself that actually might surprise some of you: I actually don’t play a lot of fighting games. You’d think that someone who enjoys racking up combos and juggling enemies in
Devil May Cry would love fighting games, but the truth is…I only play
Soulcalibur, and I’m probably not even that good. I just play it for the visceral satisfaction of the single player. This game really is a blessing for those of us who flee at the sight of competitive multiplayer, and salvage the single-player experience. There’s SO MUCH to do in this game: Arcade Mode, Survival Mode, three tiers of hope-crushing Time Attack Mode, a full-blown RPG item harvest called Weapon Master Mode…and Extra versions of all the prior-mentioned modes where you can USE the weapons you find. Not only that, but this is by far one of the GameCube’s most gorgeous titles. On a widescreen TV with component video, this game still blows most modern games out of the water with the sheer amount of detail and designs. Every character looks and embodies the culture they hail from (in contrast to Modern Soulcalibur games that embrace more flamboyant and anime-esque designs), and is only rivaled by its immediate successor. My uncontested favorite fighting game, and one of my favorite GameCube games ever.
4.
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GameCube)
This game has kind of a lukewarm reputation in the Zelda community, and every complaint leveled against it is completely valid. Yes, it borrows a lot of ideas from
Ocarina of Time. Yes, not all the Wolf parts were that great. And yes, this game has quite possibly the most padded opening of ANY game in the series. But all these flaws are like, well…like the flat chest of Keira Knightly, or the overtly rich frosting hiding a splendorous cake, or the ****ty acting in your favorite Arnold Schwarzenegger explosion-filled testosterone-fest: it doesn’t stop the item in question from being a thing of bliss. And I absolutely love this game: the horse combat, the massive landscape, the dark and demented art style, the conflict between the Light Spirits and the Twilight, and literally everything said or done by quite possibly the best companion in any Zelda game: Midna. And then, there’s just those purely epic moments in the game, from little things like the way Link slings his sword back into his sheath after a successful attack, to those terminally-badass boss fights. It’s a black sheep of the series for sure, but it’s one that I have an uncontested love for, and was overjoyed to see how much tribute it got in the Easter Egg party that was
Hyrule Warriors.
2.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (PC)
Believe it or not, I actually prefer this game to the original KOTOR. Heresy, I know—but as much as I love the first game, there were areas I found it kind of lacking. That, and I had the massive plot twist SPOILED for me by a friend (something he’d live to regret on the day I beat
BioShock Infinite before him). Now, I’ll go on record and admit that this is by no means a finished game. A lot of locales are rehashed from the first game, the plot unravels at a viscous pace and is paid off with a quasi-ending…there was even an entire planet and quest removed from the game. However, even with all these omissions remedied by fan restoration mods, I still love this game for a lot of reasons. For one thing, the sense of empowerment as a Sith was much stronger in this game, and the classes you can adopt later in the game are nothing short of awesome. The combat has more options, the crafting system is more robust, and when the story finally unravels past the unbearable Peragus and Telos quests, it actually has you partake in some really epic quest lines. From either conquering or liberating a Republic Capital City, to earning the trust of a lost Mandalorian Clan, to being targeted as a prized bounty by a conclave of competing bounty hunters in the film-noirish cityscape of Nar Shadaa, the game makes you feel like the center-piece of an epic plot. Not to mention that the plot-twist for this game, I’m not going to lie, is something I
never ****ing saw coming. Out of all the RPG’s and JRPG’s I’ve played over the years, Skyrim very much included, I still find myself coming back to this one the most.
1.
Star Fox Assault (GameCube)
Quite possibly the most underrated and viciously over-hated game on this list. ****ing really? “Fox McCloud
belongs in the Arwing?” Did every pretentious ****wit on IGN and Gamespot’s editorial board suddenly forget that Fox McCloud is a MERCENARY? He’s a jack-of-all trades, suited for
any kind of combat for
any mission he’s hired to perform—why else would he know how to fight a Starfighter, a tank,
and a submarine? He’s not exclusively a PILOT, you DROOLING, IMBECLIC DOLTS. Anyway—you’re looking at quite possibly the last great revival of the Star Fox series. After the lukewarm reception of a perfectly-fine game that should’ve remained
Dinosaur Planet, this game was released to the up-turned noses of every gamer who blasted the previous game for NOT being a carbon-copy remake of
Star Fox 64—which was ironic, considering the abysmal sales of the 3DS remake when it finally gave the shrieking man-children what they finally wanted. But I played the game and saw it for what it was—an honest little 3rd-person shooter with an emphasis on vehicle-swapping and combo racking—kind of like a Lylatian take on
Earth Defense Force. The game ditches the goals of cover-based shooting, and instead relies on sprinting through enemy swarms, and blasting through them Contra-style with various weapons and power-ups. The emphasis on building up your score, and frantically racking up points almost makes the game seem like—GASP,
an arcade shooting game? You know, the genre this series was ****ing BUILT upon? But the gameplay is coupled with a lot of nice additions that truly make it stand out amongst other
Star Fox games. The game has a much more thematic, sweeping and cinematic feel—feeling less like a Saturday-morning TV serial like its predecessors, and adopting the tone of a big-budget sci-fi space opera like
StarChaser or
Guardians of the Galaxy. The ship designs, architecture of levels, and character models are absolutely superb, and the voice acting is a vast improvement over both
Adventures and
64, with the personalities and emotions of each character matching the emotion and quality of their Japanese counterparts. And speaking of which, every character was given their best roles in this game: Fox finally emerging from his Mark Hamhill syndrome and becoming the Leader he was always supposed to be, Slippy finally ceasing to be an annoyance and actually being kind of funny, (Falco being less of an ungrateful dick), Krystal being a helpful asset instead of a damsel in distress, and the persona of the Star Wolf Team’s very own Wolf O’Donnell exchanged for a more anti-heroic tone (a change of which, you can tell, I was immensely infatuated with). Among the game’s best qualities is the godly soundtrack provided by the New Tokyo City Orchestra, who with thunderous drums and sweeping woodwinds turned catchy 64 tunes into epic symphonic themes that still give me chills to this day. By the end of the day, the game is a solid action title and a grossly-overlooked gem in the
Star Fox series. I played it to death at launch and a thousand times over since, earning each medal, flag, high score, weapon stage, and unlockable the game had tucked away. It’s by and large my FAVORITE in the series, and if you haven’t played it—buy it, steal it, download it or ransack Nintendo’s Headquarters for it. If you have even a slight interest in the
Star Fox series, you OWE it to yourself to play this game.
7th Gen
7.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PS3)
I remember reading about this game in one of those 2007 issues of
Game Informer, and almost ****ting my pants. Keep in mind: this was a younger and more noobish version of myself, back when I thought
Bleach was the second coming of anime Christ, and my favorite movie was
Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. And when I saw this game, I almost puked in excitement. The gameplay, the graphics—this was the first instance of a game that, to me, embodied the phrase ‘next-gen.’ Looking back, I think my expectations and my perceptions of how good the game actually was were a little overblown. But that said, I still think this game is a cool novelty. I really dug the story, and how it wedged between
Revenge of the Sith and
A New Hope, and the sheer size and scope of everything in the game blew me away. Snatching Tie Fighters out of space in the gigantic, echoey bowels of a starship factory, destroying a Bull Rancor force powers alone, and diving into the half-constructed depths of the unfinished Death Star were all awesome to behold, even when I go back to play it. It’s not an amazing game, but it’s more of a guilty pleasure…and hey, it’s what got me into this generation.
6.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (PC)
Alright, Jensen. Your target lies ahead and you have a set options to take him down: you can turn invisible and sneak up on him, before either spinning his skull off his neck, or slamming your hidden elbow blades into his eye-sockets. You can crawl through the air ducts and slide down to the wall behind him, and smash through the concrete to grab him. You can hack the nearby turrets to rip him to shreds, or you jump off a high-place and use the glowing Icarus jet that materializes around your robotic feet when you land on him, cushioning your fall. If you don’t feel like killing him, try to interrogate him instead. Use your cerebral scanner to check his pulse, heartbeat, and eye dilation. Analyze his speech patterns and emotional vulnerabilities to determine what personality he has, and how it can be used to convince him to lower his weapon or tell you where the hostages are.
…or you can just shoot him. But, **** that.
5.
Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen (PS3)
Alright, in all honesty, this is a recent addition. I’ve sunk so many hours into this game, and I honestly have no idea why: the story and characters are stale, lackluster, and practically non-exsistent. The English voice-acting is hilariously bad and achingly-exaggerated. The NPC’s offer nothing to the game, the quests are time-consuming and obviously artificial attempts lengthen the game, with no real purpose, and outside of looking pretty, there’s not much to the open world other than the same respawning enemies. But within minutes of encountering the next Chimera, Griffin, Hydra or Ogre in my path, I forget all of these things. I’m too caught up in the heat and excitement of launching machine-gun-like volleys of arrows at my enemy, before sprinting up and
leaping on to him, and stabbing him repeatedly with my bastard sword…all while my pawns yell completely obvious advice like: “Ice is vulnerable to fire” and “Strength in numbers, Arisen!” Couple that with DMC-style combat and a bitching soundtrack, and you have my favorite
Souls-type game of this generation. Now let’s just pray this mysterious
Dragon’s Dogma Online trademark isn’t what we all fear it to be…
4.
DmC: Devil May Cry/Devil May Cry 4 (PC)
I know, right? The two most polarizing entries in the
Devil May Cry series, both of which I place on equal footing for my favorite action game of this generation…what a bizarre blend THAT is, especially given how Western one is, and how Japanese the other is. I’ve already gone in great detail about what I like about each, and I’m grinding my teeth in horrible disdain that I won’t be able to afford a PS4 by the time both get their respective remastered editions.
3.
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood (PC)
If you grew up watching gritty, testosterone-imbued spaghetti westerns ripe with tobacco and blatant stereotypes like
Fistful of Dollars, Once Upon a Time in the West and
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, chances are, you wanted to simulate the experience through gaming. You wanted to feel like a cigar-smoking, duster-bedecked , squinting badass that blasted his enemies’ guts against the wall with his Colt or double-barreled shotgun of choice. You wanted to immerse yourself in the exaggerated, pulp environment of these movies. Now, many herald
Red Dead Redemption as the definitive Western experience, but I personally feel that the game exchanges much of its potential in an attempt to achieve realism. The game takes itself way,
way too seriously, constantly bombarding the player with heavy-handed cutscenes and conversations about morality, changes in the West, and the oppression of minorities like the Mexicans or Native Americans—because the one thing you want most out of your Clint Eastwood movie is for the action and atmosphere to come to a dead stop, and spend five minutes preaching to you. Instead,
Bound in Blood goes out of its way to capture the essence of old-school spaghetti westerns, while preserving a solid gameplay experience. The story is wrought with all the classic Western archetypes and stereotypes: the Civil War, Southern Plantations, the Sheriff’s daughter, the Indian Chief’s son, brotherly feuds, drunken pistol duels, Aztec gold, and Mexican bandits whose vocabulary consists mainly of the word “gringo.” The story itself adopts a serious tone occasionally, but most the narrative is tongue-and-cheek, riddled with some funny dialogue and some hilariously dark humor. You can play as either of the two main characters, both of which have a very distinct play-style. The first character, Ray, dual-wields all the in-game weapons, can toss dynamite and wield a gatling gun, and can take more damage thanks to his Conquistador cuirass. He can’t aim down the sights when dual-wielding, and he has to reload more due to his expanded arsenal, but is great for up close and personal encounters. The other playable character, Thomas, is nimbler, faster, has better aim, and can access high areas that Ray can’t reach with his lasso and climbing skills. He can also sneak up on enemies using the silent bow and throwing knives, offering some stealth in the heat of Western gunfights. However, he is EXTREMELY susceptible to damage, and can die in one or two hits. Both play-styles offer an excellent challenge, and the multiple approaches to countering enemies harkens back to old-school shooters like
Blood, Doom, and
Return to Castle Wolfenstein. It’s a solid game to the average bystander, but a bullet-filled ecstasy of goodness to the true Western fan. It was the first game I ever bought on Steam, and I’ve sunk over 200 hours into it.
2.
Fire Emblem: Awakening (3DS)
Truth be told, this was actually my first
Fire Emblem. I had never found a copy of the first GBA game when I was young, and I didn’t have Bruce Wayne’s fortune on hand to buy a copy of
Path of Radiance. But when the time came to buy my first 3DS, I just picked it up because I liked the artwork on the box, and I was curious why Marth looked so young on the cover. And it just so happened, that I was leaving with my family on a trip to Washington D.C. the next morning. The entire week we were there, my parents were irking me to “look at the White House”, or “take this picture with this monument”, all while I was shouting: “QUIET! Tharja and my character are in the midst of a support conversation! If I screw this up, they’ll NEVER get married!” I spent that entire trip, and over 70 in-game hours (according my save file) playing this game. And I regret absolutely
nothing.
1.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
“THE GAME IS A PRETENTIOUS GOD OF WAR CLONE!” “THIS GAME ISN’T ANOTHER ONE OF THE
SEVEN CARBON COPIES OF SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT!” “HOW DARE THEY STRAY AWAY FROM THE
ORIGINAL CASTLEVANIA STYLE!”
Let me cut down all these misinformed, self-assured presumptions that I constantly hear about this game:
a)
God of War stole nearly ALL of its in-game elements from
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, so I don’t want to hear ****ing PEEP about originality in this scenario. You can’t rip off a rip-off anymore than you can kill a corpse.
b) As I’ve stated before, we’ve had
plenty of games that play in the EXACT SAME STYLE as
Symphony of the Night—none of which sold particularly well—and not a single one of them have matched SoTN in length, scope, charm, or nostalgia. Making more would be a fruitless endeavor that would only waste even
more of Igarashi’s talent and effort.
c)
Symphony of the Night is NOT the original style. The
original style involves a Belmont diving head-first into enemy territory, slaughtering monsters with a whip and various sub-weapons, traversing obstacles with tricky platforming, and engaging in a straight, linear, and level-based structure. Which is extremely ironic, considering
Lords of Shadow, for all the vicious backlashing against the game for ‘being different’, is actually a lot closer to Classic Castlevania than
Symphony of the Night or any of its sequels.
But now that I’m done discussing the problems of yet
another fanbase blasting a game for being different (which has almost become my staple job in life, now, given how many of those fanbases I’m apart of)…what do
I think of the game?
Simply put, it was the closet I ever got to an immersive, and overtly-cinematic experience in this console generation.
For every
Heavy Rain, The Last of Us, and
Metal Gear Solid that claimed to be the definitive experience for a ‘cinematic game’, this lowly reimagining of the
Castlevania franchise did everything those games did abysmally WRONG. It provided a substantial, rich, weaving narrative at the centerpiece of an intriguing lore, without compromising the gameplay or the player’s immersion in the game. Unlike
Heavy Rain, the characters aren’t one-note dolts that make face-palm-inducing decisions that only a slack-jawed moron would sympathize with. Unlike
The Last of Us, its story actually boasts some originality, without being a word-for-word reproduction of one of its many ‘influences’, peppered with needless shock value and plot twists you can see from a mile away. And
unlike the astronomically-overrated
Metal Gear Solid series (whose place on my hate radar is wedged somewhere between the third
Devil May Cry and the fourth
Indiana Jones), the story doesn’t just dump paragraphs of exposition on the lifeless protagonist’s lap, and have him accept this newfound information with all the expression of a rock. When Gabriel is constantly being fed new knowledge about the Brotherhood of Light, the Lords of Shadow, and the conspiracy linking the two, he finds himself questioning everything he’s been led to believe. Over the course of the game, he becomes cold and disdainful towards the Brotherhood and God he had always trusted, demanding why “humanity should suffer because of their mistakes.” His journey from a self-assured hero to a confused, morally-conflicted servant of darkness is ten times more engaging, enthralling, and emotionally-touching than the baffling ending to
Metal Gear Solid 3, even with its five different plot twist. And that’s really what completely baffles me to this day: the fact that not only did Hideo Kojima work on
Lords of Shadow, he lent considerable participation to the game’s story and core gameplay. In that case, may I politely inquire as to
why on Earth doesn’t he apply the same kind of approach to his own series? It’s almost hilarious, given how well-executed
Lords of Shadow is with such a simplistic premise, and how mortifyingly-horrible
Metal Gear manages to be due to how needlessly over-complicated Kojima makes it. It’s like watching a chef prepare the tastiest peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich in the world, and then stumbling head-over-heels to sloppily prepare a flamboyant and complex filet mignon. But
Lords of Shadow takes advantage of its simple plot and uncomplicated characters…and uses this to deliver some truly gratifying twists on the direction of the story. The gameplay is a healthy balance between combat, exploration, puzzle-solving and platforming. The combat is even sometimes woven into the cinematics, a technique that would be adopted by a certain hack-and-slash reboot years later, one that I also enjoy. And admittedly, the combat itself is fairly simplistic, and boils down to just gratifying the player with barbaric finishers and sweeping area moves. It’s not
Ninja Gaiden, but it controls well, and works fine. The real star of the game is the sheer production value of this game. Even in 2014, this game still looks absolutely astounding—from both a technical and artistic perspective. Lush forests, rain-drenched villages, and fog-laiden swamps all play as the appetizers to the more bewildering levels, like the labyrinthine halls of Carmilla’s castle, or the haunting bowels of the Music Box. The real beauty isn’t in the realism or the polygon count, but in the design of the character models, monsters, and enormous back-drops. I remember watching Gabriel reduced to a speck when crossing the bridge towards the Castle, and feeling my jaw collide with the ground at how massive the world looked—like if
Shadow of Colossus had immense detail to fill in every cavernous space of the immense size it’s often credited for. The monsters and bosses in particular are grotesque and skin-crawling, with their designs resonating a strong influence from Guillermo Del Toro’s dark fantasy,
Pan’s Labrynth. In fact, what I love about the whole game—something that quite a few people hate, actually—is that the game looks more like a Dark Fantasy than a Gothic Horror flick. Off-putting to some, maybe, but certainly not enough to keep me from adoring it…and eventually picking up the gorgeous artbook that lent its designs to the project. The voice-acting and motion-capture for the game’s characters are just
awesome. Not a single actor sounds like they’re just phoning in a half-hearted or lazy performance: from the emotionally-stricken and suspicious Robert Carlyle, the menacing quiver of Sally Knyvette, the doddering cackle of Eve Karpf, and of course…the cryptic baritone of one Sir Patrick Stewart. Every character sounds extremely convincing, and authentic with the accent attached to each voice. I can’t tell you how fun it is just to watch dialogue exchanges between characters in cutscenes—constantly having to remind myself that this isn’t a conversation between two real people, but two actors in a booth somewhere in Mercury Steam’s headquarters. And the music...Odin’s flowing Norse beard, the godly ****ing music. You know, when I heard there were people actually COMPLAINING about the game’s score, and
why, I was almost flabbergasted and ashamed to consider myself part of the
Castlevania fanbase. You people are going to sit there and tell me that songs like
this and
this aren’t good enough, because you want another remix of horrendously-overrated and even more so overused tracks like
Vampire Killer or
Bloody Tears? It’s songs in the
Lords of Shadow soundtrack that remind me of more
neglected songs from Castlevania history, melancholy and chilling melodies that resonate from the Gothic tone and influences that the series was founded upon.
Now with all of this gushing, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that the game is anywhere near perfect. As I’ve stated, The combat is really,
really simplified…perhaps too much so for its own good. But if you can stomach the stealth and the weaker story, the sequel has a VERY robust combat system to remedy that hindrance for hack-and-slash aficionados like myself. The levels can get overly-linear sometimes…but by far the worst fault the game actually has is some of the obnoxious, irritating, disgustingly-tedious puzzles that it throws at you later in the game. You all know the ones I mean, so you’ve probably shared my agony and rasped voice from screaming in frustration at the game. There’s even a puzzle later in the Castle that almost made me stop playing the game…something I’m happy didn’t deter me from completing the experience.
By the end of the day, though,
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is just an awesome experience to behold. It resonated with me more than almost any game I played this generation, probably because it provided the perfect storm of meaty gameplay, gorgeous visuals, a Dark Fantasy setting and a well-acted, emotionally-tugging story. If I have one lamentation about the game, it’s that my love for it set some extremely high standards for the sequels to live up to. Oh, they’re fun games in their own right, and far more playable and acceptable than the legions of bespectacled hipster trash that make up the Internet’s professional reviewers will have you believe…but they never reached the heights of the first game. But whatever the case may be, I still have and always will have the first
Lords of Shadow, the best entry in the series and some worthy sequels that remedy some of its existing problems. I actually try to avoid playing it on a regular basis, because…well, investing myself in the game’s world and story makes me subconsciously sit in front of my TV for an untold plethora hours. If I played
Lords of Shadow regularly, I’d probably lose a good chunk of my daily life to it. And believe me, I weep for Gabe as much as the next person, but I have a college to attend, a foreign language to learn, other games to play, a novel to write…
…oh, yeah, and
Berserk. You know, because it’s being updated CONSTANTLY, you know? Ha ha…SIGH…
