Castlevania Lords of Shadow

[JR#8]

Did a search but couldn't find a thread on this game.

Due out on the 14th of this month. Played the demo on Xbox Live and I'm really looking forward to this game.

Quick question, I'm looking into buying it on eBay as it is much cheaper but I wanted to know if anyone has any idea if the Collectors edition is going to be released in Aus?

There are a few copies on eBay but I'm not going to pay $150+ for it. I can get the normal version for around the $50 mark.

JB HI FI will be selling the normal version for $89 if anyone is interested.

 

[HBK619]

Okay just finished playing the Castlevania demo. Firstly it was very short!

Turned on my PS3 a bit after 11 and had to install then play it. Finished up a tad before 11.25.

Now for the actual game. It's basically you're God of War style action/adventure battle mechanic. You've got your light attack (square), heavy attack (triangle) and your 'special attack' (circle). Movement was nice and fluid (not like ****ing Enslaved, Jeez that was clunky as hell) and the limited combos I got to try were interesting enough. I couldn't really get a good handle on the graphics because it was basically raining for the entire ****ing demo. From what I saw it looked quite good though. Having never played a Castlevania game before I didn't really know the deal with the story. The level provided in the demo was fairly average in my opinion. You had to fight about 20-30 wolve type creatures and then a couple of massive wolves. The scenes from the intro on the XMB (in the box of the game) looked way better than what was dished up (it had you flying an eagle and fighting some giant demon monster)

All in all it I was left feeling not quite underwhelmed but contempt. It looks like a good enough title but nothing really groundbreaking. Looked like your typical action/adventure to me.

From what I've read though the actual game is quite a bit better than the demo which I played. The mechanics were all good in the demo so if the other levels were jazzed up and a bit more interesting than the demo one it would probably warrant the 90+ reviews which it has gotten.

Probably not for me though. For anyone interested it is coming out October 7th.

Just played through the demo then after taking forever to d/l it due to not wanting to go over usage so early in the month.

First off, jizzworthy to have Patrick Stewart narrating.

Graphically is very nice looking (I've seen some of GiantBomb's quick look too, so I know it looks stunning outside of the rainy demo), framerate felt a little dippy at times though but only during cutscenes. Blood is nice and goopy. The main character looks a bit more douchey than I'd like though. The menu is pretty cool, the way it's a book and opens up then in the combo's section it will give you a hand drawn animation of what that specific move is, very nice.

The subtitles outside of the big prompts is quite strange and really off-putting, doesn't work at all within the context of the game.

The combat is quite good, very fluid and responsive, although the controls are a little off compared to the brilliance that God of War offers (of which this game is definitely trying to emulate). The grab thing is a bit weird (grabbing them with R2 and then having a circle close in on another circle then pushing a button when they connect).

The demo consists of a couple of parts. The first is a big arena battle basically with about 4-5 Lycan's coming at you at any one time. Then you have a boss battle with a big Lycan. The it's onto a section where you're on the back of this horse thing and have to knock two other Lycans riding other big Lycan's I think, you then get knocked off it and have to fight about 5-7 more Lycans then it's back onto the horse. Then you fight another 2 Lycan's on big Lycan's (so much Lycan!) and get knocked off again after a little bit and have to fight a big Lycan with other small one's coming in to make things tougher. Once you've done that, the demo is over.

It's not a bad demo, doesn't show off a whole lot, but based on GiantBomb's Quick Look this will be one to pick up at a later date no doubt.