Zero Punctuation: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 - It Sucks, Ha.
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Is it wrong taking almost a sexual joy in watching games I played but didn't enjoy being ripped apart and curbstomped by Yahtzee's critique?
Arnoxthe1 said:
Except Soma is still being menaced by all the creatures of darkness because he doesn't want to be Dracula.
The only time he actually does lose control and become the dark lord is in the bad endings, and you, the player, still don't get to play as him during those points. That being said, he makes a fairly badass Dracula in Dawn of Sorrow, during the extra mode where you play as Julius Belmont (and a few others) to fight Somacula. Pretty good boss fight.
The only time he actually does lose control and become the dark lord is in the bad endings, and you, the player, still don't get to play as him during those points. That being said, he makes a fairly badass Dracula in Dawn of Sorrow, during the extra mode where you play as Julius Belmont (and a few others) to fight Somacula. Pretty good boss fight.
I prefer the Dracula X Chronicles version, myself.Cecilthedarkknight_234 said:
sounds about right. The whole LoS experiment has obviously failed and now with Koji Igarashi having left Konami I think it's safe to say that the series is going to be put on ice for awhile. I really don't know what happened, but Konami has become one giant joke. They basically abandoned anything Hudson Soft related, drove Silent Hill right into the ground by giving it to hack studios, and now has let Castlevania implode. Pretty much the only two games they've released in the past few years that have been good have been Metal Gear Rising and the Contra spin-off Hard Corps: Uprising. This is pathetic
Every video on the site is still showing up as just a 45 second ad for the youtube channel, which doesn't have the latest video. Is anyone else having this issue? It's infuriating waiting through yet another Diablo 3 commercial only to find out that I get to watch the ad yet again. Can't get any response from anyone running the site 
I really don't get why this game gets so much vitriol. It improved on practically every single aspect of the first game, with more varied combat, less annoying QTEs, great bosses and spectacle cut-scenes, a really fluid and fun platforming and even the graphics are great (I have no idea where some people get their screenshots, I am running it with the HD texture pack and on medium settings and it looks downright gorgeous).
The only issue that no one can question is the presence of the stealth-sections, which make little sense in the narrative and often unnecessarily complicated by under-explained mechanics (protip: in the Agreus section, mist-form is your friend). I would also argue that these stealth-sections were just replacing the annoying puzzles from the first game.
All things considered, this game is pretty much the equivalent of a summer blockbuster. Not very cerebral, has a bunch of problems, but it is so much FUN.
The only issue that no one can question is the presence of the stealth-sections, which make little sense in the narrative and often unnecessarily complicated by under-explained mechanics (protip: in the Agreus section, mist-form is your friend). I would also argue that these stealth-sections were just replacing the annoying puzzles from the first game.
All things considered, this game is pretty much the equivalent of a summer blockbuster. Not very cerebral, has a bunch of problems, but it is so much FUN.
I'm glad you bring the bit about his name up, Yahtzee.
Dracul = The Dragon.
Dracula = Son of the Dragon.
So really, Alucard should be Dracula, and Gabriel should be Dracul. If... that's what they were going for.
OT: I did like the game, somehow, despite recognizing all of it's faults. There's a healthy chunk of game here, as I logged about 21 hours in the game, given that I spent a lot of time exploring - and I could have explored more - but exploring and backtracking is such an enormous pain compared to the side-scrolling Metroidvania games of yore. Plus, the ending was TERRIBLE.
Dracul = The Dragon.
Dracula = Son of the Dragon.
So really, Alucard should be Dracula, and Gabriel should be Dracul. If... that's what they were going for.
OT: I did like the game, somehow, despite recognizing all of it's faults. There's a healthy chunk of game here, as I logged about 21 hours in the game, given that I spent a lot of time exploring - and I could have explored more - but exploring and backtracking is such an enormous pain compared to the side-scrolling Metroidvania games of yore. Plus, the ending was TERRIBLE.
I liked it, but I'll even say that the platforming was kind of crud (Besides the magic lights, he jumps in a very stiff manner, and there's not much sense of freedom in the climbing bits either, making the ones without a timing challenge seem like annoying busywork), and the environments were very one note (modern day being worse, but the castle got pretty samey too). Compared to the first one, which felt much more epic quest in scope (other then the gigantic labrynth ruins of werewolf land).GabeZhul said:
Then again, half of the complaints on the first one were that it didn't use the Castle enough, which seems to have been taken perhaps too much to heart.
It seems like they could've worked the Castle into the modern day better as well. You do stumble across bits of it in the modern real world amongst the city, and the first game mentioned it could alter itself/regrow, so you could easily run into large parts of it underground without the wacky memory mode thing.
Dracula being acquainted (loosely, he sure as hell doesn't recognize police) with modern times could be fairly easily summed up by him drinking the family's blood early on, with acquired memories being a fairly regular thing in vampiric lore. The modern day section also starts an unspecified amount of time *after* Zobek first wakes him up and he went out the window then ported back. The window is already broken in the modern day start, and the Zobek awakening sequence is displayed as a flashback. Or he simply had an offscreen rapid fire course from Zobek or
Alucard
It tickles me to no end thinking of a dark brooding vampire at Disney World who's trying, and failing, to look like he's not having a good time. He'll have to come out of Space Mountain and stare at the ground of a while until he can finally mumble without cracking a huge smile.
I admittedly wouldn't mind a time-displaced Dracula-in-modern-times affair if it was actually handled with any degree of competence. The opportunity for acclimation would have given Konami tons of the bathos they seem to love to bring out when Metal Gear is on stage.
That said, I think I could see Castlevania working in a modern setting. Hear me out here. Imagine Dracula casting himself in the guise of a stunningly charismatic yet amoral businessman with some product that makes mindless slaves of human beings (geez, exaggerated Apple parody much?), and you play as a modern-day Belmont who's figured out what's going on and is due to go after Dracula. On the one hand you can have your beating up of human dudes when you fight your way through Dracula's security guards of increasing strength and ludicrousness, and yet you can also have your Gothic high fantasy by stepping through portals that flip the office environment maps for the classic castle setting. Sort of like the old 202% completion rub by tracking both real world and castle completions, and you get bleed-over from the classic Castlevania into modern day (like the increasing appearance of more traditional Castlevania monsters in the real world near portals to the other side).
Build a modestly sized open world around the huge, labyrinthine building and the castle itself, and you can get just enough of the exploration and fighting for everyone. No need to bring guns even into the modern day setting if you make the subweapons a bit more tolerable, or just take the Metal Gear route and have all the weapons be gene-locked or something.
But what do I know, I'm just rambling at this point.
That said, I think I could see Castlevania working in a modern setting. Hear me out here. Imagine Dracula casting himself in the guise of a stunningly charismatic yet amoral businessman with some product that makes mindless slaves of human beings (geez, exaggerated Apple parody much?), and you play as a modern-day Belmont who's figured out what's going on and is due to go after Dracula. On the one hand you can have your beating up of human dudes when you fight your way through Dracula's security guards of increasing strength and ludicrousness, and yet you can also have your Gothic high fantasy by stepping through portals that flip the office environment maps for the classic castle setting. Sort of like the old 202% completion rub by tracking both real world and castle completions, and you get bleed-over from the classic Castlevania into modern day (like the increasing appearance of more traditional Castlevania monsters in the real world near portals to the other side).
Build a modestly sized open world around the huge, labyrinthine building and the castle itself, and you can get just enough of the exploration and fighting for everyone. No need to bring guns even into the modern day setting if you make the subweapons a bit more tolerable, or just take the Metal Gear route and have all the weapons be gene-locked or something.
But what do I know, I'm just rambling at this point.
I kind of question where Castlevania is going now. They've already rebooted the whole thing, had Dracula beat Simon, and decide to not really do the whole Lord of Darkness thing. So..now what? Another reboot? Go back to the original timeline? I just dunno.