"Extreme Platforming!"
I love trailers.

Game looks pretty good.

Also, take note that, to me, this game shall henceforth and forever be known as:
"Mirror Of Fat".

Why, yes. Plenty more of that please. Thanks.

Trailers for a game have never ever left me feeling so... mixed before. X_X before I let loose my opinions here, let me lay out two very important facts so that one can understand where I come from.

1.) I -LOVE- Castlevania. I love classic stiff platforming think before you leap action games that doesn't afraid to put you in your place. I love the high contrast 8-bit graphics that made up the NES games and the quirky feeling of beating the meat out of a wall that you desperately want because you are in a heightened panic for ANYTHING to give you that little bit of health you need to push on. I also love Metroidvania, with the castle's intimate interconnectedness and the leveling up and just crazy variables on how you could go about playing these games. I love Ayame Kojima's take on gothic portraits and how they gradually felt more comfortable applying a couple of anime tropes to what was up until that point something very much grounded in trying to invoke the imagery and feel of Hammer's horror films and the Universal studios classics. Hell, I even like some of the 3D stuff that other people think is crap and enjoying where the designers were going with their failed experiments of games.

2.) I really could not get into Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. I love me some Patrick Stewart and I love me some Castlevania, and I thought that Konami was on to something I'd really like by handing it to a western studio that isn't afraid to take some risks. I understand Lords of Shadow was a competent game that Frankensteins together bits and pieces of successful games and as a result is something that plays okay,b ut I don't really like having to sit there and wail on a single guy and abuse a parry for that long. I don't like uncharted's style of platforming that's not so much platforming as it is snapping from one ledge to the next in a stream of very scripted feeling ledge climbing events. I don't like that as far as I played into the game (Which was well on my way to the second lord before I traded the game in) that you didn't have bats or crows trying to impede your platforming and that there wasn't some whipping involved with that. Gabe felt weak and pathetic most of where I played through, where he was constantly crutched on having to try and keep combo streaks going to keep magic dropping because only when he's using magic does he feel any sort of powerful and potent!

What burns me the most though about the whole ordeal is the presentational stuff. at it's SHITTIEST (See: Haunted Castle for the Arcade, Castlevania Patchislot, etc.) Castlevania has a pumpin' and memorable soundtrack. Even Harmony of Dissonance, which people complain has a bad soundtrack has quite a few tunes that stay with me and I daresay I do listen to on my spare time. Castlevania Lords of Shadow is filled with cliche' Lord of the Rings wannabe fare that is forgettable at best. I have nothing against orchestral score, but the composition just is NOT there. Even the sorta music box-y Vampire Killer tune is just... really, REALLY underwhelming. Speaking of which, it kinda stinks that they got rid of the Vampire Killer whip in exchange for a really gimmick-y Dante's Inferno looking weapon... and for that matter rebooting all the lore. they really, REALLY didn't need to do that. sure, there was a bit of bloat setting in, but there were still stories to be told and such! Even the graphics kinda bother me, once again invoking more Lord of the Rings in my opinion then something distinctly Castlevania.


HOOH! Okay, now we can get to my opinions of Castlevania: Double-stuffed Oreo of Titles.

The census on Castlevania is that 2D is good and that the 3D is the cancer that kills. I'd be inclined to disagree, but the proof is in the pudding. That being said, there are some things I see in these LoS:MoF trailers that REALLY alarm me, such as them feeling the need to ape the stiff and unessesary combat scheme from Lords of shadow. the combat and the platforming seem to be two very seperate things, and that fighting things is going to be very painstaking. If it wasn't for the whip swinging parts, I'd almost feel like I'd have to congratulate MercurySteam on FINALLY making a sequel to Prince of Persia. The Music from trailers so far has also not been too encouraging to get the kind of composition that will keep me listening for time and time again, and I find it kinda insulting that they feel the need to attach names to characters that don't need to be there for this reboot, ESPECIALLY Alucard considering the whole nature of what happens at the end of Lords of Shadow. I also kinda cringed at them trying to take a certain classic one liner at the end of that trailer.

That being said, I AM happy to see things like the more prominent focus on the castle and it's gothic scenery, the Metroidvania style map on the bottom screen, and most of all, seeing some of the classic Sub-weapons like the Cross Boomerang and the Axe return. That, and I think Mercurysteam as developers do appreciate the lineage of what they're working with, otherwise we wouldn't get lines like "BUT ENOUGH TALK, HAVE AT YOU!" or the thing that was at the end of the E3 trailer with that... thing with the cleaver smashing Fleamen. Heck, seeing FLEAMEN instead of random goblins in a sun-soaked swamp  has me stoked! (Imagine that; I'm stoked for fleamen.) Here's hoping for some vertical climbs up a clocktower with Medusa heads and Axe Armors impeding your way. =3

I was a huge fan of the DS Castlevania games, I thought the execution was brilliant.

I too was unimpressed by the PS3/360 reboot, it felt like a game that took itself too seriously. Still the scale of the game and detailed environments are a huge artistic achievement. I was hoping it would be a little more quirky like how in Dawn of Sorrow the best way to beating one particular monster was to throw down a plate of rice and curry, a power you had to steal from the skeleton butler enemy.

]I think the reason Konami is going with this reboot is because they weren't satisfied with the sales and thought it had something to do with the Japanese game design.

Although I am of Castlevania fan I'm gonna have to wait for reviews before I put money of this 3DS version.