OK, time to tie a little bow on this month so far, because after a lot of time, effort, and frustration I finally obtained my 434th Platinum by completing the Kleidos Challenges in
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 on my PS3 on "Prince of Darkness" difficulty.
It was a 14 year long journey, but I'm glad I came back to finish it off. I'm also glad I did, in fact, create a new profile on my PS3 just to replay the first 5-6 or so hours of the game on a fresh save after getting the Platinum. It reminded me that I really do love this CV sub-series when I'm playing the story campaign on normal instead of a series of absolutely insane combat challenges on the difficulty level harder than the game's Hard mode.
And Christ, this game still looks absolutely stunning at times. Some of this texture work wouldn't look out of place on a PS5 game. Hell, a LOT of this game looks artistically better than most PS5 games I see, adjusted for resolution scaling. It annoys me somewhat that if Konami hasn't remastered this series by now, they probably never will.
And IMO, Mercury Steam is one of the best...if not THE best...when it comes to selling the physicality of melee combat. When you slam your chaos claws into an enemy shield, the game absolutely SELLS the sheer raw power of the strike, between the camera, the audio, and the force feedback on the controller. When you perfectly block an enemy attack, the game slows down and rings like you just caught one of the bells of Notre Dame. The combat is deliberate and heavy, and I love how it feels when it's not being pushed beyond its limitations like it is in the combat challenges.
I might keep playing this game for fun, but I'm glad my memories of this game weren't as rose-tinted as I feared. A lot of the stuff in the "modern setting" still isn't great and the way the game incorporates context-sensitive climbing SURE is Uncharted-era gaming, but I remember an ungodly amount of whining about the forced stealth sections back in the day and it really does feel overblown. The game's also just plain weird at times for what feels like the sake of it. Honestly, all the "I'm DRACULA! Why aren't I slaughtering everything!" reminds me of the blowback against Bioshock 2 back in the day when people were unhappy with how underpowered you were as a prototype Big Daddy at the start of the game, forgetting that these are still GAMES and the player has to be able to lose.
With time and people seeing just how worse the series would get with Bioshock Infinite, Bioshock 2's definitely gotten a much more positive reappraisal over the years, and I hope this game (and this series) does as well. It's a game made with passion by a team of talented artists who thankfully were not fired when this game underperformed, thanks to Nintendo's intervention.
Recent Posts
Very nice looking game. 
