Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - I Don't Have A Witty Title This Time

I could’ve sworn that Gabriel and Zobek split up. Yet Zobek keeps on narrating like he knows what Gabriel is up too. It’s really creepy. And I wish the guy would make up his mind on the Claudia chick. First he calls her young, then he calls her centuries old. Which is it? I don’t think I’m asking that much for an answer.

So Gabriel wanders into this placed called the Three Towers, I assume that it is named so for the three towers in the area. I only remember climbing two… This area reminds why I hate the camera. Sure it’s constantly moving, I have no control over it and the game chooses some really stupid angles for Gabriel to work with. Almost every time I encountered enemies in the level at least one of them ended up off-screen. There is no targeting system, though I do think Gabriel has a slight auto-target so hitting bad guys gets really frustrating. Especially when you don’t know that they’re there.

One of the worst culprits is near the end of the level. There’s a crank Gabriel had to use to open some gates. Well the area is a giant circle and after you collect the item you’re after you have to come back to this crank. This time Gabriel is attacked at the crank by Greater Lycans. There is no warning, there is no setup and you can’t see them coming. I think this was done so the Lycans could destroy the crank, but I took the hit that destroyed the crank and that makes me unhappy. If you need to destroy an interactive part of the environment that Gabriel is in the process of doing, use a cutscene.

In this area Gabriel is introduced to Fairies and fairly suddenly too.  He had to battle a horde of Lycans and suddenly these green streaks kept flying in and surrounding the Lycans. At first, I thought they were granting extra power to the Lycans and I kept waiting for them to transform into Greater Lycans. Thankfully I was proven wrong and all the green streaks are is Fairies. Fairies can be used to distract enemies. The Fairies actually give Gabriel a container so he can capture more Fairies and store them until he needs to use them. That’s kinda creepy, but that also ends up being your mission for this level. Find three Fairies to get past the final door. That’s actually where most of the level comes into play.

Like I said, the level is one giant circle. You run around it finding where the Fairies are kept and you move on until Gabriel makes it back to the start of the circle. The Fairy locations are pretty easy to find so don’t worry about that. The trickiest part is when Gabriel has to put a Crank handle back into a Crank. He actually has to use the same Crank handle in two different spots. I missed this the first time around.

There are a lot of collectibles in the area and I happily found them all. Normally I end up missing them and I have to go back for them later, like with most weapon power ups. I was able to successfully upgrade Gabriel’s Light Magic, Shadow Magic and Health Bar in this level. I don’t know if it’s planned that way, but I thought it was pretty neat to get all three in the same level. What I want to know is what is up with the fanfare that plays when you finally get an upgrade? The whole game has to stop for a moment and announce to the world that you are now a little bit stronger. I prefer the way God of War handles its upgrades. It’s more like giving a high-five. It says, “Good job, here’s your health” then it moves on. Castlevania is more of a “BEHOLD ALL NATIONS, KINDERED, AND PEOPLE! SIR GABRIEL OF THE HOLY ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS OF LIGHT HAS GAINED ADDITIONAL HEALTH! ALL PRAISE BE TO GABRIEL AND HIS ADDITIONAL HEALTH! HUZZAH!” And then it shuts up. Does that seem like overkill to you? Because it seems like overkill to me.