Topic: I knew it! Castlevania: Lords of Shadow!(SPOILERS HERE, PLZ USE THE SPOILER TAG)

[crisis]

School is awesome, Kale~


am downloading the demo now, only 50 minutes left yay

am also downloading GoW:Ghost of Sparta demo. Gonna be an interesting night!!1

[thernz]

Swedish magazine Gamereactor gave it 8/10 and actually praised the combat and story and said that there is a LOT of variation in the gameplay. They also think that it's unfair to call it a GoW clone cause they acknowledge that Castlevania inspired modern action games and not necessarily the other way round.

How did Castlevania inspire modern action games? There are a lot of mechanics in them that were not influenced by Castlevania at all. The whole interplay between strong and weak attacks, the balance between offense and defense rather than offense and dodging, combos, expansive movesets and etc. are all alien in Castlevania. It's like saying Mario (not 64 lol) inspired Uncharted. A closer inspiration would be something like Flashback or Tomb Raider than a game whose elements do not allude to such an evolution.

[crisis]

How did Castlevania inspire modern action games? There are a lot of mechanics in them that were not influenced by Castlevania at all.

Man with whip fighting monsters, dude. All action games have that naow! Except in some the whip is replaced with a gun or sword

[e105beta]

How did Castlevania inspire modern action games? There are a lot of mechanics in them that were not influenced by Castlevania at all. The whole interplay between strong and weak attacks, the balance between offense and defense rather than offense and dodging, combos, expansive movesets and etc. are all alien in Castlevania. It's like saying Mario inspired Uncharted. A closer inspiration would be something like Flashback or Tomb Raider than a game whose elements do not allude to such an evolution.

I wouldn't say the balance between offense and defense is foreign in Castlevania whether it's offense and dodging or offense and blocking. Castlevania bosses have always had more health and have needed more hits than their counterparts of their action generation ala Mario or Sonic bosses. Because of that, you've needed resource management (aka heart management) as well as a strong defensive ability because you won't be able to kill the boss in three or eight jumps. You need to be able to balance your offense with your defense so that you don't get greedy and take a few extra hits and get killed.

Combos, I think, are insignificant as they merely amount to multiple whip strikes doing a set amount of damage compared to...multiple whip strikes doing a set amount of damage. The only difference is that some are in a combo and more interesting to look at.

EDIT: Plus, Castlevania has always dealt with enemies in a "health" manner more so than a "hits" manner or even a "jumps" manner. Cross does more damage than whip but cross requires hearts and holy cross even more so along with its increased damage. Most action games of the time that weren't Castlevania or involved guns didn't have this kind of variation in combat, a variation which I see in LoS, which is why I found it disappointing when Symphony of the Night essentially became "equip powerful weapon and strike" because sub-weapons were useless.

[Kale]

School is awesome, Kale~


am downloading the demo now, only 50 minutes left yay

am also downloading GoW:Ghost of Sparta demo. Gonna be an interesting night!!1

Skool is naught awsume! It is trubosum. Oll dis crap bout randumb stuf I dun need!

[thernz]

imo there's a big difference between blocking and dodging. they create very very different situations. if anything, i would say that the dodge roll is an extension of that jump to dodge mechanic, while blocking came from another source.

plus, i think there is a significant difference between single strike and multiple different strikes. each strike/attack can have a different purpose depending on their individual strengths and weaknesses like frame counts, range, power (if the combat system is done well enough). you can chain them, they can have much more influence on how the enemy reacts, keeping enemies vulnerable, creating juggles, guard crushing, and etc. it's more akin to fighting game combat than anything castlevania ever had. saying that combos are the same as multiple whip strikes is just calling the depth in the innovation in the action game drama shallow.

the whole health matter you say would cause a very different evolution path for action games if they took inspiration from it with the management of different weapons. it's in los, yes, but i was mainly talking about how action games in general didn't take inspiration. this is one plus in los's combat.

[just in case of misunderstandings: i am not saying that castlevania should not use the elements introduced by this action game genre, i am just saying they did not originate from castlevania. a more likely inspiration would probably be in fighting games and beat em ups.]

[Dremn]

I can't believe I wasted my time reading IGN's review. As always, they never cease to amaze me with their sloppy journalism and biased reviews. Absolute rubbish.

In other positive news, I love this comment someone left Konami on their twitter:

MeatRations
  
@Konami Just played the Castlevania demo, are you sure you guys didn't turn my PS3 into a PS4? Absolutely STUNNING. Making me drool a bit.

This game could possibly out do SotN in the sheer amount of detail it has going on.

Actually you know what, it already has. This game is friggin gorgeous.

[e105beta]

While I may have to agree with you on the blocking, combos in a non-fighting game environment really are, for lack of a better word, shallow for the most part. Save for slight spacial control, which can easily be accomplished with multiple whip strikes. The key principle is flinching. If the opponent does not flinch, which the old Castlevania didn't and the LoS bosses don't seem to, comboing becomes little more than a fancy form of successive strikes. Most action games tend to reward comboing with little more than higher scores.

As for the normal enemies that do flinch? Well, that's not really completely Castlevania, but I still wouldn't discount Castlevania's influence from that either.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I will concede that the framerate isn't as smooth as, say, Dante's Inferno... however, this is misleading because in the first stage, there seems to be lightning effects that seem to cause a slight 'flickering' (NOT a drop in framerate, more like a slight strobe-light effect) compounded with the large amount of rain, and the second stage is a 'speed' stage, and there seems to be an element of 'almost blurring' speed going on, so it would probably look crappy if it ran without this effect, and at F-ZeroX-like smooth speed.

I suppose it's like comparing a Football Game's camera type to a Film's camera.  It's that type of difference.

Also, it's the demo.  Gameplay may not reflect final gameplay (says the disclaimer).  Take that as you will, though.

[thernz]

Well, I would say it's pretty essential in a lot of them too like DMC or Bayonetta, and in a different way, Shinobi, while in other games like God of War, it's pretty useless. But really, this is just saying that LoS's combat despite its plethora of moves suffers from excess and shallow depth. Hopefully, it isn't.

The enemies don't flinch in CV, but they do get stopped for a moment, which was probably served a similar purpose to flinching. I wouldn't really attribute this to just Castlevania though. A lot of other games shared that mechanic.

[LoneChild]

Castlevania : Lords of Shadow Demo Analysis - PS3

In this video you can clearly see that these drops in framerate, during the "push when the circles join" event are PURE BULLSHIT, in fact the FPS raises 7-8 frames whenever it occurs. Fucking amateur reviewers...
The general framerate seems to be pretty solid even with this insane amount of things happening on-screen, the rain, lightning effects and all.

[Julius]

I will concede that the framerate isn't as smooth as, say, Dante's Inferno... however, this is misleading because in the first stage, there seems to be lightning effects that seem to cause a slight 'flickering' (NOT a drop in framerate, more like a slight strobe-light effect) compounded with the large amount of rain, and the second stage is a 'speed' stage, and there seems to be an element of 'almost blurring' speed going on, so it would probably look crappy if it ran without this effect, and at F-ZeroX-like smooth speed.

That's actually good news! Considering Dante's Inferno was locked at 60fps with considerably less graphical power I would expect LOS to be sitting around 25-40 depending on the scenery and action going on. What I wouldn't want to see is jumpy framerate. Sitting at 25-30 is fine, but going from 15-60 throughout gameplay makes it a little difficult to not notice.

[Kingshango]

If anyone want to take the dive, 1UP is doing a Game night with Lords of shadow right now.

Edit: 1 Up spoiled it's score during the game night session, it's getting a B.

[Kale]

Hmm, I though it would be a 60 fps game... guess not...

[thernz]

it does seem more like intentional slowdown rather than choppy framerate. i would consider it a detriment in the design nevertheless, for slowing moments in game pacing. it adds impact and emphasis but i dont think that's worth breaking the pace for even a second for the extra visual splazz. this mainly refers to when gabriel does attacks like the gullotine. it doesn't really matter for the grabs, but the grabs themselves break the pace a bit anyway. you know, being qtes and all. but i guess that's okay for them.

im pretty disappointed they're not doing 60 fps too. loi did that, i think, and its combat was fairly smooth, the platforming/movememt system was pretty clunky though. but man, the animations were so silky and great in that game, besides leon's dumb air combos.