Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

Anyone played Castlevania: Lords of Shadow yet?

Some perks: The game looks absolutely stunning. Rich colours, vivid scenes, beautiful in-game and cutscene graphics.

Most of the end bosses are very nice, both in terms of visual concept and as a challenging fight.

Gabriel is voiced by Robert Carlyle, who has a delectable nasal Scottish drawl, and the voice over in between chapters is done by Patric Stewart.

And there the whole thing goes to hell. I don't think I'd ever say it, but man, Patrick Stewart GRATES on my NERVES with his deep, beautiful voice! Especially since he keeps on reading the greatest bloody rot ever typed down by the most doltish moron with such FEELING and inflection.

Ok, without spoiling too much of the so-far sparse plot: Gabriel Belmont's fiancee Marie has been brutally murdered. It never becomes clear by whom, at least not at this point of the game, but he's off for revenge, and apparently he can get it by fighting loads of monsters. Later on, it becomes clear that Gabriel is part of an order, and that order has been trying to beat the Lords of Shadow since, like forever.

During his travels, Gabriel meets this guy Zobek, who looks EXACTLY like Ramirez from Highlander, is apparently from Gabriel's part of the world...and is voiced by Patrick Stewart. Who does not have a Scottish accent. Um, why not ask Sean Connery to do the voice acting? Ok, maybe he was too expensive. Anyway, Gabriel and Zobek MEET for the FIRST TIME at the second chapter of the game, and then they part ways, but Zobek is, apparently, creepily following Gabriel instead of hunting the vampires, like he's promised, because at the start of each chapter he keeps on rambling on about how Gabriel is feeling, and what his 'old friend', whom he's met three days ago, is going through.

HOW DO YOU FUCKING KNOW, ZOBEK?

It wouldn't be so bad if Zobek gave some useful information, but he just repeats in grave tones what's already abundantly clear, Mohinders dolefully about the sad fate of a vampire girl who's shown mercy, perhaps because the love Gabriel shows for his dead wife reminds her of her own mother's arms around her ( ) or urples on about the state of Gabriel's mind, which is also quite clear, thank you very much.

At first the stupid filler between chapters was amusing, then laughable, and by now I actually turn off the sound when I get to another chapter, Anything to keep from listening to that beautiful voice being raped by the filth he's forced to read out. The fact that Zobek, when you do meet him, is as useful as a dish cloth when you need a knife doesn't help endearing him to me. Here, have a listen to this. Skip to the 2 minute mark and you can hear the start of the bleat. Now imagine hearing this about 20 times, saying absolutely NOTHING of interest: Lords of Shadow intro and tell me you think Patrick Stewart wasn't desperate when he took this job.
I think I can safely use this here:

This doesn't surprise me.

I'm sure I've said it before, but Castlevania has sucked something chronic since everything following Symphony of the Night (In fact, I know I've said it before because I was called out for not playing the hand-held games that followed SotN, and I responded by saying: Unless it's Pokemon or Sudoku, Handheld games can sod right off.)

Yeah, I miss Alucard. Hell, I miss Dracula! I don't know if he's going to show up, but the Big Lord of the vampires is not Dracula, but some breasty chick in a dress that defies gravity.

Okay I'm going massivily off topic but as somebody who loves his hand helds i cannot let this.
v

WD40 wrote:

Unless it's Pokemon or Sudoku, Handheld games can sod right off.

^
Stand, so here goes.

*Clears Throat*
Advance Wars.
Golden Sun.
Sonic Rush.
Fire Emblem.
Final Fantasy.
Phoenix Wright.
Professor Layton.
Elite Beat Agents.
Mario Kart.
Pokemon.
Metroid.
Zelda.
Dragon Quest.
Super Mario Brothers.
Castlevania.
Pokemon.

Me thinks your sampling of hand held gaming is rather small to being dismissing it as you are.

On topic, poor attempt at reinventing a franchise is poor, just wait till they attempted reboot of devil may cry hits, no way that's gonna be anything other than bunk.

Oh look, the game developed by a studio which has all but nothing to do with the studio that produced the best games in the series, and which had nothing to do with the series itself until they decided to ham-handedly smush it into a Castlevania costume... is not that good.

This is utterly surprising.

I think my brother got it for Christmas, though, so I'll probably end up checking it out at some point.

No no no, you're getting me wrong. Even though the game has admittedly nothing to do with the original Castlevania games (apart from the Belmont name, so far) it's actually a pretty decent game. Not good, but not godawful.

It's riddled with bad view points, causing you to fall off the cliff instead of grabbing hold to a ledge, and it's sometimes confusing and it's annoying that once you pass a check point you can't go back to find that scroll you were looking for, but it's actually not all that bad. It's a God of War clone, and it could certainly be better, but this is not my problem with the game.

My problem is Ramirez I mean Zobek and his idiotic, over-articulated droning. It casts a shadow over the game and makes it worse than it actually is. When you start playing the game, you'll know what I'm talking about. I swear it is possible to annihilate a game with badly written and even more horribly executed voice over shit.

Zobek is an over-dramatic, egomaniac asshole. In your last encounter with him, he gets lost in his own little world, talking to himself about how brilliant he is. He paces around, monologuing exposition about how the entire plot got you there, and he doesn't even look at Gabriel while doing so.

I believed there wasn't much else to do with the original CV mythos at this point, but the plot twist at the end sounds like Kojima at his most pretentious.

Spoiler: