Read on for my impressions.
 
Graphics
The graphics aren’t too bad. The zombies look kinda scary, some more than others, the environments are really well done. The playable characters though don’t look THAT great. There’s some nice details and such, but overall they don’t look real. I think the graphics really fit well though, and overall it’s a really good looking game.
Other than that there’s a few graphical glitches. Most notably right down the first stairway, I could see a zombie’s head pass through a wall from the next room, or you can pass through your teammates’ bodies and see them transparently and such which just looks weird.

Weird stuff like that happens

Sound
This is spot on. All the sound effects, the voices, the zombie screams everything fits in great. I was totally freaked out he first time I went in the subway and heard the Witch there. Not much more to say here.

Gameplay 
Really like this. This is definitely not your normal zombie game. Instead of the weak and slow zombies from normal zombie games, the ones here are fast and strong, and there’s a lot of them at a time.
The game plays like a normal FPS, using the HL2 engine, so right there it’s a pretty different take on the usual zombie game.  The game is really fast-paced, but at the same time it retains the usual “is there something around the corner” feel zombie games usually have. 

So you start off on top of a building, and you must get in the streets to  get to the subway to eventually get to a safe spot. You get a few weapons on the way: Shotguns, Machine Guns, Molotov Cocktails, pipe bombs and Pistols with infinite ammo (you have to reload, but you still have infinite ammo) which gets really badass once you get a second pistol. So basically you’re going from room to room, or just different sections of the map to get to the next and you kill zombies on the way.

There’s the normal zombie who runs fast and gang up on you, but there’s also a handful of boss enemies. Hunters are super agile and stick to surfaces and kill by jumping on you and slashing at you until a teammate helps you out. Smokers strangle you with their really long tongues, and release gaz when they die, reducing visibility and such. Boomer are fat… They vomit on your and explode when you kill them (putting vomit on you if you’re close to them). Their vomit attracts hordes of normal zombies, so be careful.
There’s 2 also super bosses: Tanks, who are just really big and strong. And Witches, who “injure”(if you don’t get helped fast you die) you in one hit. Those will attack you if you startle them (AKA flash your light at them, shoot near them, or shoot them), and they have really creepy voices when you’re near them.
So there’s a nice variety of enemies and the bosses really make things interesting.

If I had to fault something there, it’s the AI controlled teammates. They constantly get in the way and are kinda useless unless there’s a horde attacking.

Overall the gameplay is really good, much better than I expected, I was really surprised. Fast-paced, requires a bit of strategy, and overall just really fun to play.

Overall
I was actually surprised. I wasn’t expecting this kind of fast-paced action from a zombie game. This is more about teamwork to get to the end and just blowing the crap out of everything in your way than it is about conserving ammo and such like other zombie games (I mean, you have dual-pistols with infinite ammo).

It’s a really fun game, better than I expected. Great gameplay, nice atmosphere, it’s just really well done.  I didn’t play the online yet, but i’ll be sure to give it a whirl sometime soon.

I don’t think I’ll be buying this game until it gets a price drop, but there’s no doubt in my ming that it’s a really good game. If you like FPS or zombie games, at least give it a try, you could really end up liking this.

Screenshots
Took a couple.

2 of your useless teammates

 

Disgusting, just got vomited on >_>

 

This zombie is about to get pwndÂ

 

Why not shoot my teammates? It's not like they're useful anyways

 

Currently dying after stupidly attacking the witch. At least I could still shoot in that state.

 

Those tanks are big, but they're nothing a shotgun can't take care of.

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After playing the demo for Quantum of Solace, I set my expectations at a pretty high level. I mean, it was fun to play, the controls and such seemed to work well.

But did it actually live up to my expectations? Not really. 

Read on, dood.
 
Story

Not gonna spoil anything… Actually I didn’t even spoil myself anything. I played through a fair part of the game and for now it seems pretty interesting. Of course, the reason that I decided not to complete the game was because I plan on watching the movie and don’t want to already know every little plot twist.
Just wanted to make a passing mention here that this is not ONLY a Quantum of Solace game. The plot starts a while after Casino Royale, and after just a few missions… surprise surprise, you get a flashback scene… that lasts a really long time, with pretty much the complete story of Casino Royale. *CASINO ROYALE SPOILERS HERE* You get to go through everything in CR, from the “parkour” part with James chasing the bomb maker to killing Dimitrios to taking Jonathan Bliss’ place in the poker game (though you don’t play that) to saving Vesper from Le Chiffre and finally seeing Vesper die. It’s a pretty long segment, going through all the important scenes from CR.
After that it’s back to Quantum of Solace, trying to find Mr Greene and such. Overall I think it works well, but with the game being called Quantum of Solace, you’d think that it wouldn’t cover the story from Casino Royale as well (leaving it as just a flashback or something). From what I’ve seen the story looks really good, but I can’t really say much since I’m trying to keep some surprise for the actual movie.

The one disappointing thing here is the story segments. See the following screenshot:

That's what they look like... yikes.

Yeah. Kinda lame, just various graphics and character faces and maps appearing, with people talking in the background. There are some actual FMVs, but these kind of scenes outnumber them, with one at the beginning and end of each “chapter”.

Graphics
Just look at the screenshot. 

Fire!Â

As you can see, this looks fantastic. That’s not at the highest setting, I lowered some of the settings because I was getting a bit of lag at some parts, especially where there’s water pouring or, in this screenshot, fire everywhere.

The character models are really well done (Daniel Craig looks almost spot on), the animations are fluid and almost lifelike, and most of the time the environments are gorgeous and there’s a good attention to detail. There are a few iffy spots. In the crumbling building where you go to save Vesper, the water flooding the building looks and moves kinda unnaturally, but that’s one of the few problems i’ve seen. That And Bond shooting through certain obstacles.

Overall the game looks awesome, though you might need a pretty good computer to run it at high settings.

Gameplay
Go to a room, shoot enemies, go to another room, shoot more enemies, go to… oh wait, more enemies are popping up, shoot them… ok now go to the next room, shoot a couple more waves of enemies… a few more…. okay now you reached the end of the level. Do the same thing again in different environments.
I don’t normally fault games for being repetitive, but damn this is repetitive. Okay let’s break this down a bit.

Gunfights (because that’s more than 80% of the game)
Basically the whole game revolves around gunfights. These all involve using the cover system. Because you’re suicidal if you try going with the normal FPS view. Sure, you can get a few kills, but in the end if you’re not hiding, you’ll die.
The cover system is pretty much like in Gears of War. Find some barricade or walls to hide behind. You can either aim in a general direction to hope hitting enemies, or slightly get out of cover to get a good aim. When you’re in cover, enemies will never hit you unless they’re next to you or in a really good angle. Which is strange, since for you it’s really easy to hit enemies that are taking cover.
You can also lob grenades at enemies. They don’t actually hurt them much unless they’re right on them, but what they do help with is making enemies come out of cover, so they become easier targets for you, being stunned for a few seconds.
The basic strategy is finding explosives and other destructible items to blow up or stun enemies, shoot those, and watch the fireworks/kill stunned enemies. When all of those are gone you’re on your own to kill the rest. This is pretty fun but again it gets repetitive.

Problems with gunfights
Now, the gunfights aren’t BAD, but they could use some improvement. For one there are way too many enemies. Some parts are pretty tame, but as it goes on the number of enemies goes up and at times you spend like 15 minutes on a single gunfight. That’s way too long.
Second, I always seem to have trouble with the cover system. Either it doesn’t get in cover or it doesn’t get out of cover when I want to, there are really some times when not being able to get in or out of cover got me killed. And that’s really not something you want happening in a long gunfight.
Third, you die too fast, or at inconsistent rates… Most of the time 3 to 4 bullets kill you, but sometimes it goes up to 10 (not counting the auto-regenerating health here), and sometimes just 1 is enough. I know this is trying to be realistic, but when someone you can possibly see kills you in 2 shots, it really sucks. Basically, you have the exact same health meter as normal enemies.
Which leads me to the fourth problem. With the battles being long and Bond dying too fast, it leads to a problem. You get tired of playing really fast. If you don’t know where the enemies are coming from and where to take cover, you’ll die multiple times in a gunfight. You need to know where the enemies are coming from, or you’ll get surprised by some enemy popping up at unexpected locations. Sure, there’s checkpoints everywhere between fights, but it’s still pretty annoying.

Stealth (which all lead to gunfights in the end)
Added to gunfights are parts where the game tells you to try and be stealthy to avoid gunfights. This mainly involves crouching, properly using the cover system and using a silencer on your weapon. But most of the time you’ll get to a part where enemies seemingly have bionic eyes and ears, being able to see/hear you no matter what you do. So in the end reinforcements will come in and you’ll have to fight waves of enemies once again. There are also parts with cameras, that if they see you, reinforcements are coming right away. Those parts were fun, trying to find a good path to get to the camera’s switch box to disable it. Really though, I would have preferred for the stealth to work a bit better.

Overall the gunfights and stuff aren’t BAD, but they could have been a bit better. The cover system needs serious tweaking, and some of the other issues I mentioned should’ve been addressed. I mean, did NO ONE in the development team think “Hey, aren’t these gunfights a bit long”? They’re fun, but after a while they get tedious.

“Boss fights” (which suck)

QTEs are shit

QTEs REALLY need to die. As of now I can’t think of one game that used them properly, and yet developers insist on using them.  Now, you have cinematic “boss fights” here that are completely controlled by QTE. Okay, that’s bad right there, but add to that the fact that (on PC, I don’t know about the console versions) they are really hard to do because the system is just badly done, and that the QTEs don’t even affect the animation that’s playing. You’re fighting that guy with a big knife, and he slashes at you. Naturally you get a QTE. So if you get it, you evade the knife attack, of course, and if you miss it… WTF, you still evade it? That’s right, it’s basically just a video playing while you have to click on certain spots at certain times, and if you miss too much you have to rewatch the scene from the start until you get it right.

Now I wouldn’t be whining as much if they actually worked properly. But they don’t. You don’t see your cursor until the QTE pops up, so even if you know where it’s coming from, you can’t prepare to get it there. It’s like if you had a QTE in a console game, your controller would disappear and you’d have to find it before pressing the button. Add to that the fact that the accuracy is stupidly weird, and you’ve got a recipe for frustration. My icon is in the middle of the thing when i’m clicking, why is it not working dammit?

Those QTEs also appear in normal gameplay, a few times are mandatory even, since you don’t have a normal melee attack(WTF?). Instead you have a takedown attack, and when you do it close to an enemy you have a QTE to essentially do a 1-hit kill. But it suffers from the same problems as the “boss fight” QTEs, so they suck. Not only that, but if you miss you won’t be facing the enemy anymore and most likely you’ll die.

Other Stuff
Other than gunfights and the worst QTEs ever, you have a few other things to do. Mainly hacking computers, patching into cameras, unlocking doors and finding cellphones.

The doors are hilarious. If all doors had a lame lock system like this in real life we’d all be screwed. Basically it’s a mini-game where you have to press the correspondent direction when a green arrow appears on the screen. Really simplistic and not really fun, but as it goes on they get harder, so at least that’s not too bad.

The hacking and patching in cameras is simple, just stand in front of them and hold F long enough without getting shot, though that will never happen unless you’re stupid. Patching into the cameras will give you an idea of where enemies are and where to go next, but that’s not incredibly useful. Hacking will usually unlock doors or just make you complete your objective. Yay.

The final element is cellphones. They’re lying around the level, giving you hints on what to do, or where traps are set and stuff. It could be useful, but the levels are so damn linear, it’s really not needed. And who the hell goes around putting cellphones everywhere?

Overall
So is the game good? Well… Yes. Really good. But it’s majorly flawed in various areas. QTEs are ass, the gunfights need some tweaking, the cover system is buggy at times, but overall it’s pretty fun to play if you can get over the fact that it’s frustrating and stupidly repetitive.

Best Bond game since Goldeneye? Easily.
Better than Goldeneye? FUCK no. Never in a million years.

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Now I’ve managed to watch it and here I am with my impressions of the first 2 episodes.
I’ll first go into a brief summary of each episode(not going too much in detail) and then give my impressions about it . And there’s gonna be some pictures at the end of the post of course.

Episode 1: Prophecy
This episode starts with Kahlan and her sister running away from Darken Rahl’s troops to get to the Heartlands and find the Seeker of Truth to give him a book. Kahlan’s sister gets killed, she then comes accross the Boundary and uses some magic necklace to get through it. A Quad follows her (though it’s not refered to as a Quad here >_>) and Richard, who was just done rebuilding a bridge, sees her running away from those men and tries to help her out. Kahlan shows off her confessor powers(already?) and the bad guys are killed… except one. Kahlan goes off to find… someone, and Richard gets bitten by a poisonous plant.

The survivor of the Quad goes to the “boss” off the Heartlands, who just so happens to be Richard’s brother(Michael), and explain his view of what happened(and says that he’s from the Midlands), so Michael is off to find Richard and Kahlan. In the meantime Richard talks to his dad a bit and some of Michael’s men come to Richard’s house, so his father tells him to go meet Zedd.

Now Richard goes there, all weakened from the poisonous plant’s bite, and get healed. He then gets told that he’s the Seeker, and that his parents aren’t his real parents. Kahlan gives Richard the Book of Counted Shadows(what?), which, even though it’s in a language he doesn’t know, is still able to read it. So Richard goes to find his dad but finds his house burning. He is then told that Zedd is telling the Truth, and then his dad dies. Richard goes to fight the remaining Quad member at Zedd’s house(taking the horse that has the Sword of Thruth and the Book on it), but gets pwnd and the Book of Counted Shadows is taken away.

Richard realizes his faults and is truly named the Seeker of Thruth by Zedd, who happens to be First Wizard, a high-ranked wizard in the Midlands, and Kahlan. He gets the Sword of Thruth and the episode ends there.

Episode 2: Destiny
Episode 2 finds Richard, Zedd and Kahlan planning how to catch up to the Quad member. Chase comes in, and believes Richard about everything that’s happening, but Michael, who now sides with Darken Rahl’s man out of nowhere, l wants him dead(isn’t the love between brothers magnificent?). They go get something to eat before leaving, and during that time Darken’s forces are trying to break through the boundary by shooting burning… things from their catapults.

Now Michael rallies a bunch of scared citizens and goes off to find Richard and crew(especially Kahlan, who they call a witch(they really know nothing >_>)), but they can’t stop them because Zedd can shoot fire. Nifty. So they get away and try finding a way through the Boundary. On the way there they seperate from Chase and he gets forced(by the Quad member) to tell where to find someone who know how to go through otherwise he’ll kill Chase’s daughter. He gives his instructions on how to get to the Bone Lady’s place, and then he goes to find Richard and gang.

So then Richard’s an idiot and almost goes in the Boundary, but Zedd stops him and gets poisoned. Chase comes in, tells Richard what happened and they go to the Bone Lady, while Kahlan trails behind, transporting Zedd with her. They get to the Bone Lady, save Chase’s daughter from a Gar (didn’t mention that earlier, basically flying demon dudes), and are told that the Quad guy is gone to the Boundary.

So Richard and Kahlan go there, leaving Zedd to be healed by the Bone Lady. They fight the Quad guy, get the Book back, and Darken’s troops manage to break a part of the Boundary. So there’s a big fight between Richard and Kahlan against those troops, and they pwn them. Oh, and before that Richard burned the book. So now the episode ends and Richard, Kahlan and Zedd are off to the Midlands. Yay.

Impressions
Well, I must say  enjoyed this. They did make quite a few changes from the original book, but overall the main story stays quite similar.
The actors were pretty well chosen. Kahlan looks quite similar to what I imagined, Zedd is just as I imagined, Richard… well he’s a bit young and looks different from what I thought he would, but in retrospect this look is fitting for the first book’s Richard.
The acting was satisfactory. Not much more to say here. Except that Zedd doesn’t say “Bags” enough >_>
The problem for me was core differences between the show and the book(i’ll cover those soon). But I think that despite that it should be a good show.
I’ll definitely be watching more of it.

Changes done 
There are a few changes that really change some important elements in the story.
The main one is the Book of Counted Shadows. In the books, Richard read the book since he was a young kids until he completely memorized it, being able to recite it and write it anew when asked. After he was able to do that, they burned it. In the show, he never heard about it and only read a few pages(or even just a few lines) before burning it. At least the lines he read are faithful to the book. But that will inevitably change some elements in the series… most notably the ending, which mostly involves Richard’s knowledge of the Book of Counted Shadows.
Another disturbing change is Richard’s relation with Zedd. In the book, Zedd is Richard’s mentor and taught him almost everything he knows. In the series, Richard considers Zedd “just some crazy old men who speaks to his chicken”. That’s just really weird. To add to that, Zedd doesn’t explain the Sword of Truth’s powers to Richard, which was an interesting plot point in the book.
Another weird difference is the death of Richard’s father. In the book, he was killed by Darken Rahl himself, who came to the Heartland on the back of a dragon. Here they just ignored that, and the dragon(who ends up being an important character) and decide Richard’s dad just gets killed by the remaining Quad member. 
Which brings me to another weird difference: the remaining Quad member. All of them died in the book, so the remaining one seems… out of place here.
The one change that really bothered me is the Wizard’s First Rule. It’s the title of the book the series is based on, so why is the Wizard’s First Rule itself not right? In the book it’s ”People are stupid”, but now it’s “people will believe a lie because they want it to be true, or because they’re afraid it might be true”. “People are stupid” is not only true, but is used throughout the series by Richard to get things done. Just something really random I found that really bothered me here.
The final weird change is Kahlan’s confessor powers. You hear that she’s a confessor early enough in the book, but she doesn’t really use her power until later when they’re in the Midlands, yet here even before going to the Midlands she already used them twice.

There are other differences, but those are the main ones I found. Though it’s been like 3 year since I read the first book so I must have missed some. At least they kept Gars intact, including the blood flies they use to find preys and all, so that was a nice touch (though they don’t explain it in the show). 

Overall
I think it’s going to be an interesting series, and hopefully they’ll go further than just the first book, like another series later on for the second book or something. As long as they don’t screw up too much of the books story I think it will be almost as interesting as the book.
I’ll be sure to keep watch on this. (maybe a network that plays on standard cable here would be nice enough to show it here? I’ll keep downloading the series until then).

Pictures
Here’s a few of them.

So romantic, standing together amongst a bunch of corpses

 

Chase is not as big as I thought he would be, but he is still badass

Crazy naked old man talking to his chicken.... oh wait this is Zedd. Bags old man, put some close on, this is disturbing >_>

The boundary actually looks pretty cool.

This is a Gar. Not what I thought it would look like, but pretty cool anyways.

And off they are to the Midlands. Yay!

 

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Web of Shadows? more like Web of Fails

Hi everyone.

Well,  one of the games I was really hoping would be good, because the videos made it look really fun and all. I mean, it looks like a Spiderman game should look like, it seems to feel like Spiderman… But actually playing it… *shrugs*
Now I’m playing the PC version of the game, so I can’t comment on the console versions. But this is really a big disappointment. (just a note here, I didn’t think of taking screenshots while playing, and I’m not going back in the game to take some).

Read on for specifics.

Graphics
One of the things I can’t fault TOO much on this game. The graphics, though not the highest quality out there, are pretty nice. The city looks good, Spidey looks good, the other character models are pretty well done(symbiote Wolverine looks badass), normal citizens look meh but that happens in most games. Special effects could be a bit better, but they still look fine. Graphic glitches are plentiful. For exampe, one time during a cutscene, Cage just walked through a door. Or another time, during a cutscene again, Spidey was standing in the air. Not just a few centimeters high now, something like over 15 feet high. This sorta glitch happens frequently in cutscenes and quite often in gameplay too.
One thing I should mention is the animation. It’s really well done. Every move makes Spiderman really lifelike and pretty much exactly how you’d imagine him moving in the movies and such. That’s really one of the high points here. Whether it’s swinging through the city or fighting enemies, Spidey’s animation is near perfect.

Sound 
Most annoying Peter Parker voice I’ve heard in a long time. And inconsistent too. Sometimes he sounds all heroic like, and 2 lines after he sounds like a whiny emo kid who’s about to cut himself and sometimes he just sounds incredibly neutral, but each time his “emotions” change his voice sounds really different. Really some of the worst voice acting I’ve heard (not including the 4kids dub of One Piece). The other voices aren’t too bad, nothing spectacular, some of the music is stock, and the sound effects are nothing special either, just what you’d expect I guess.

Gameplay
Let’s break this down in a couple sections: Combat, leveling and navigating

Combat
Basically the core of the game, the battle system in this game is sadly really simplistic. You can easily go through normal fight by button mashing (or in this case mouse button clicking non-stop).
The controls are… kinda complicated, yet really simple. Left mouse button attacks, pressing it repeatedly adds hits to your combo(attacks change depending on if you’re on the ground, in the air or on the walls). Pressing Q blocks, pressing Z shoots webs(which stuns weak opponents and does nothing to bigger ones unless you shoot a lot at them), pressing C makes spidey shoot a web, charge against the opponent and if you press certain other buttons at the right timing you can do various attacks. Pressing Caps Lock(yeah…) changes your suit(from red to black and vice versa) on-the-fly which enables for more combat variety. As you gain experience you can learn more moves and deepen the battle system. But what use is there to learning more attacks and combos and such when your basic 5 hit combo will kill everything in the game with no problem(well, except for some parts require using the C button, you’ll fail if you don’t use it)? Well I guess it’s more fun to use a variety of moves to beat opponents, but in the end it’s not needed.
The enemies are kinda lame too. You get a couple of different enemy types for each chapter (or whatever), but most of them, with a few exceptions, are just copy pasted and have a different ability or two, but are basically the same thing. Exceptions are boss battles, which are all pretty different and actually kinda fun to fight, though I found some of them a bit too easy.
Overall the battle system isn’t bad, but the lack of difficulty makes lots of the elements here useless.

Leveling
As you fight enemies and save civilians and complete objectives you’ll win experience points. Experience points are used to buy skills and upgrades. You get ground moves, air moves, wall moves, web shots, web slings and a few other random things to upgrade. Some just give more hits to your combos, other add new moves completely, and some just upgrade the power of what you already have. One nice thing here is that both the black suit and the red suit have their own upgrade tree, so whatever suit you use more you have different things to upgrade.
You also have spider symbols to find all over the place in the city. Getting a certain number of those levels you up, raising your health, specials and swing speed. Those are hidden everywhere in the city, if you want them all you’ll have to check every nook and cranny, there’s lots on the rooftops, and they’re not always super easy to find(though most of the time they’ll just catch your eye and you’ll get them there.
Overall the leveling is simple but effective, not much bad to say about this.

Navigating
What’s Spiderman without swinging from building to building and all around the city to find your objectives and bad guys to fight?
Well in this game it feel really nice…. sometimes. The right button on the mouse makes you jump up using webs if you’re on the ground, and subsequent uses of the button will make you shoot webs on nearby buildings to swing around the city. Pressing the Space button while swinging makes you swing higher and when you let go you go higher. Now the swinging in general works well, but that’s as long as you don’t touch walls. When that happens it’s just bad, it’s like Spidey doesn’t know what to do and everything just screws up. It’s hard to really explain, but really it doesn’t work too well. Might as well mention that, although it might not seem like it(I’ve seen reviewers saying Spidey’s web attached to the clouds >_>), Spidey’s web has to attach to a nearby building that’s higher than he is, otherwise the Right Mouse button just won’t respond and you’ll be left falling until you’re at a proper height. As of now though I don’t remember dying from fallint from a building, but if it’s too high it might hurt falling down.
Speaking of walls, that’s also a real bitch. Pressing Q makes you hold onto wall so you can move accross them. That’s fine and all, but would it be too much to ask for the game to actually respond when I press Q? Most of the time it does nothing, making me hold on the wall when I’m really close to the ground. Moving around isn’t too bad… when it wants to. Most of the time the camera angle is horrible and it’s hard to navigate where you want to. Turning doesn’t work really well either. While on the wall you can also press the E button to get in Sprint mode, which allows for better speed on the wall, but crappier turning capabilities.
Not much else to say here. Most of the time the swinging is kinda fun and, when you’re not getting problems because of walls and such, you really do feel like Spiderman.

Why this game sucks (AKA how to make a horrible PC port) 
Ah, now I didn’t call this Web of Fails for no reason. Most of the problem I’ve experienced come from the really bad porting to the PC. This is one of the most badly optimized games I’ve ever seen. I don’t have the most high-end computer in the world, but it still holds its own really well and can run Crysis on High without any lag(didn’t try Very High yet, but it should be able to play a mixture of high-very high). But here there’s lots of slowdown at really random parts, but the big problem is explosions. May it be during cutscenes or gameplay, if a car explodes or something, even if you have a good computer, the game will lag heavily. Also, there’s fire hydrants all around town, and if you happen to break one, though it won’t be as bad as the explosions, you’ll still be getting lag when the water gushes out.
More problems brought by the PC port are the really awkward controls. It’s kinda tough to do exactly what you want here, the game is unresponsive at times, and really the button placement is just… meh.
Now this is one of the big problems to me. The menu navigation is horrendous. Was it really that hard to have some mouse support on there? Everything is done with the keyboard. Q and E goes through different subsections in the sections you’re currently in, and Z and C go to other sections of the menu. Wow, how intuitive >_> Also, there’s no visual settings, so if the game is lagging for you, well tough luck, you can’t make the model/texture quality lower or anything. That sucks.

Now there’s a few problems that don’t come from the game being a horrible PC port. Mainly the locking on. I mean, you’ve seen it in Devil May Cry and other action games, when you lock on you’ll be locked on to the closest enemy and you can still move your camera around and such. But here… The game will randomly lock on to far away targets and such, even if you don’t press the Tab button, and when you’re locked on you’re forced to face said target, and if you try moving the camera the screen just jerks around. That really becomes a problem at times, making it hard to see where you’re going when the game just locks on to random crap when you’re fighting. This is really the worst thing about the game. Really, the lock-on system should logically be really simple, but no, they decided to screw it up heavily. If it locks to something you don’t want, you have to stop the lock then move the camera back how you want it, and if you’re fighting a series of enemies, after killing one the game will put back the lock on to the randomly placed thing it was locking on to before.

Overall
Now this game had a lot of potential. The combat is good and if it was harder it would have been nice. The swinging around is fun when it’s not bugging up. The leveling system is good, and choosing the good or evil side for the story is real nice.
But the port to PC is horrible, Peter’s voice sucks, there’s graphical glitches everywhere, there’s not lots of difficulty, it’s repetitive and actually TOO long(if they just abridged some of the useless story segments or tutorial parts it would have been a bit more bearable.
Verdict: If you REALLY want this game, get a console version, it should play a lot better and I’d say wait to find it in the bargain bin.

Well, that’s it for now, more things coming up here soon.

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This one does keep the usual Metroidvania style, but does a few things a bit differently. Is this game still as high-quality as previous DS/GBA Castlevania titles? Read on to see!

Story
This game takes place… actually I have no idea when. It seems like Mid 1800s, but it’s still pretty cryptic in that aspect, what with modern lighting, gasoline powered chainsaws, color cameras, robots… Yeah, it’s pretty cryptic as to when it takes places, but somewhere around 1865 sounds just about right.
Anyways, whatever year it is, the Belmonts are nowhere to be seen, maybe hiding or something until Dracula comes back to life, and a few other organizations are preparing to fight Dracula if he comes out and the Belmonts aren’t there to take care of him.  One of those organizations is Ecclesia, which seemingly only has 3 members. One of the members is Shanoa, a woman who can absorb “Glyph”, which basically let her use magic. So in the beginning of the game, Shanoa is preparing a ritual to seal Dracula forever, but is stopped by Ecclesia member Albus, who wants to prove himself worthy of going through the ritual instead of Shanoa. As a result of his interference, Ecclesia loses the Dominus glyphs which are supposed to be used to seal Dracula, Shanoa loses her memories and emotions and must start her training anew, and Albus is gone missing, Dominus glyphs in tow.
So basically, as Shanoa, you have to find Albus and the Dominus, as well as save the villagers that Albus kidnapped and imprisoned. I think the story is quite enjoyable, a few okay twists and everything just works well.

Graphics
The graphics are really nice. The sprites are well drawn and detailed (though, like most castlevania games, the sprites don’t have faces). The environments are really nice looking. Most are pretty dark and creepy, and overall give off a pretty good atmosphere. Last but not least, the enemies  look pretty nice. You’ve got the usual zombies, skeletons,  medusas, Death, axe armors, Frankenstein monsters and a couple other Castlevania staples, you also have a few new things like the big scary faces, Leatherface straight out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, weird screaming spirit girls, Nightmare (weird horse things), giant starfish, (historically accurate)Giant Enemy Crabs, shadow wolves and a few others. Monster design is overall really well done.

Sound
The sound is great as always. Monsters reacting to attacks or other of their sounds/talking/screams. Lots of creepy sounds too, of course. Shanoa’s voice acting is also pretty good, even if there’s not that much. Finally the music is great. It really has that classic Castlevania feel to it, and usually fits the atmosphere pretty well. Not much more to say here, the sound is great, as expected.

Gameplay
Ah, the gameplay. If I would describe it in one word, I would say “superb”. Map navigation is pretty much the same as older games, you go from room to room fighting monsters, some doors hide boss battles, and some rooms have breakable walls or floors or something to find hidden rooms or items, and finding save points and teleports. The basics from the various “Metroidvanias” hasn’t changed much, but some other gameplay elements have changed. The biggest difference from the previous titles is the Glyph System.

Glyph System
The big difference here is the Glyph System. Though it shares some similarities to the Souls system from Aria/Dawn of Sorrow,  it’s still pretty different. For instance, Shanoa doesn’t use weapons. Her attacks all stem from her use of Glyphs. Swords, rapiers, hammers, lances, fire, electricity, ice, light, darkness, all of the attacks come from the various Glyphs she absorbs.
Basically, you equip one glyph on each hand(Y button and X button) and one that can have various effects(used with the R button). Glyphs equipped to the hands can be used in combos by quickly alternating between the two buttons. Depending on the glyphs equipped, the rhythm to switch between each glyph is different, but proper switching enables to swifter attacks and better combat. Normal attacks uses MP, since all the attacks are basically magic based, so you can’t just attack non-stop, but MP recovers automatically fast enough.
In addition to that you have Glyph Union. With proper combinations, you can use different Union attacks, which combines two Glyphs to use a powerful attack. All combinations of the same glyph will have it’s own Union, but other combinations might create really powerful attacks. Those attacks use hearts, and a large amount of them, so they should only be used when they are really needed, especially in the beginning when you haven’t found many Heart upgrades.
Finally, as you kill enemies with glyphs(or find “Drops” items which boosts attributes), your attributes for each type will go up, eventually boosting their overall power. Not much more to say on that aspect, but basically the more you use a weapon type, the more powerful it gets.
The Glyph equipped to the R button can have various effects. The most important in the beginning let’s you latch on magnetized… things… and send yourself flying in whatever direction you want. Some make Shanoa transform into a few enemies, some give you stat boosts, one lets you fly, one lets you walk through certain walls. Basically, some of them are important to move on, the others can be use to complement your fighting style.

Quests
There’s quite a few quests in the game, given by villagers once you save them. The quests are mostly “go find X number of X items” and a few “kill X number of enemies”, but there are a few others, like “draw a waterfall” or “take pictures of a monster” or “find my cat”(though there’s a bunch of non-quest cats to find). Those quests give money, various items, or expand the inventory in the shop. So if you want some of the better equipment or just more stuff overall, doing quests is a good way to do that.

Equipment
Not much to say about this. Differently to previous Castlevania games, you don’t equip weapons, since all the attacks are handled by Glyphs. So you have armor, shoes, helmets and accessories. Most of the armor pieces can be found in the store after doing quests, and most accessories are found in treasure chests in dungeons, though a few can be found in stores when you do certain quests.

Going to different dungeons
This game, at first, doesn’t take place in Dracula’s Castle, which is currently nowhere to be found. So until you can actually go there, you go to various other locales, which range from forests to seas to caves to creepy dungeons and mansions. Those appear on a map, where new places appear when you complete previous areas. Very simple, but a different approach to the usual “going to different parts of Dracula’s castle”.

Overall, the gameplay is excellent. The Glyph System works really well, the combat is great and fast-paced, quests are fun to do, and exploring every area is good too.

Difficulty
This game is hard. Easily the toughest “Metroidvania” game in the Castlevania series. Except for the first boss, the bosses are all pretty tough, and each boss is harder than the last. They all have patterns, or at least visual/audio cues as to what their next attack will be, but it’s pretty tough figuring that out on your first try, and then evading their attacks isn’t always exactly easy. Not only that, but after a while bosses start doing a LOT of damage. One of them in particular, when I had 500 HP, did over 100 damage for each attack, around 160 damage for his “medium” attacks, and one of the attacks doing over 200 damage, you can imagine how fast I could get killed against him.
But it’s not just the bosses, even normal enemies can be a problem. Though not as bad as bosses, they still do ridiculous amounts of damage. Though it’s not too bad anyways, what really adds to the difficulty is the incredibly small amount of save points (which recover your HP). There is a LOT of distance between each save point, which are, for the most part, just next to boss rooms. Though some teleports help, most of the time they would still send you to a monster-filled room before you can get to a save.
If you want a challenge, this game definitely delivers.

Overall
So yeah, the game is awesome… Not much more to say here. Good characters, nice story, good graphics, nice soundtrack, incredible gameplay and really good difficulty. If you’re a Castlevania fan…. well you should already have it by now… If not, it’s worth trying out, though if you’re new to the series i’d pick up a different one to at least get used ot the gameplay. Overall great game, another masterpiece on the DS.

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