Well, guys, this certainly is different. Yes, after over a year, New Games + is changing into something. Something…wordier.
Last week kicked off the wallet-destroying wave of holiday ’08 releases that everybody’s been looking forward to since last year’s wallet-destroying wave of holiday releases. Most of 2007’s big titles hit in November (Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty 4, Super Mario Galaxy, Mass Effect, and Rock Band, just to name a few); 2008, however, is kicking things off a few weeks early. Headlining last week’s releases, we had:
[[image:081021dead.jpg::left:0]]Dead Space, a video game clearly inspired by the films Event Horizon and Alien. You are Isaac, an intergalactic love machine en route to a magical night with an alien race, when you happen upon a vessel just floating there. Thinking a large space ship would provide more fun, you go in only to find that aliens are trying to kill you.
Last week also saw the follow-up to a GTA wannabe, Saint’s Row 2, and a multiplayer game that everybody has been worried about, SOCOM: Confrontation. But who cares about the past? The internet’s all about the present, and so am I, thanks to my goldfish-like memory span.
This week’s lookin’ pretty good, if you ask me. First up is Peter Molyneux’s sequel to the “Best RPG Ever” or whatever nonsense he used to pitch it:
[[image:081021fable.jpg::left:0]]Return to Albion to do all the crap you wanted to do in the first game, like shoot people with guns, be a chick, and kill your best friend’s wife (reader experiences may vary). I also hear that it has an intuitive one-button combat system. With one hand free, what will you do with yourself? If you take the low-hanging fruit of a masturbation joke, congrats, you probably still think the Wii has a funny name.
[[image:081021touch.jpg::left:0]]Speaking of childish jokes, how about this one? The first Touchmaster was a pretty decent Clubhouse Games clone, but I’m not sure how this one’s gonna fare. I expect it to sell on the name alone.
[[image:081021castle.jpg::left:0]]Next up is Konami’s DS follow-up to the abysmal Portrait of Ruin. (Yeah, I went there.) What’s this? An ancient evil has awakened and you are the only one who can defeat it? Time to kill the same sprites you’ve been killing for five games, but this time, it won’t be horrible! Guys, I could say that this game was a steaming pile of poopoo and that wouldn’t stop any of us from purchasing it. We are suckers for Castlevania games, except when they’re fighters.
That’s it in terms of games I really want to get into this week, but that’s not to say that’s it for releases. Also dropping into stores are Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, FarCry 2, Star Ocean: First Departure, and Legendary; the next couple of weeks are going to be filled with some pretty big titles as well. Who’s ready for Fallout 3 and LittleBigPlanet?
Also there is Midnight Club Los Angeles if you want to do 195 in a Lamborghini down the Sunset Strip, and if you do not want to do that maybe there is something medicine can do for that problem.
“Looking forward to” the 2008 holiday rush? I think “dreading” is more like it. It’s mid-October, and I haven’t even finished MGS4 yet! Last year I never even made it to Mass Effect, and this year it looks like Valkyria Chronicles and Fallout 3 are both going to wait indefinitely while I deal with LBP and Rock Band 2. Not to mention all those MegaTen games I picked up after getting hooked on Persona 3 last year, to say nothing of its upcoming sequel…
A little help here?
You left off Star Ocean: First Departure… I know I’m personally really looking forward to getting a chance to play the 1st in the Star Ocean series.
B-but…the Wii DOES have a funny name!
Portrait of Ruin, horrible? Explain?
The thing that ruined Portrait of Ruin for me was the main bad guy was Thomas Kinkade. Lamest villain ever. He even attacks you with paintings. That’s just really pushing it, Konami.
Portrait of Ruin had good gameplay and bosses. It also had terrible level design and unacceptable levels of sprite reuse.
Anyone know how the new one has been shaping up? I haven’t been paying attention.
I’m sure Portrait was a good game, but it was a horrible Castlevania game. The whole “the paintings are new worlds!!” could have been a great idea, except it just added more uninspired hallways with uninspired enemies.
Not to be all contrarian and stuff, but I’m going to be all contrarian and stuff. Portrait of Ruin was the best Castlevania since Symphony of the Night. I was VERY relieved it wasn’t just another lame Sorrow rehash.
Portrait was even more grossly slapdash than Dawn of Sorrow, which is saying something.
Boo to Castlevania hate. All the Castlevania games since Symphony are worth playing — even Circle of the Moon. Or Maybe I’m just a fanboy.
GeoX, are you serious about PoR being the best Castlevania since SotN? Because man, that’s weird.
Portrait of Ruin was wasted potential. It takes place during World War II, but c’mon, no Nazis as all? Also, the character designs and story were cringeworthy. I’m so glad they fixed at least the character art for Order of Eccelsia. Loved the game-play of PoR though, but I’m pathetic like that.
And hey, what’s a Halloween without Castlevania?
Oh I am dead serious, my good man. Part of it might have to do with the fact that at least the portraits break up the usual formula, which was getting very, very stale, and of which Dawn of Sorrow represented the nadir. Part of it might have to do with the fact that I was playing it extremely intensely in an effort to distract myself from a painful break-up I was going through at the time. Obviously, all these are subjective factors. But I will tell you this much: that game scored a direct hit to the pleasure center of my brain–to an extent which was actually rather surprising to me. Couldn’t stop playing. Super-sweet, addictive gameplay that shook up the formula to the extent that Konami’s highly conservative standards allow for any kind of shaking. So yes.
I really liked Portrait myself. Better than the first DS Castlevania, though I played and completed it during an incredibly bad week in my life so its got bad memories for me regardless of the game’s actual qualities.
Circle of the Moon kinda sucks, but the GB Castlevanias are still far, far worse.
I’ve only been goofing around with the new Castlevania for a few hours, but so far I’m seeing a lot of new-looking sprites. Skeletons and Bats always look the same, but the floating horse heads and shrieking ghosts are ones I haven’t seen before. And the first boss – crustacean with a face – that’s a new one, right?
PoR was good enough for me. Certainly the music was great. Yuzo Koshiro FTW.
Harmony of Dissonance is worse than Circle of the Moon. That’s all I have to add to this conversation.
Guys. Portrait of Ruin is a brilliant four-hour game stretched to eight, which averages it out to merely pretty good; Circle of the Moon was the poopy progeny of Castlevania Legends, which was super-poopy. From what I’ve seen, Ecclesia is Portrait done right.
Portrait of Ruin rehashes Symphony of the Night, an incredible game that utilized the mechanics of what is popularly considered the greatest 16-bit title of all time (Super Metroid) for the 5th time (although still adding its own twists) is appalling.
But then Mega Man 9 comes along, having rehashed the mechanics of a game series over 20 years old that we got sick of once already while adding absolutely nothing new (and even taking away features implemented in Mega Man 3), and everyone cries “GENIUS!”
I find all this terribly confusing. I guess it all has to do with nostalgia and absence.
Not nostalgia or absence but intent and execution. There were lots and lots of 2D platformer Mega Man games after they stopped making them for the NES, up through last year’s Mega Man ZX Advent, but MM9 was a much better game than any of them. It laid out its rules and ambitions in its stripped down graphics and minimized interface, establishing a context and succeeding in pushing those limits in subtly new and absolutely engrossing ways. Portrait of Ruin, on the other hand, was bogged down under an ineffectually-realized premise, a detailed character system which was never used to its full potential, and a second set of levels that was utterly tedious to play through. It was good, but not great in the way that MM9 is.
I don’t see how that’s confusing.
Portrait of Ruin rehashes Symphony of the Night, an incredible game that utilized the mechanics of what is popularly considered the greatest 16-bit title of all time (Super Metroid) for the 5th time (although still adding its own twists) is appalling.
But then Mega Man 9 comes along, having rehashed the mechanics of a game series over 20 years old that we got sick of once already while adding absolutely nothing new (and even taking away features implemented in Mega Man 3), and everyone cries “GENIUS!”
I find all this terribly confusing. I guess it all has to do with nostalgia and absence.
I’m not a big Castlevania fan, but I take issue with the equivocation you’re making.
It’s not always about creating new mechanics. MM9 is great ( possibly genius) because of its refinement of the basic mechanics of MM2. It’s reflected in its pairing down of abilities, but also in level design where you have to adapt and concentrate on different skills during play. Sure there is some nostalgia, but that’s in the graphics, music, and effects. Gameplay is perennial.
Again, I’m not sure about PoR, but its possible that while the game takes the mechanics of SoN, it doesn’t necessarily mean they did anything deeper than merely use the mechanics. If the game felt like a boring retread, it may have been more than sprite-deep. Adding possibly unrelated elements could have further messed up the formula, as MM4-8 have shown.
“Portrait of Ruin rehashes Symphony of the Night, an incredible game that utilized the mechanics of what is popularly considered the greatest 16-bit title of all time (Super Metroid) for the 5th time (although still adding its own twists) is appalling.”
That’s like saying Symphony of the Night is a rehash of Super Metroid.
Jeremy summed up Portrait pretty well. What was really depressing there was that the original levels weren’t all that expansive to begin with.
Granted I would rather have seen all-new portraits instead of the first ones repeated, but I honestly did not find playing through them again at all tedious. Is this a complaint that people also have about the second half of Symphony of the Night?
Over the past years, increasingly so, yes, people have been complaining about the Inverted Castle.
Sure, but Symphony’s Inverted Castle was something new and unexpected in 1997, so its shortcomings were the sort of minor problems that go hand in hand with branching out and innovating. By the time Portrait rolled around, they’d had a decade to resolve the issues but nevertheless succumbed to the exact same problem that Symphony suffered. Trying to excuse Portrait’s flaws by saying “Yeah but Symphony!” is like defending the lack of interesting power-ups in New Super Mario Bros. by saying “Yeah but the original Super Mario Bros. had even fewer!”
True, but we’re talking about how things hold up over time. Symphony’s Inverted Castle, which I agree was nifty at the time, didn’t so much when all was said and done.
You will not find me defending NSMB, which was pretty disappointing, but that’s neither here nor there. I do like inverted things, however. Hell, different items, enemies, bosses–I don’t want to give developers an excuse for laziness, but whaddareyagonnado? We all buy the games anyway. And the lack of new layouts don’t bother me so much.
And speaking of NSMB and recycled layouts, I spared everyone SMB 1 as an example in order to avoid drawing out the argument.
You’re welcome.
I hear lots of Portrait of Ruin bashing, which is fine by me, but I hear some Sorrow bashing, too, and even some Circle of the Moon bashing. Arg.
Circle of the Moon was pretty good, as long as you didn’t play it on the hardware that existed when it came out. The lighting was terrible. Slap it in your DS and it’s a new game. Enjoyable, even, once you figure out the wacky magic system.
And Aria/Dawn of Sorrow? Excellent games, both. If I had to pick the best Castlevania since Symphony, it would probably be Aria. Guess my tastes are off.
Oh, yeah, and Harmony of Dissonance is pure crap.
Dawn of Sorrow is my favorite DS game, and Ecclesia played very similarly to it with a bit more challenge and chapter-based areas. Castlevania fans will love it to death. I can understand the lackluster response to PoR, but it was a game that fell under it’s own cumbersome mechanics and uninspired storyline. Ecclesia feels like it’s taking it back to its roots, and the hour I spent with it left me only wanting more. Whether it’s the first or the last SotN rehash, I’m excited. Fuck the haters.
I was already bored after the beginning of Portrait of Ruin. Then I hit the retread paintings and said “no, fuck this shit, I’m playing something else”. The levels weren’t that fun to play through once, and now I’m expected to do them again, only flipped? Fuck you, Konami. And yes, Symphony did something similar, but SotN’s castle was far better designed and fun to play through than all the levels in PoR. And then you get to see what that awesome castle is like upside down! I’ll admit it wasn’t the most brilliant thing ever even back then, but it was fun as hell (even if they used the same fucking music for like 3/4ths of it), and that’s what counts.
PoR is one of two Castlevanias I’ve played and not finished, the other being the ass-tastic Lament of Innocence.
I like all these games, but how do you people keep them straight in your head? They all run together for me.