Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is a bold reboot of Konami's traditional franchise, translating it into a large-scale three-dimensional action-adventure. You play as Gabriel Belmont, a knight of the Brotherhood of Light, whose wife was murdered and whose soul cannot find peace. He sets out across a land cut off from heaven to defeat three lords of shadow and obtain a mask capable of bringing back the dead. The journey leads through snowy mountains, gothic cathedrals, a swamp with giant spiders, and a castle full of clocks and mirrors, all told in a solemn, almost operatic tone.

Combat is built around the Combat Cross, a whip with a cross-shaped grip, whose combos gradually unlock and split into fast attacks against a single enemy and sweeping attacks against groups. On top of that, you switch between light and shadow magic. The former restores health on a hit, the latter boosts damage, and both draw from separately refilled reserves. Alongside combat, the game offers a lot of wall and ledge climbing, mechanical puzzles, and battles against giant titans that you literally climb, destroying rune markings on their bodies. The environments are framed by a fixed camera, giving them picturesque, almost painterly compositions.

Technically, this was a very impressive title on PS3, with richly detailed environments and expansive vistas. The orchestral soundtrack ranks among the best the series has had, and the narrator and lead roles were cast with experienced film actors, giving the game a pathos-laden but effective tone. Reviews were largely very positive, with criticism aimed at derivativeness from other action games and a few drawn-out stretches toward the end. Today, Lords of Shadow is interesting mainly for its scope, length, and ending, which ranks among the best-prepared surprises of its generation. It's a game worth sticking with through the opening hours, before enough combat abilities unlock and the truly grand chapters open up. Anyone looking for a classic two-dimensional Castlevania will be disappointed, but anyone treating the title as a standalone action-adventure will get one of Konami's most ambitious games of that era.