vampires suck (or something much wittier about how disappointed i was by the latest castlevania game, lords of shadow)

So, I turned my Playstation 3 off. Not in disgust but in disappointment. After loving, and completing, Batman Arkham Asylum this seemed like my kind of game. One that I had been very much looking forward to. A rich looking, Gothic 3D action adventure with hand-to-hand combat and exploration and puzzle solving. The developer (Kojima Studios) and the publisher (Konami) both have a high success rate in the category of Games What I Like. So what went wrong, for me? I emphasise the subjectiveness because I believe this to be a great game in the opinions of many. Had the review scores not been so favourable I wouldn't have bothered playing it. I recognise that it is not a 'bad game' in the same way that I recognise that Citizen Kane or The Ten Commandments are not 'bad movies'. Retro-viewed contextually they are difficult films to fault in the respect of scope, grandieur and technical achievement. They're just not My Kind of movies.

So, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow has so far sold over a million copies, has not received a review score of less than 8/10. But why didn't I like it? I will try to explain. 

I think it's a great shame, but it just wasn't for me. Possibly one of the reasons is that the Castlevania series is one with a rich history that I am not fully familiar with. 

Hell, if I'm perfectly honest, this is Castlevania as I last remember it. Simon Belmont kills vampires with a whip in a left to right scrolly type fashion. Not keeping up with the Castlevania mythos over the last 20 years has obviously been my undoing. But, I shouldn't have to, should I? I shouldn't have to be such a fan of a franchise that I blindly forgive inadequacies in each subsequent installment. But, is that exactly what I did with Batman Arkham Asylum? If I were not only very familiar with Batman's rich history but also a big fan, might I have viewed his latest videogame adventures differently? No. I like to think I can separate good from bad and I am fully aware of many terrible Batman games that did not lure me in because of the cowled crime-fighter on the box.

A novel idea six years ago thank's to Shadow of Colossus, warmed up and served again 3 years ago in God of War, and now, for your pleasure a really big bad guy, and you know exactly how to kill him. This is the Ice Titan. The boss at the end of the first level. Huge even when only exposed from the thighs up. He gets his fist stuck in the ice while trying to smash Belmont (the tiny figure to the right of the picture). That is Belmont's cue to climb up the Titans' arm and hit him in the head until shaken off. Rinse and repeat.

I don't think I've ever seen a game as pretty as this. The fantastic detail begs for the environment to be explored but each scene can only be viewed by the perspective dictated by the camera, which sweeps focus from one path to the next as you delve deeper into the surroundings. In this regard, you are ushered down each path, stopping only to despatch some goblins or lycans, or just to breathe in the backdrop which, unfortunately, is just that. A backdrop. 

The lack of camera control by the player is the result of an unavoidable trade off. If a game is to look this stunning, it has to be on the game directors terms, not the players. It felt like the developer wanted to make a movie but sadly also had to shoe-horn in some interactivity. Each shot looks so painstakingly photographed that if it indeed were a movie, the director would not be blamed for not wanting his shot ruined by handing over control of the camera to the average cinema goer.

...and, to be frank, why would the director want some dippy, ham-handed gamer to desecrate a sublime shot such as this one with his clumsy, uncoordinated analogue stick twitches and jerks.

So, as a technical demo of what my Playstation 3 is capable of, faultless. As a collection of screenshots, peerless. Sign me up. I'll gladly spend £30 on the coffee-table book. But as a game... the painfully narrow linearity is something that I feel unable to plough through just to watch a couple of hours of movie footage. Like I said... a shame.