Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow Hits PCs This August

[Earnest Cavalli]

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow Hits PCs This August


Better late than never, 2010's surprisingly excellent Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is headed to the PC in a newly revealed "Ultimate Edition."

This morning Konami announced plans to port Castlevania: Lords of Shadow to the PC. This new version of the game will feature largely the same content found in the original Lords of Shadow as well as its two DLC additions, and is said to run at a steady 60 frames per second at resolutions up to 1080p.

Great news, right? Well yes, and sort of. We're always in support of enhanced ports reaching systems whose owners might otherwise never get to play a quality release like Lords of Shadow, but this new announcement is just all kinds of confusing.

Why release a PC version of Lords of Shadow now, almost three years since its console debut?

Why cap the PC title's resolution at 1080p when modern gaming rigs are capable of producing far higher resolution moving images?

Why was this game's sequel (the appropriately titled "Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2") announced for PC release months ahead of its predecessor?

Does this mean that Konami might finally be taking the PC seriously in markets that aren't utterly addicted to online gaming (read: Southeast Asian territories)?

Honestly, I doubt we'll ever get answers to these questions. Mostly because this re-release isn't terribly high profile, so Konami is certainly not dedicating its most talented developers to its creation. Hopefully the port manages to be good in spite of this, but we'll remain wary of this whole situation until the PC title is up and running on the nearest gaming PC.

Barring any catastrophes, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Ultimate Edition, should make its PC debut via Steam on August 27. Expect pricing details soon.

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[Alufear]

Boy there's a lot of doom and gloom in this article. D:
LoS was a great game and is gonna get a little better for the PC gamers. Why is the word catastophy even in this article? :/

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Maybe they're practicing working on x86 architecture because next gen consoles will be using it, and it doesn't hurt making some money in the process. Who knows.

First Mortal Kombat, now Castelvania? If only Rockstar would released Red Dead Redemption for PC.

 

[Grabehn]

Why cap the PC title's resolution at 1080p when modern gaming rigs are capable of producing far higher resolution moving images?

because upping the resolution would probably require a new textures set which is a shitload of actual work where as porting it from 360 and increasing frame rate generally actually isn't ?

still interested in the game tho. i like gothic style games and the Castlevania series in general.

I would take the "it requires a lot of work" if it had been something released at the same time with the other versions, but it isn't. It's long enough to make something with it but they didn't.

With that said, I fucking hated this game (still do and am yet to finish the damn thing). It just felt dull and was to reliant on the "press x to save your ass" to make any death, or lack of it matter. But then again, I've never liked the GoW type of games, looking at you Darksiders...

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Why cap the PC title's resolution at 1080p when modern gaming rigs are capable of producing far higher resolution moving images?

because upping the resolution would probably require a new textures set which is a shitload of actual work where as porting it from 360 and increasing frame rate generally actually isn't ?

still interested in the game tho. i like gothic style games and the Castlevania series in general.

It is an excellent game. It is pretty much a linear game though, unlike the Metroidvania style of Symphony of the Night and the slew of other old franchise installments. Each level is segment section, with hidden items to find along the way, the game does however let the player replay levels which comes in handy to get things you couldn't get before getting certain power-ups. If you take your time and look for everything, back track to get all the power-ups and items and such as well, the game takes around 18 to 20 hours to beat.

By console standards, it is one of the best looking games of this generation, so of course it is going to look even better on PC. The story is pretty good, of course you can't help but love the awesome voice work of Patrick Stewart. Though, the ending I saw coming a mile away when I looked at the comparison of the normal game cover and the cover of the special edition I got.

As far as I'm concerned, I think it is finally the first 3D game that the franchise has that doesn't suck. So what if the combat is similar to God of War, the Castlevania franchise had a chain whip weapon before GoW, and really how else was the combat going to go.

I can see sort of why people complain about the quick-time events, since there are so many in the game, but really, I would call them just timed events because they aren't all that quick, two to three seconds time to perform them, rather than the normal split second oops you are dead kind.

All around it is a great game, with great gameplay, awesome graphics, splendidly atmospheric levels, a good though predictable story, and just damn fun to play.

 

[major_chaos]

2010's surprisingly excellent Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

I would not call LoS "excellent", unless I was dunk, stoned concussed and in a really good mood.
If it wasn't pretending to be Castlevania I might be able to give it the "praise" of "decent GoW clone, with slightly better than average (albeit confusing) story" but since they saw fit to call it Castlevania, I'm gonna judge it as a Castlevania game, and when evaluated on those terms its abysmal IMO.

 

[RJ 17]

Still no release date on LoS 2...and that makes me a saaaaaad panda.

 

[camazotz]

Stop asking these questions....Konami might look here and say, "Why, you're right, why indeed?!?!" and then stop releasing a game I've been patiently waiting for to come to PC. Gaaah!

 

[lancar]

We've been seeing a small but steady increase of more and more slightly older games being ported to the PC lately. It's an interesting development, to say the least. With the advent of the new console generation being more porting friendly than ever, I don't see this trend stopping any time soon, either.

Even if us PC gamers tend to get our games some time after the console guys, the adaptation of some titles that really never even used the PC before is intruiging.

Perhaps this really will be the last console generation, after all?

 

[Parakeettheprawn]

All I keep thinking whenever another game like this gets confirmed from that Steam list: Come on Halo Trilogy Pack... come on Halo Trilogy Pack...

Of course they were dumb enough to announce Spartan Assault (ugh), so that seems to smart on their part TBH...

 

[Scars Unseen]

As far as I'm concerned, I think it is finally the first 3D game that the franchise has that doesn't suck. So what if the combat is similar to God of War, the Castlevania franchise had a chain whip weapon before GoW, and really how else was the combat going to go.

Honestly? If I'm looking at other games for inspiration, I'd go with a mashup of Prince of Persia/Mirror's Edge movement and platforming and Dragon's Dogma's combat style with some Shadow of the Colossus style boss fights. Imagine a midair fight with 2 giant bats where you have to jump between the two using your whip as a grapple while the bats try flyby attacks to snatch you off the other's back. I think that would be a vast improvement over GoW style fights.

Then again, I'm just really sick of GoW clones now.

 

[Jamous]

Always good to hear that games I've been looking into are heading to PC. Definitely going to be looking into this, even if there are porting issues as there often are... Looking forward to playing!

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Lords of Shadow was a decent game, but it took out the exploration outside of some token item hunts in tiny areas. It didn't feel like a Castlevania game. It would be like making Halo a rail-shooter.

Well, maybe you will get your wish and the reboot will evolve back into the non-linear style. Though for me, considering that my first Castlevania game was the actual first Castlevania on the NES, which was the definition of linear, the reboot being linear made sense to me. Heck, the music they called back to in the Music Box level was from the first Castlevania game, if anything a homage to where the reboot is laying its roots, even though the reboot is an origin/prequel story.

I'm not going to say it is a better game than say, Symphony of the Night, but I just don't think LoS deserves all the flack it gets.

 

[Korzack]

Mmh, maybe they saw the big mountain of cash Dark Souls made with its PC release and thought "Screw it, worth a try!" Has come a bit under the radar, but not to worry, there's a demo out on Steam now, so I'll give that a look... Then buy a ps3 copy online.