The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I entered a contest, and then I won a contest, thanks to the fantastic people over at On the Stick. I had entered both because I had a good idea and because I wanted to support them. They’re making a fantastic podcast over there, I think. Not just a “for Talking Time” production, but a podcast any gamer can enjoy. I’m certainly enjoying it.

In any case, I won a copy of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Now, I wasn’t really planning on playing this one, but since I won a free copy, I made sure I blazed through the whole thing. On easy, of course. I suck at action games. Now that I’ve beat it, though, I wanted to comment on it a bit. We’ll do mechanics today, and story and other such things tomorrow. I have many things to say about it!

It’s a really weird game. I am just really unsure what they were thinking when they were developing this game.

Just to get the obvious question out of the way, it doesn’t feel like Castlevania or anything. They try to invoke a little of that with powers that unlock things in earlier levels, but I felt no need to ever go back to an earlier level just to be able to hold more subweapons I rarely used, so I didn’t do backtracking. I don’t think this is a problem, but I suppose it could be a problem for some people.
What it is, instead, is like… God of War mixed with all the parts of Uncharted where you’re shimmying along things? I don’t know. There’s so much traversal, and it’s mostly just inoffensive. It’s never any fun, but it’s never really frustrating, as they always make things magically light up to show you were to go. Then you get there, and you might solve a weird puzzle, or fight some monsters.

I personally really enjoyed the combat. I think it’s because I haven’t really played a brawler/spectacle fighter/whatever the fuck this genre is called game in a long time. I played the original God of War, and I played two hybrids of the genre in Brutal Legend and Darksiders, but never really any pure ones since. As such, it was kind of fresh, getting into thinking about combos again. I mean, I’m horrible at it, and there’s nothing particularly whip-like about how you use the whip in the game, but it was pretty forgiving on easy after I got the hang of it, so it was never that much of a problem. I’m sure something like Bayonetta is more palletable for people who really like this genre, but as someone who doesn’t normally go in for it, it was pretty fun.
The best thing about it, I think, were the Light and Dark magic meters and the Focus bar. Basically, you had two magical auras you could throw up at any time. The Light one had a health drain effect, and this is where most of your healing comes from. The Dark one just flat-out ups your damage. There are special combos with each, but I never really used them. However, managing these meters was actually pretty fun. Do I want to end the fight quickly, or be more survivable? I could absorb Magic Orbs into either bar, so I had to constantly be making the decision of which one I needed more. On top of that, the Focus meter meant that if I could get many consecutive hits without being hit myself, I’d get a ton of magic orbs, which was actually enough incentive to make me actually do some blocking and dodging in a game. It made me get more involved in the combat, which was fantastic, as I worried I’d end up just mashing buttons.
I never did find much use for the subweapons, though. Every so often I’d get tired of them telling me I was full up on them, and use them, but they seemed so… separate from the normal flow of combat it didn’t really occur to me. Near the end I started using the Holy Water more to clear out minions, but that was about it.

Granted, there are annoying parts too. I found the Shadow of the Colossus-style bosses to be obscenely annoying. It would always seem to punish me for wailing on the magical seals, since they took about 5 hits more than they should have to break. The sections where a Chupacabra steals your powers and you have to hunt him down while he CONSTANTLY SAYS STUPID SHIT was also annoying. It’s such thinly veiled game padding that it just makes a player sad.

But mechanically, I had a good time. A better time than I thought I’d have, actually. I was kind of prepared for the worst, but the combat was enjoyable, and the rest was fine, and wasn’t going to make me give up. That’s good!

Next time, we’ll weep for Patrick Stewart, but yeah, the game part of the game is pretty fun.