Let's Talk... Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow was an excellent blend of exciting combat, well-crafted puzzles and grand boss fights that quickly became the single best-selling Castlevania of all time. Lords of Shadow 2 puts you back into the shoes of one Gabriel Belmont, who became (or already was?) Dracula, the Prince of Darkness, at the end of the first game. A more action-oriented game than its predecessor, Lords of Shadow 2 focuses more on its excellent breed of fast-paced combat but suffers from a convoluted and unfocused story and some occasionally over-ambitious gameplay ideas that simply fail to come to fruition.

Dracula is portrayed as a stone-cold badass... but also loving father..?

Lords of Shadow 2 takes place well after the events of both Lords of Shadow 1 and Lords of Shadow: Mirrors of Fate and is actually set in the modern day. After his castle is besieged by an angry mob known as the Brotherhood of Light, Dracula is forced into a deep sleep lasting a thousand years. He awakens in the present day (ish) and comes into contact with Zobek, one of the Lords of Shadow (and voiced by Patrick Stewart), who promises to remove his curse of immortality if he destroys Satan, who Zobek will return to Earth soon. Dracula must track down the three Satan-worshipping acolytes that can lead him to Satan. Along the way, however, Dracula is plagued with constant visions of his late wife (who he was tricked into killing in the first game) and his son, Trevor Belmont aka Alucard (yes that is Dracula backwards…). Oh, and he’s also being stalked by bloody reincarnations of his castle, who are desperate for him to stay in his castle and so possess people and objects to attack Dracula…

Needless to say, the plot gets a little weird. It gets off to a promising start, but each layer of convoluted nonsense that gets added spread its focus thinner and thinner. It’s hard to enough to keep up with the game’s intense back story and all of the crazy lore surrounding the Lords of Shadow series without all the extra nonsense layered on top. The game makes a number of rather hokey attempts to humanise Dracula by trying to show him as a loving father and devoted husband. These scenes are hard to take seriously and really highlight the confused pacing and tone of the story. These failed attempts to explore Dracula’s character are made worse when they are continually contradicted by scenes of Dracula being a ruthless, cold-blooded bad-ass (which is exactly what he should be). That’s not to say that the story is completely without merit, however, and there are a couple of cool moments spread throughout (with a genuinely good twist towards the end). But, frankly, Lords of Shadow 2 presents a fairly disappointing conclusion to the trilogy.

It's fair to say that things get weird before Dracula's dead wife shows up

Where the story fails, however, the gameplay truly excels. The combat is more complex than the previous games and takes more explicit influence from titles like DmC: Devil May Cry. These influences come from your three main weapons: your Blood Whip, Chaos Claws and Void Sword. Combat revolves around you switching between these three weapons to take advantage of their varying effects. The Void Sword does less damage but returns health on each strike, the Chaos Claws hit fast and hard and can break armor, whilst your Blood Whip is your default weapon. Both the Void Sword and Chaos Claws require separate types of magic to power and each successful strike will deplete a weapon’s respectful magic bar (magic is gathered through killing enemies and dealing damage without being hit). The DmC likeness comes from the way that each weapon is effectively toggled on and off. The Void Sword is toggled with one button (LB on the 360 pad) and Chaos Claws are toggled with another (RB). The game gives you good reason to switch between weapons, though the few they give become quickly predictable.

The game also encourages you to mix up your weapon habits by offering you three levels of “mastery” for each weapon. Full mastery of a combo is gained through prolific use of it, which is displayed by a percentage that will increase by a small amount after every successful use of that combo. Once a combo reaches 100% mastery, it can be transferred to the overall mastery level of the weapon that it belongs to (since each weapon has its own combo list). Each mastery level gained for a weapon will increase its damage output and thus its overall effectiveness in combat. It’s an interesting system that gives you plenty of incentive to vary your combos and encourages you all weapons in equal measure. It works excellently in giving you a legitimate reason to mix things up and resist the urge to just mash out the same combos every time. The combat generally flows better, looks better and feels way more satisfying than it ever did in the first game.

Gameplay is fast, fluid and vastly improved 

Further improvements in the gameplay come from the ability to turn off  quick-time events. First of all, arguably the most important change from the first game, the ability to completely get rid of all quick-time events from start to finish. A bizarre yet fascinating feature to include, one wonders when or why these QTEs became optional (negative reaction from fans? Play testing?). Either way, QTEs are now a toggle-able option in the options menu. This is made even stranger because of how QTE-rich this game is, boss fights are full of them, interacting with objects usually requires it, all finishing moves use them, the list goes on. Being able to turn off QTEs is an excellent and refreshing change that really makes you realise (even more so) how dumb and unnecessary they really are.

The game’s excellent combat, very basic puzzle-solving, and rewarding exploration are occasionally let down by some truly awful pseudo-stealth sequences that feel both poorly designed and completely out of place. Whilst the majority of the game is well-made, the over-ambition and lack of focus that encumber these stealth sequences unfortunately overshadow the obvious talent over at Mercury Steam Entertainment. Occasionally you’ll be faced with clumsy forced stealth sequences in which Dracula must evade a pair of huge brutes wielding inexplicably large weapons, who will instantly vaporise him on sight. Escaping these sticky situations either involves distracting them with a swarm of bats and then sneaking past or using Shadow Portals to turn into a pack of rats to then distract them or get behind them before possessing one of them, usually to then open a locked door. Needless to say, these sequences are horrible. Frustrating, poorly designed, out of place and thoroughly without merit. Such sequences feel like a physical manifestation of a developer with too many ideas and too much ambition.

Most of the boss fights are pretty awesome

The design of the world, however, is one of the few things in Lords of Shadow 2 that actually feels like it stems from too little ambition. Unlike the exotic locales of the original Lords of Shadow, this game takes place almost entirely in a stale and extremely ordinary modern day setting and many of the environments live off a colour palette diet of dull greys and browns. Whilst there is some novelty to the concept of demons in a modern day setting, they just don’t do enough with it to make it interesting. Aside from a panic-ridden news report towards the beginning of the game, there is zero mention of people and society in this completely empty world and the world is inhabited almost entirely by demons. That is, of course, except for a group of mech-soilder dudes with guns and jetpacks who are given absolutely no explanation, and become a prevalent enemy type later in the game. When you consider how great the game looks on PC, the environment design is disappointingly plain and feels far too uninspired (especially when DmC: Devil May Cry showed us how cool demons in the present day can be when done well).

On the PC, the game looks truly amazing. With some excellent lighting and some great-looking environments, the game’s many beautiful moonlit set pieces really show up the game’s 360 and PS3 counterparts. Fortunately, the game also manages to run extremely smoothly. Controls are tight and the game plays reasonably well on a mouse and keyboard set-up, though you’d probably be better off using a gamepad. The star-studded cast of the first game continues here with Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Zobek and Robert Carlyle reassuming the lead. Needless to say, the voice acting is truly excellent and, in some cases, manages to compensate for some shaky writing and the unstable plot.

On the PC, the game looks really fantastic

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is a fairly divisive mixed bag. On the one hand, the game presents a thoroughly improved and truly satisfying combat system, incredible visuals, some great boss fights and a number of outstanding moments. But on the other hand, you have a convoluted story with confused pacing and tone that offers a pretty disappointing conclusion to the Lords of Shadow trilogy, a couple of over-ambitious mechanics and simply boring environment design. In the end, though, Lords of Shadow 2 maintains a high level of quality and enough moments of excellence to make up for the parts that just leave you thinking who thought this was a good idea?

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Let's Talk... Darksiders 2

The original Darksiders, although a great game, bordered the dangerous line between being a respectable homage to the Legend of Zelda series and just being a straight up knock-off. Vigil Games could have easily crossed that line with Darksiders 2, but with a solid formula already established and a potentially vast world to dig into, Vigil Games has kept much of the original game’s original concepts and expanded on them in a way that feels both smart and natural.

In Darksiders 2, you play as Death, one of the others horsemen of the apocalypse, as he attempts to get his mighty unpopular brother, War (the protagonist of the first game and another horseman of the apocalypse), out of a whole heap of trouble. Although knowledge of the events of the first game would make it a little easier to follow the story of this game, you wouldn't be at a major loss if you have no idea who the four horsemen are or who belongs to which faction etc. Also, instead of taking place on a ruined Earth like the first, the game is instead set in an entirely different world and is constantly switching between the land of the living and the land of the dead. The change of scenery adds some much needed variety to the environments and allows for some much more interesting and far more fantastical set pieces.  

Death looks and plays very different to his brother, War

Unlike the heavy and powerful War, Death is a significantly quicker and more agile character straight from the get-go with a trusty pair of dual-wielded scythes being the main tools of your arsenal. Of course, scythes aren’t the only weapons at your disposal. The game’s new and engaging loot system offers plenty of opportunity to frequently upgrade and replace your current equipment with armour and weapons. As with any loot-driven game, weapons are totally defined by their attack speed (there’s essentially one type for slow, medium and fast) and the various attributing stats they may wield (which include things like critical strike chance, life on hit, life on crit etc.). Naturally, the addition of loot makes Darksiders 2 as much an RPG as an action game.

The same can be said for the addition of the very standard quest system that allows you to track the main quest and side quests. The side quests are fairly standard for the most part and you’d do well to get through them all without getting bored of their repetitive fetch-y nature. These quests are usually simple tasks like searching a dungeon for a particular item, or killing X for Y, but some more interesting side content begins to open up later, such as the round-based survival arena that will offer you loot for an exit every five rounds. For some, changes like adding loot and quests, although pretty smart changes, may move the feel of the game too far away from what made the first Darksiders feel so different and it almost feels like Darksiders 2 has lost some of its identity by doing so.

The world is enormous compared to the first game, but it's easy to forget that with all the immediate fast travelling the game offers

 One of the core features of the original game that has not been canned, however, is the steady progression of Metroidvania-style items required for traversing the world and solving puzzles. The grappling hook and portal gun rip-off make a return in slightly different forms, as well as the ability to split yourself into two beings for the purpose of holding down pressure plates for opening doors and raising bridges etc. For the most part, these items open up some fun but rather rudimentary puzzles until you unlock the self-duplicating ability. The game builds some interesting and rather challenging puzzles out of this relatively simple mechanic in a pretty novel way. Also, later in the game the portal gun rip-off is upgraded to have reality-switching properties that make the last portion of the game rather tricky at times.

The combat isn’t exactly difficult but sure is satisfying when done right. The different weapon types and the variety of stats available from armour and weapons allow you to build your character in rather dynamic ways. For example, my preference was to equip the fastest weapon type, a pair of claws, and attempt to max out my critical strike chance and life on kill as much as possible, which paved the way for me to just tear through some areas. On top of the gear is a two-sided talent tree that basically has one side for ranged attacks and summoning minions, and the other for melee-focused obliteration.

Floating combat numbers aren't the only thing that make the game feel more like a standard RPG, but its a nice addition nonetheless

Overall, Darksiders 2 does a great job of expanding on the story and gameplay of its predecessor whilst still adding enough to keep it fresh and iterative enough. The change of protagonist and change of setting are both smart and natural changes that do the game a great service. However, although the addition of loot and a standard quest system are positive changes, they take away a significant part the series’ identity. Either way, with two solid games under their belt and still another two horsemen of the apocalypse to explore, Vigil Games have plenty of room for another sequel.

Let's Talk... DmC: Devil May Cry

As someone who has never been a fan of the Devil May Cry series in any capacity, DmC: Devil May Cry was a pretty great surprise. This flashy reboot moves away from the series’ traditional roots of extreme difficulty and replaces it with a considerably less challenging and more accessible experience. The game’s extremely stylish art style and excellent level design easily outweighs the satisfying yet simplified combat system, and it certainly seems to be more the focus of the game.

A satisfying and rewarding combat system is great fun, but it certainly isn't as difficult as previous DMC games

 A younger and controversially reinvented Dante takes center stage of the reboot. The story explores Dante’s past, as is the standard for reboots, and sees him team up with his long-lost brother, Vergil, to stop the demons taking over the world with a mind-numbing soda drink. It’s pretty ridiculous, and as soon as a flying pizza covers up Dante’s crotch as he flies into his clothes you know it isn’t going to take itself particularly serious. For as dumb as it is on paper, its execution actually isn’t half-bad. It manages to tell its own stupid story, somewhat build Dante as a character and makes enough room for potential sequels, whilst attempting to explore some harrowing topics like sexual assault and domestic violence (granted it’s only for a brief moment and touches on it in the lightest possible way).

When compared to the previous games, the combat certainly appears considerably “dumbed down” at face value. But as new weapon unlocks and a whole host of purchasable combos add layer upon layer, it eventually becomes pretty complex. Some enemies appear in ethereal forms that will only become solidified when using the right weapon. Some enemies require you to pull off particular combos to leave them vulnerable. And, of course, the Devil May Cry trademark of knocking up enemies and juggling them in the air with your guns is well intact. The combat is certainly no cakewalk, especially at the higher difficulties (which actually get quite creative in how they alter the challenge of the game, for example, all enemies die in one hit but so do you) and involves a lot of switching between different weapons and doing your best to look as stylish as possible.

A gorgeous art style and some great art direction elevate every inch of this game's appeal

Fortunately, the game’s reasonably deep scoring system incentivizes you to do just that, and plays its way into almost every aspect of the game. At the end of each level you’ll be given an overall score based on how fast you beat the level, your combat rating and how many collectibles you found. The score is an arbitrary completionist figure aside from the upgrade points you obtain from higher ratings, but the drive to get those S ranks is a great way to encourage you to experiment with the game’s angel and demon weaponry, which act as light and heavy attacks respectively. Although the combat is relatively easy on the default difficulty, the way that the game’s scoring system is constantly rewarding and punishing you during combat can actually make it rather brutal. An excellently executed combo can get your score right up there but your letter grade score drops a couple of levels whenever you’re hit.

The fact that all of the gameplay takes place in the demonic limbo/fake reality allows the designers to truly go crazy here. Mundane environments like warehouses or just typical streets are mutilated, twisted and transformed into the most ridiculous and just unrecognisable landscapes of such incredible creativity. As well as bringing some extraordinary environments, the game also throws some truly memorable boss sequences your way, too, which, whilst not exceptionally difficult, won’t be forgotten for a good long time. It’s difficult to explain some of the crazy environments and do them the justice they deserve; they’re certainly something to be experienced first-hand. The way that the things form and explode all around, the way that titles and information appears and overlays on screen, and wonderful usage of a varied colour palette makes for some visually stunning and truly unforgettable set pieces.

Screenshots alone don't do the crazy level design justice

Overall, DmC is a super stylish and hugely enjoyable experience with a couple of truly outstanding moments, but having the Devil May Cry name stamped all over it may in fact be its downfall. Fans of the older games will probably hate that this game even exists, whilst anyone who hasn’t played a Devil May Cry game will probably just be put off by the notorious difficulty of the earlier games. Nonetheless, DmC is an incredibly stylish reboot with some decent promise for another great sequel, and although the action is solid it’s the game’s amazing level design and awesome art direction that elevates this well-made and accessible character-action reboot into crazy levels of stylishness.