skip to main |
skip to sidebar
I'm going to be blunt when I say that some companies shouldn't make games. Either that, or all companies should be required to create and develop games to a standard of quality. The following game, by just about all accounts, wasn't.
For those of you who don't know (and I seriously doubt there are many of you that read this that do), Bram Stoker's Dracula was released in 1993 by Sony Imagesoft for the consoles of the time, and was developed by Traveler's Tales. Traveler's Tales is responsible for a handful of movie & tv show game adaptations in the past fifteen years and more recently the LEGO Star Wars/Batman/Indie series.
Unlike the LEGO games, which are actually fun from what I've experienced, Bram Stoker's Dracula was boring and badly-coded. This is something to be expected from books turned movies turned games, but I was willing to give it a shot considering how awesome the source material was.
1. Plot
What can be explained here? It's based off of the Columbia pictures movie adaptation of the classic novel, except formatted to fit into a 16-stage action platforming game. Not much to explain beyond that. Something I didn't learn until after looking up the movie, however, is that Keanu Reeves played Johnathan Harker in the movie, and you play as Harker throughout the entire game.
2. GameplayHere's where the game goes bad. The developer must have been in a rush to get the game out, or just didn't care to release a good game because this platformer just generally isn't above mediocre. It has the classic staples: Form of close/long range combat (Harker's sword and projectiles), lives, a hit point system (show as red-filled vials instead of a bar), and a useless score bit.
It may have sixteen stages, but they're all rather short for a platformer. On top of that, combat is dull. Harker's sword hit box is a tad small, and is absolutely useless for hitting enemies beneath him while moving at a downward angle.
Basic concept of each stage depends on what kind of stage there is. The quicker ones have you look for Van Helsing, which causes projectile items to appear on the stage, then find the exit. Even quicker stages than that are ones that remove the Van Helsing bit and just have the end. The third type replaces finding Helsing with fighting a boss.
That brings me to my next irritation: how absolutely easy the bosses are, not to mention how vague it is as to who they are. I had to look at a walkthrough to find out that the first boss was Dracula's carriage driver, for example. Before that I had assumed it was just a really bad shot at one of the Belmonts from Castlevania. But yeah, the difficulty. When the final boss of a game can be defeated by sitting at one side of a plain rectangle room and spamming your sword until Dracula runs into it enough times to die is just pathetic, even with the bad hit detection and small amount of life you get. The platforming of the game is harder than any fighting involved.
3. Graphics
They were alright for the time, but could have used some more time in making them.
4. Music
Eh, what can you expect from something that could be considered yesteryear's shovelware? I just didn't care for it.
Overall, it could have been a much better game. However, it's a general unwritten rule that movie to game adaptations generally just suck. For what it's worth, it was a change of pace from a Castlevania game, and had some different bosses in it. Like a fifteen-foot tall man wrapped in bandages that vomited spiders at you.
Final Score: 4.0
A month ago I came into a bit of money. What I did with it is the same thing that I usually do when I come into such an amount: I go game shopping. So I went down to the local music & game shop and browsed around for pre-owned games, then I walked out with Viewtiful Joe (GCN) and Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (PS2) in my possesion for only $25.
It wasn't until the last week that I actually started playing CoD though, and now that it's beaten I have a few thoughts on it. Thoughts on topics such as...
1. Plot
Compared to other Castlevania games - you are Belmont, Dracula is alive, go kill him - Curse of Darkness breaks the trend a little by instead starring another supporting hero, this time in the form of one of Dracula's two "Devil Forgemasters" (with this being the only time ever hearing of them). Hector, as he is known, had betrayed Dracula sometime during Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse and gone off to do his own peaceful little thing. Some time later the other Devil Forgemaster Isaac orchestrated the death of Hector's fiancee Rosaly via burning at the stake.
Isaac then plays cat and mouse with Hector as Hector struggles across the cursed countryside - another departure from Castlevania's tradition of just a giant castle - to kill Isaac and avenge his lost fiancee. Along the way he meets various characters such as the monk-like Zead, the enigmatic Saint Germain and Julia the witch. He also ends up encountering Trevor Belmont - the hero of Castlevania III - several times throughout his travels. I won't go into details or spoilers here but even though the cutscenes are spaced out farther than I would have liked, the plot does have it's share of twists and is quite good. And to top it off, I find Saint Germain to be an excellent character.
2. Gameplay
The meat and bones of the game, and what you're purchasing the media for. Unlike a bulk of the Castlevania games - 2D action platformers or "Metroidvania/Castleroids", Curse of Darkness follows in it's precursor's footsteps in being an action game set in a 3D enviroment. Unlike Lament of Innocence though, Curse of Darkness deviates even farther away from the typical whip + sub-item attack scheme that so many other Castlevania games have.
For example Hector fights in a system more akin to a Dynasty Warriors game, with one button being standard attacks and another being more powerful combo-finishing techniques that are used after the standard attack button has been pressed X number of times. The differences don't end there though, as Hector gains several different weapon types - ranging from swords to spears to even a guitar - and each type has it's own moves, pattern and speed.
However, unlike a normal game where you gain different weapons by finding them, Hector forges his own weapons using the items he gains via enemy drops or by stealing. Some of the best weapons in the game can only be forged by stealing from the proper enemy or boss, and a few of them are quite difficult to obtain. Death's item is especially a pain in the ass but is worth it in the end. This is because each enemy has a certain time when the item can be stolen from them (shown by a purple cursor instead of green when you've locked onto them with R2). Each enemy has a different window of steal availability with some being rather easy (Skeletons) to others being incredibly tedious (Death).
Another addition, and a bulk of the gameplay, is the Innocent Devil system. Representing his Devil Forgemaster status, you collect and raise various species of Innocent Devils to aid you in both exploring the areas around Dracula's lands and in combat. They range from the fairy species (seen previously in Symphony of the Night), which can heal you as well as provide other player-aiding abilities, to the Battle and Bird species which help with heavy doors and large gaps respectively.
With these expansions onto the usually run and hit of the 3D Castlevanias, the gameplay does get repetive and a tad boring after awhile. Much more detail could have gone into the areas that Hector explores and they could have dealt with being a tad less linear, especially Dracula's Castle. So many bland and empty hallways that existed for the sole purpose of running down could have been dealt without. And like I said earlier, combat does resemble a Dynasty Warriors game quite a bit. Could have been better, but still good overall.
3. Graphics
I'm not really much as far as opinions go on graphics. I'm a guy who still enjoys SNES and Genesis titles afterall, so the overall look of a 2005 PS2 game is that it looks good. The cutscenes look detailed and nice, and the character models during gameplay are decent. Backgrounds and level design is repetive though and flat, so it doesn't do great in that respect. Overall, it's good, but not much better than that.
4. Music
Finally, the music. Every Castlevania game has an incredible score worth listening to, and Curse of Darkness is no exception. Where some other aspects of the game may fail, the music is there to help you deal with it and still have a good time. The music has all of the old Castlevania appeal, but with the addition of the electric guitar in many songs - something that was missing from a few previous games. Personally, the battle theme that plays when you fight Isaac is my favorite.
All in all, I enjoyed the game for what it was worth but I think there could have been several improvements. It's still worth picking up and trying out though, so it shouldn't be just tossed aside in favor of one of the Castleroid games.
Final score: 8.0
Until the next save point, Sobou's out.
After a little over three weeks I update my blog. However, there's a twist on this post's topic. It's not going to be about video games, but the accident I went through months ago. I've been throwing around tidbits of information on said accident ever since I came back to the Internet, but I haven't fully written down a full-on synopsis of what happened nor have I posted pictures.
So, the time for that has come. We go back to the beginning of it, May 14th. I warn that some of the linked pictures are graphic, and I'll warn the reader when it comes to their links.
On May 14th, I was looking on JobsinME for employment. I came across one that fit to my limited standards: a sit-down warehouse job where my task would have been processing and sorting DVDs returned from Netflix members. The pay was good ($9.50 an hour to start), I'd be sitting down for the shift, and it was sorta local.
This was a damn good job for me since, as my friends know, I have bilateral club foot. Standing up for longer than a half hour or so causes my feet to hurt pretty bad. I also quickly wear out the soles of any footwear I have on because I walk on the outer sides of my feet. So, a job where I sat down and did work with my hands - for good pay - was a heaven sent.
May 15th I went in for my interview and was hired then and there. From there I tackled the only remaining task for this job: finding a bicycle to use. The job location was about seven miles away from my home and I had no vehicle transportation there. Bus route didn't start for close to two hours after I'd start work (shift started at 5am), and I knew no one who could give me a ride each morning.
I ended up acquiring my friend Nick's old bike to use. Though, I can't remember ever picking it up since I got the bike on the day of the accident: May 17th. The woman who hired me had said that I ought to get my way out to the job site before I started work so I'd know where to go and the proper route, yada yada. That Saturday, May 17th, I started doing just that. I didn't even get a tenth of a mile from my house before my travel came to an end.
Not more than twenty seconds of walking from where I live is an intersection. One of the streets to this intersection is Walnut Street. The half of it going in the direction of downtown is very steep and hard to walk. For reasons I can't remember and fathom, I decided to go down Walnut and attempt to merge onto Sheridan - a rather level street - instead of going down the street I live on. And to top it off I decided to do this on Nick's bike. A bicycle I had never ridden before.
Spectators said that I went down the hill pretty fast and missed the turn almost entirely. I ended up cutting onto the sidewalk, hit this cement divider, and flew the twelve to fourteen feet directly into this brick house. The dried spot of blood has been paved over since then.
I hit the house tilted to the left, so my right side and arm took the intial brunt of the hit. I was told I went unconcious almost immediately. From the hit and the resulting force of impact, I fractured eight bones in my body. The last of the Thoracic and the first three Lumbar spinal vertebrae, both the radius and the ulna of my right forearm, my left clavicle and the top-right portion of my skull. I also suffered a subdural hematoma, but luckily there were no lasting effects from it.
I remember nothing from May 17th to May 25th, very little of Memorial Day, and nothing else until May 28th. On May 30th I was relocated from the hospital I had been in to another and June 5th I was finally able to go home.
These three pictures are all of me the day after the accident. [Warning, those were graphic.] This is me at the second hospital, with my mother, my stepdad, and a close-up of me. This is me after being at home for a few weeks. The scars are where they had to preform surgery and put two titanium plates into my right arm. The circular middle of this scar is where the bone broke through my skin. This is the other scar.
I had to wear that torso brace everyday at all times unless I was laying down or sitting at less than a 45 degree angle. At night I could take it off, but I was forced to sleep on my back or sides. When August came around I went through the process of weaning myself off of wearing it everyday until September came. A few days ago I met with my doctor again and I'm supposed to wean myself off of using the brace period. Since that appointment I have not put the brace on and I don't ever intend to again.
As far as activities went, I wasn't able to sit at the computer for more than fifteen minutes every couple of hours because of the pressure put on your spine and back while sitting. Most of June had me laying in a reclined position on my bed watching tv or movies until I finally felt well-enough to start playing video games again.
I started out with Final Fantasy IX and got to the third disc before I put it back. Shortly after that my friend Will lent me his copy of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, a game I put over 140 hours into before I finished playing it. And after those I went back to my Backlog and started going at it all over again.
Overall, my healing has gone incredibly well. The doctor has informed me that I can start work again, provided that it's not something that would injure my body. So working hard hours in a retail store or doing physical labor in a warehouse are just some examples of what I can't do in addition to my restrictions because of clubfoot.
The job search has been hard and I'm hoping that I can carpool with someone to work the job I got hired for back on May 15th but I haven't heard anything from them in days. Not sure what I can and cannot handle but I'm going to continue looking since now my need for an income is greater than my pain.
Next time I update, it'll be about video games again. Don't you guys worry. Until the next save point, Sobou's out.
For years I only ever considered using a computer for non-gaming activities. Chatting using IM systems, browsing the internets, collecting and listening to music, ect. I did play video games, but they were few and far between. For the longest time it was only Blizzard games, like Diablo and Starcraft, but as the months go by I've started to use my computer for gaming more.
I download games and I play them from the disc, but I only own a few of the latter. So with few options available to me, the internet has provided sites like the excellent Home of the Underdogs.
This site's goal is to host and provide both freeware and abandonware games for the PC, with some of the oldest games being from 1982 to games up to 2005. Unfortunately, they apparently haven't updated in a couple of years but the site is still running and all of the games are still available.
After I got into a small funk over deciding which game I should play (since I was tired of both FFIVDS and FFVA at that moment), I decided to hop onto the computer and see what games I had downloaded. I have several roms available to me but none of them peaked my interest aside from Captain Commando, a game I recommend for SNES owners, and after I beat that I went to the internet on a whim.
The result? Delicious stockpiles of free games of every genre I can think of. Thanks to HOTU and other sites I now have several more PC games added to the repetoir, including a couple I think deserve a mention.
The first is Duel Toys. It is a freeware game released in '05 that takes a fun twist on fighting games. Instead of playing as the actual characters, you're a kid who owns "Duel Toys". These Duel Toys are the characters you use to fight with, so it's a tad like Pokemon in the "collect your fighters" theme. The nifty thing is it takes games from several major fighting game series. Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Darkstalkers, Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat and even Star Gladiator; it's got fighters from them all.
To top it off the sprites are done in a cutesy "chibi" fashion to give it a fun and happy-go-lucky feel. My only gripe with it was near the end of the Story-themed mode they provide. After you collect six badges and accumulate 50 wins you're allowed to enter the DT Tournament. This Tourney is a bunch of endurance battles one after another. Lose, and you're automatically sent back to your house. This forces you to start the whole thing over again.
Problem with that is, you have to reset the program or Quit the Story mode without saving, because the DT Tournament glitches up. If you lose once and try to go back all you can do is wander around the area while all of the assembled fighters - including a sprite of your character - stand there and look at nothing. Save your file at that point and you're permanently (as far as I know). Overall still a good little fighting game.
The next game comes from Bombergames. These guys have spent the last five years or so making the best Streets of Rage games I've ever played. The entire game engine was coded from scratch, all of the sprites from the games have been graphically edited and made better, and the game's series of stages is an original run with multiple paths to give the player a buttload of stages to get through. If you ever liked the Streets of Rage series or enjoyed a good beat-em-up, this game will do both of those justice. It's definitely a download (and for free too).
Now for the third and last game of my mentions. Released two years ago by Pixeljams, Gamma Bros is an awesome neo-retro game that goes back to the heyday of oldschool shmups. The concept is kinda like Space Invaders but with movement on both x-axis and y-axis, with enemies coming from all four sides of the screen. There are only a few stages to the game but these are long and make the playthrough last, especially if you die.
Unlike other shmups where you get extra lives or have multiple continues, Gamma Bros only gives you two chances before you get a Game Over. This comes from the story of the game - a tale of two friends trying to get home from work through an alien-infested area of space. Each of the two guys has a ship with a lifebar that you can collect heal restores for. When the ship is gone, however, the guy is left to hover around in space with a jetpack. If he dies it switches you to the other man and if he dies, game over.
Fortunately you can buy new ships and even resurrect your fallen comrade with the proper currency you pick up through the game. But luck and skill go a lot father then purchasing new chances in my opinion.
That's all for now, so until the next save point Sobou's going back to healing his fractured back.
Well, the past several days have been quick and interesting. Well... kinda interesting. Life shuffles on like normal for most of us, but for several it either speeds by or just up and quits.
Before I start up the whole rant about my life and video games, I want to say that I send my condolences to the families of Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes. This past weekend both of them died. Bernie was only 50, while Isaac Hayes was 65. It's a really bad thing to see great people passing on, but life does happen so we just have to grieve and move along. I liked both of them since I thought Bernie Mac was great in the movies he played roles in and was a funny comedian, and who didn't like the soul-singing star who played Chef in South Park? It's just a sad loss of two men who had years ahead of them.
With that done, let us move on to someone more personal: me. For me the week went by fast and my main obsession was Final Fantasy V Advance. Yesterday I finally beat the game, after six hours of ABP-grinding near the only Save Point in the Cleft of Dimension's Void. Gaining anywhere from 26 to 30 and sometimes 199 ABP - when you're normally lucky to get 6 ~ 8 - was awesome so I took it upon myself to master every class except Necromancer (which I don't have yet) and Mime (which functions almost exactly like Freelancer).
With my team completely beefed up I went on in and beat the crap out of Exdeath and Neo Exdeath. I had forgotten not only how easy he was (when you have all your classes mastered), but how moving the final cutscenes were. From what happens with Gilgamesh, to the appearance of the Dawn Warriors and the determined final attack of your party, it just hit home and felt good to see something come out of it.
After he died and the credits rolled, I unlocked the Bonus Dungeon. Whoo. It's a pain in the ass. The bosses challenge you unlike anything the regular game provided, including Omega and Shinryuu. Bosses like the Archeodemon - who casts Death on himself if you attack with commands like !Rapid Fire and fully heals himself - and the Grand Aevis are tough and challenge you harshly even with 99% of your classes mastered. I'm on the Archeodemon now, but after yesterday's attempt at him I shut it off and installed Age of Empires 2.
Now, I love the game. The tons of different units and upgrades, the multiple resources and ways to acquire them, and the historial tales you play through are all fun. But not when you're about to beat a campaign mission you've spent close to an hour on and the game crashes on you. That turns that love to hate. Which is why I went straight to my next game: Super Robot Wars 3.
Known in Japan as Da 3 Ji Super Robot Taisen, this game is incredible. Japanland has gotten at least 20 different Super Robot Taisen (Wars) games, but America has only ever acquired two: SRT Original Generations 1 & 2. Problem is all the different series contained within each game, which makes licensing a bitch for the Japan companies because everyone of them wants a cut of the profit if the game is going over to America. This sucks because the games are fun as hell.
I obtained a ROM of the game and there is a full translation patch available on the Internet, so I started it back up. I had played it for several missions ages ago, but I wanted a new start. Oddly enough as I'm playing this I'm also ripping sprites of the mobile suits, the character portraits and the map icons for a reason even I don't know of yet. It makes for a fuller experience I suppose, and I can always use the sprites for a new Backlog banner.
So, for those of you who said "lol tl;dr", let me shorten it out:
- Sucks that Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes died.
- I beat FFVA and I'm working on the Bonus Dungeon
- Age of Empires 2 is fun, but not when it crashes on you.
- Super Robot Wars is awesome and they should get it over here.
Until the next save point, Sobou's out.
