Castlevania lords of shadow 2 game genre. "Raisa Volkova, daughter of Satan"

An unexpectedly high-quality and interesting sequel to Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, which in many ways surpasses the first part, but, nevertheless, is far from ideal.

Developer:Mercury Steam Entertainment

Genre:Slasher

Platform:PS3, Xbox 360, PC.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is a sequel to a completely successful restart (which is not a restart at all, but simply a new game about hunters of evil spirits, which was given a well-known name in order to make more money) of a long-running franchise that originated back in 1986 (played as a child in first part - feel old).

When you sit down to play Lords of Shadow 2, you need to understand that, as in the case of the first part, this is by no means Castlevania. The game, of course, has common features with Castlevania, such as some characters and the castle (which in LoS 2 is quite copy-pasted from the same Symphony of the Night, which is perhaps even good), but this is a completely different game. LoS 2 has a completely different presentation, a different atmosphere and general style of play. From LoS 2 there is no feeling that the developers just went and tried to put the same Symphony of the Night or, for example, Vampire's Kiss in 3D - you see it here new game. Even when compared to the first part, Lords of Shadow 2 feels different. The mood and atmosphere of the game changed, the second part became darker, bloodier and cruel, which is very correct, especially considering the fact that main character after all, Dracula, Prince of Darkness (and the game constantly reminds us of this once every half hour, which is a little annoying).

LoS 2 also feels new because it has finally removed the idiotic system of dividing the game into levels that was in the first part. If before you had to look at the loading screen for a minute, then listen to Zobek muttering, then look at the splash screen and complete the level in a minute and a half to see the loading screen, muttering and splash screen again (how infuriating it was), now we have this kind of open world , consisting of the modern city of Castlevania and Dracula's castle from the "past". Both locations are divided into four zones, which you gain access to as you progress through the story. You can return to all locations in order to use your acquired abilities to get to previously inaccessible secrets (yes, another similarity with most games in the series) or gain a little more experience on your enemies, which will not be superfluous, because there are a lot of different techniques, and you can buy them for experience not only them, but, for example, concept art or various items in the Chupacabra store (yes, this “cute” creature, the little demon who was so annoying in the first part, opened his own store in the castle). In general, it has become more convenient to move around the world, there are fewer downloads and the locations have become larger.

True, unlike the first part, not all locations are beautifully drawn - you won’t be able to admire them for hours. If you have no complaints about the castle at all - there are snow-covered towers, a gloomy garden, dungeons with lava, and a theater (that is, no worse than in the first part), then when you move to the city, everything becomes somehow different . No, on the surface everything is still relatively good, but when you go down into the sewers or laboratories, or into the subway, you begin to think that you are in a completely different game - some gray corridors, ventilation shafts, dull rooms... Why? Moreover, they are completely gray and faceless, like in some military shooter. Lords of Shadow was simply pleasant to look at, but with Lords of Shadow 2 it won’t be the same - you won’t really admire the ventilation shafts.

By the way, about ventilation. Perhaps it’s worth remembering the main disadvantage of the game - stealth. Crooked, boring and illogical stealth. That is, for example, you fight a huge three-headed boss with a bunch of tentacles, win and within five minutes you’re hiding from an ordinary big guy in armor. After all, “you are still weak, Prince of Darkness, you don’t need to go ahead - possess a rat, run through the ventilation, chew through the wires.” For what?! Why did you even have to do this?! This is at least illogical. Diversify the gameplay? Well, we should do this stealth once, at the very beginning of the game, when the hero is really weak. But no, you need to repeat this five times, the last time almost at the very end of the game. Inserting stealth into a slasher film is a bad idea, but when this stealth is also crooked and illogical, we get just another element that gets on our nerves.

It’s good that at least the slasher turned out to be excellent - the combat system has been noticeably improved compared to the first part. Instead of the usual evasion, there is now a dash, which can be used to knock down small enemies. You can also use evasion in the air, which I really missed in the first part. The “light” (heals) and “dark” (deals more damage) powers for the main weapons from the first part have been replaced by the “abyss sword” and “chaos claws”. The sword can not only heal, but also freeze enemies, while the claws allow you to destroy shields and throw fireballs at enemies. If in the first part it was possible to forget about such abilities before treatment was needed, now they need to be used wisely.

The whip is still used as the main weapon, although now it is made from Dracula's blood, but this is only a visual difference. All three types of weapons have skill levels, and you can upgrade a weapon by filling the skill bar of a particular blow, that is, the player is forced to use different attacks - everyone wants to upgrade their weapon. And in general, blocking, sometimes jumping and using one or two hits will no longer work. You need to choose tactics when dealing with enemies, change weapons in time, use various combos, etc. This is especially felt in battles with bosses and, fortunately, in the sequel they removed the bosses of the “climb the boss and hit the boss” category. vulnerable spot" Yes, maybe the bosses don’t look as cool as the titans from the first part, but you need to fight them, thinking about what and how to hit them, and not frantically press X to win (and that’s exactly how you had to go through the titans in the first part ). This may, of course, not be on the level of Ninja Gaiden II and Devil May Cry 3, but boss battles have definitely become more interesting. The only thing that disappointed me was the final boss, since, in fact, there was no battle with him - it just involved platforming and “press X to win”.

And not only combat system got better - in LoS 2 they worked on many bugs. For example, the dash can be used endlessly by simply holding down a button, thereby speeding up the hero’s movement. There is less platforming and it no longer looks as if it was screwed in just for the sake of it (and in the first part, jumping on platforms often gave exactly that impression). And most importantly, the developers removed the riddles; there are none in the sequel at all. How infuriating were the riddles in the first part of Lords of Shadow. They were so stupid and dull, they showed up at such an inopportune time that sometimes there was a desire to give up on the game and turn it down on the other side. Now they are gone and nothing bothers me.

In general, the gameplay side of LoS 2 unexpectedly grew exponentially (if there was no stealth, it would have been great), the shortcomings of the first part were taken into account. It's just a pity that the difficulty of the game was lowered. Playing on hard, I rarely died - most often from being pinned in the corner. If you understand the combat system well, the game may seem very easy. You still expect a little more from a slasher film. The game should challenge, force you to place a block every second and thoroughly study the combat system, but in LoS 2, even on high difficulty, you just need to understand the tactics of battle with this or that enemy and that’s all.

If the gameplay suddenly became a cut above, then the plot became noticeably worse by the same amount, and the ending in Lords of Shadow 2 was completely lost. Yes, in the first part the plot was far from ideal, and closer to the end it began to slide into something unclear (just look at the main villain, who appeared five minutes before the end of the game and who until that moment was not mentioned even once in the entire game), but with LoS 2, unfortunately, everything is even worse. There is one “unexpected twist” (which is only partially unexpected) and a couple of good moments, but in general the plot is strange, incomprehensible in places (incomprehensible because they don’t try to explain certain things to the player), the actions of the characters are meaningless and illogical (what is the character worth , who appears for fifteen minutes, from the hero’s enemy becomes his ally and dies... and why does he die?). The hero generally does not care about what is happening around him. Lots of plot holes. The ending is just disgusting - boring, stupid and unfinished. The game lacks some kind of sane final video. And yes, despite the fact that the developers said that Lords of Shadow 2 is the completion of Gabriel’s story, but taking into account the ending, it is quite possible to wait for the third part. In about two years. And what? Another coming, because it’s so “original”. It's a shame, of course, that this happened. It seems to me that, taking into account the ending of the first part, it was possible to do quite interesting story, but MercurySteam apparently decided that if the gameplay was brought to mind, then they could put it on the script.

Conclusion

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 turned out to be very controversial. On the one hand, the gameplay has changed for the better, everything unnecessary was removed from the game and things that had problems were brought to fruition, it really became a pleasure to play. On the other hand, the script has completely slipped into some kind of vague nonsense, the game is replete with cliched plot devices, has many things that were never explained, and the ending is completely terrible. The visual component also suffered - if in the first part of LoS you wanted to screenshot almost every moment, then in the second part only about half of the locations are pleasing. Simply put, the first game was a joy to watch and the second game a joy to play. I liked Lords of Shadow 2 more than not - still, I just want to play, and not look at beautiful pictures and press a couple of buttons to win.

Advantages:

+ long game duration by modern standards

+ great soundtrack

+ improved combat system compared to the first part

+ Improved movement around the world compared to the first part

+ interesting and varied boss battles

+ great design of Dracula's castle

+ many secrets that are interesting to look for

Flaws:

- strange and rather boring plot

- disgusting ending to the game

- terrible and completely unnecessary stealth

- bad design of a modern city

- low difficulty

- unnecessary and uninteresting test mode

According to the Spanish developers, it was generally successful. You could complain about the undeveloped main character, the excess of acrobatics and the fixed camera, or you could close your eyes to it and enjoy the excellent work of artists and game designers who gave the players a solid skill-based slasher. In the final part of the relaunched trilogy, the authors intended to correct and multiply everything, and now we will tell you what they ended up with.

Gabriel Dracula Belmont.

Every pixel is a spoiler for the first part, so don’t be ashamed of what’s important actor history, Gabriel Belmont, now bears the honorary name of Dracula. Not so long ago, several hundred years ago, someone called the Forgotten One came to the world of the living for a usurper’s visit, and in order to pacify this guy, Gabriel had to drink vampire blood. What's done is done, and now the poor fellow drags out a proud existence, which, to his great regret, is incompatible with death. Thank God, his old acquaintance Zobak came to visit him and suggested this very death. Of course, not for free: Dracula is required to slap Satan. Again.

Every pixel of Lords of Shadow 2 is a spoiler for the first part. For the next victory over the overthrown angel, ex-Belmont, during the course of the play, will have to restore all his heroic strength, walking through a very conventionally open world and collecting various artifacts in it. During these wanderings, which in fact turned out to be more linear than the line, MercurySteam are trying to show the protagonist as a seasoned, seasoned old man. It didn’t happen: the protagonist is still the same puppet, an errand boy, but in our opinion he’s just a loser. All and sundry deceive and beat him, often even kill him, which somewhat contradicts the beginning of the story.

So that God forbid not to be killed, in Lords of Shadow 2 They introduced a stealth system, which absolutely does not suit her. To prevent the evil minions of Satan from beating up the almighty immortal Lord of Terror, the latter distracts their attention by summoning flocks of bats or by turning into a rat. The sometimes tiring acrobatic exuberance has not gone away. The medieval world also remained in place - a certain boy, let’s give him the operational pseudonym “Sonny,” leads Belmont on a journey through the past. Both the past and the present are drawn by artists in such a way that you can’t take your eyes off them. The external architecture of the buildings, as well as their interior decoration, is a sight to behold. The same can be said for the monster designs.

Casual vampire.

To say that the combat system Lords of Shadow 2 remained unchanged would be a mistake. Yes, the hero still has the same tools as before, but its importance has decreased to a critical minimum. You don’t need to remember at all about the Sword of Void and the Claws of Chaos, which have taken the place of light and dark magic: they practically do not require use. With the experience you earn, you can now not only upgrade your abilities, but also shop at the Chupacabra minimarket. Moreover, you can even buy crystals, the collection of which increases your life or magic bars. True, even without the shopping complex named after Chupacabra, they are scattered literally at every step.

The energy for using daggers is restored by itself, all kinds of artifacts have been added so that even the weakest player will definitely emerge victorious from any battle. Restore health, provide yourself with endless magic or slow down enemies, pave the way to secrets on the map - choose which one you like best and use it. Even if the number of artifacts is limited, once spent, they still fall out abundantly from those killed.

You don’t need to remember the Sword of the Void and the Claws of Chaos at all. There was also a place for an interesting solution, leveling up the level of weapon proficiency through its intensive use. In general, not a trace remains of its former complexity - if not for Pegi 18, the game could be safely recommended to the little ones. Lest we forget that slashers sometimes require player participation, Lords of Shadow 2 testing arenas have been introduced. There are four of them in total, and each can be unlocked by finding gems in the open spaces with open world. Playground, monsters, tasks: kill the next one before the timer runs out, or kill everyone without using anything.

The threequel failed to increase the scale: the first battle is breathtaking, and the lazy player risks not getting to the second epic event, which by luck is the final one - out of two dozen hours of gameplay, God forbid, half is allotted to battles with enemies. Unknown authors tried to get rid of the race through known places to places using the method of maps of instantaneous movements, and almost succeeded in this - in order to get from the past to the present, you will need to find a suitable place. A wolf altar, for example, would be fine.

Login Note:
The game has an interesting reference to the original source of the series. When you kill an Agreus bird with a chaos bomb, it turns not into a charred corpse, but into a delicious chicken on a plate. It was exclusively with this dish that the first of the Belmonts restored health in the first of the Castlevani. The achievement obtained when making grilled chicken is called “Classic taste”.

Red cloak, sword at the ready, and yet Lords of Shadow 2 not at all similar to DMC. The British craft has a whirlwind gameplay in its bosom, but the vampire saga... Not to say that the whole action has been turned into a rat simulator, but the dynamics of the project have noticeably dropped. It’s good that the artists’ work remained at the same level. Even if experimenters introduce elements that spoil it into the game, the adventures will still be able to please the eyes of fans of slasher films, especially considering that a visit from a representative of the genre on a PC is a rarity. And one more thing: the game will contribute to learning in English. Because there is no official translation and there never will be.

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Probably no other mystical character over the last hundred years has undergone so many metamorphoses bordering on outright abuse of himself as the vampire.

Bram Stoker, a small and modest civil servant, could not even imagine what his novel would lead to after some hundred years. He portrayed Dracula as only a born Briton could do - an elevated, sophisticated, aristocratic image, a little removed from the outside world, who, it would seem, did not stand out at all from the rest of the same, if not for the constant need to drink blood and the “inability” to be reflected in mirror

A game about Dracula, you say? Oh well...

Despite the fact that the idea of ​​a vampire had been in the air for quite some time, and “Dracula” was far from the first work on this topic, it was Stoker who was the first to think of creating a memorable image based on the varying reliability of guesses, superstitions and speculation, as well as documented cases of “vampirism.” , one of the most quoted and recognizable in popular culture.

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You can taste enemy blood at any time - the enemies will wait patiently for you.

But this was just the beginning, and with the development of technology everything went further - it became possible not only to imagine Dracula, but also to see it. The earliest fully preserved film is Dracula (1931). This could have been an almost perfect adaptation of the novel, if not for Universal's order to cut it down and make it more dynamic. As a result, the film, with an excellent embodiment of the atmosphere of the original book and the brilliant Belo Lugosi (who, by the way, is considered the best screen embodiment of Dracula still), was very “chopped up” and left you with the feeling that you weren’t told enough about something.

But the main work about the king of vampires on this moment is Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), written by Francis Ford Coppola, whose screenwriters came up with the "brilliant" idea of ​​merging a fictional character with his real prototype– by the sovereign of Wallachia, Prince Vlad III the Impaler (Romanian: Tepes - impalement). Fans of the book did not appreciate the creativity, but ordinary people really liked it.

MercurySteam understood the theme of the transformation of a vampire in a strange way - we turn into ordinary mice, not bats.

And then natural consumer orgies began. First, in the 70s of the last century, one bright mind from Marvel Comics came up with the idea to make vampires the heroes of a mass politically correct stabbing, which at the turn of the millennium resulted in the Blade film trilogy. Beautiful, stylish and without the slightest semantic load - a comic, what to take from it.

Dedicated to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night fans.

But vampires received the main stake in their hearts in 2008 and 2009 (Twilight and The Vampire Diaries were released, respectively), when it dawned on someone not only to turn an ugly, pale-faced ghoul into a plush cutie, capable of sunbathing, eating garlic and swilling buckets of holy water , and even make him play “Love Story”, like your Don Juan.

XX-individuals of the species “Homo sapiens” (girls, that is) of pubertal maturity and mental immaturity, accepted both works with a bang, pasting all the free walls with images of Robert Pattinson and Ian Somerhalder, filling “Contact” and Instagram with photographs of their idols, and zealously breaking to the above-mentioned persons on Twitter, naively hoping that she, all so one and only, sitting at some iPad near a Russian, lime-bleached stove, will be able to melt his heart from there, and he, on a white horse, knee-deep in mud and manure will come To her.

To be fair, I will say that both works are quite professionally made (technically) and can appeal not only to sixteen-year-old girls. It's just their target audience.

Lords of Shadow 2 is a rare game in which the diaries are pleasant to even just look at.

Of course, the Japanese simply could not stay away from this. But if they weren’t, they wouldn’t have explored the theme of blood-sucking ghouls in their own way. They invited players to look at the vampire from exactly the opposite angle - through the eyes of a vampire hunter. And not just give it a look, but make it a living classic - you'll be surprised, but even today the original Castlevania trilogy plays very well on the NES.

And in general, vampires are quite lucky with games (if you don’t take into account last generation gaming systems) - starting with the same Castlevania and Bram Stoker's Dracula on NES, SNES and Sega Mega Drive and ending with Vampire: The Masquerade, BloodRayne and, of course, Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi.

But the main outrage was committed, as you probably already guessed, by MercurySteam. However, first things first.

Prince of War

The best thing you can do for yourself before starting Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is don't play to the first part. Especially after completing the second one. Because looking at its predecessor, you don’t really understand how such a continuation could be created. Although hardcore fans of the Castlevania series, looking at the first part at one time, repeated the same thing.

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The main fault was that this game was the Siamese twin of God of War. At the same time, not wanting to remember that the classic games in the series are exactly like God of War in 2D. A chain whip, jumping on platforms, special weapons like throwing axes – doesn’t that remind you of anything? Konami's only fault was that they didn't come up with it first.

The half-hour pre-release demo turned out to be a complete scam - the intensity of passions in the game itself is not nearly as intense.

But they came up with something else (not themselves, through MercurySteam) - to call Dracula the father of the entire Belmont family (the main characters of almost all games in the series), who cannot die, no matter how much you kill him. This, by the way, is the main reason why fans disliked the first part - it neglected the plot and logic of all previous games, making them look like a real circus with horses. And Lords of Shadow 2 is the apotheosis of all this.

But before we burn this game in the flames of fan fire, let's figure out what it is.

Unfortunately, the game does not draw such large-scale angles as often as we would like.

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The first part is recognizable from the very first seconds: the good old whip (for some reason, it has become one and a half times shorter), defensive magic (here it is the Sword of the Void), offensive magic (Claws of Chaos) and several consumable items, such as an hourglass, stopping time, and dodo eggs, capable of revealing to you any secret on the level (we increase the level of health and magic to the point of pain in an original way– collecting colorful pebbles).

As in the first part, the techniques are demonstrated with pencil drawings throughout the book. Only this time they were outlined in ink.

For those who have played God of War and its imitators, but don’t know what we’re talking about here, it’s still worth doing a little educational work on the local combat mechanics.

Firstly, to use magic, you just need to press either LB or RB (gamepad, gamepad and again gamepad, comrades), and not hold them, as in God of War. Secondly, there is a surprising amount of stuff hanging on the LT. But what’s even more surprising is that it doesn’t cause dislocated fingers even in boss fights. LT+left stick in any direction - a sharp shift to the side, from which the small rags fall head over heels in front of the count and allow themselves to be beaten with impunity. LT+A – a jump that allows you to jump over the low blows of bosses or jump behind the back of small enemies (not everyone can be attacked simply from the front). Simply pressing LT is a normal block with the ability to immediately counterattack. And since all three tricks are located in different parts of the gamepad, all this causes minimal inconvenience, and you don’t feel any constraints on the battlefield at all.

The homely truth of the whole game in a nutshell.

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The epic landscapes are still there. True, the whole thing, for obvious reasons, happens at night, so you will admire exactly three types of scenery - views of your castle, views of Castlevania-City at night, and views of the catacombs and sewers. And if the views of the castle are fantastically beautiful and (excuse the tautology) epic, then everything else does not at all convince of the competence of MercurySteam level designers.

Of course, no one is asking for water meadows or sprawling jungles from the first part, but too often you see only stone walls around you (and ideas could be taken, for example, from Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest). What's most disgusting is walking around the castle - best part this game. It doesn't have much combat, but it does have interesting level architecture, challenging spatial puzzles (better than God of War, but worse than Uncharted) and the atmosphere of the original NES trilogy. You could say this is proper Castlevania in 3D.

The only difference is that if earlier the processes of jumping on platforms and killing monsters could not be interrupted (there are two dimensions, strikes to kill the enemy, too), then this will not work here - we are not playing a side-scroller after all.

“When I was assigned to this area and I first entered here, it seemed to me that the gates of hell had opened. It turned out not. It turned out to be a typical Monday morning.”

And then, comrades from sunny Spain suddenly suddenly remembered that there is a number two in the game, and it would be very nice to refresh it a little. And they started making such gags that you couldn’t tell it without tears. About her, in fact, below.

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Darkness of Gamedesign

If you closely followed the development of the game, you couldn’t help but notice that MercurySteam’s “election promises” were, to put it mildly, a little strange.

There were six main ones: reduce the game's dependence on QTEs, abandon the fixed camera, add an open world, move the game to our time, improve the game engine and increase the frame rate on the screen. I read it and couldn’t believe it – how can you so furiously hammer nails into the coffin of your own game?

No, there are no objections to the last two points, this is exactly what the developers managed best - the main character himself and his enemies are very vividly drawn, and the local special effects and particle system regularly delight the discerning gamer's eye (although the amount of work put into the picture with the first part is still -still incomparable). But everything else...

A rare shot where the power of the engine and the talent of the artists are combined in a confined space.

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Let's start with the first point: reduce the game's dependence on QTEs. Yeah... You could also reduce the plot's dependence on dialogue. What did they want to achieve with this? Distance yourself from God of War? It didn’t work out - his ears are already sticking out of every local candelabra, thanks to the combat system. Please Castlevania fans? So they need atmosphere and plot, and not technical implementation (although those who played Super Castlevania IV are unlikely to agree with me). But it turned out very well to ruin the sensations. Yes, QTEs were more than a direct borrowing from God of War. But they made the battles (especially with bosses) much more alive. This was especially true for finishing moves, when you yourself did and felt every a blow to the enemy's body.

Here all this was replaced by a cinematic camera (previously it was a fixed one) and... exactly the same QTEs, but ten times less in number. As a result, local boss battles are very good conceptually, but in terms of feeling, to put it mildly, they do not deliver.

Here, unlike classic games series, wall candelabra cannot be broken. Floor only. And that’s not all.

Point number two: abandon the fixed camera. In my opinion, the example of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance very eloquently explained why slasher films need it. Here, of course, everything is not so sad, but in some places it is very similar (especially in confined spaces). And there’s simply no time to turn it around in the heat of local battles - I wish I could dodge it myself.

Sometimes the game gives you partners. The main use is to be a handhold for jumping onto a wall.

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Point number three: add an open world. Well, here, of course, there were more or less successful precedents (for example, Darksiders II), but MercurySteam is not Rockstar, and their open world naturally did not work out.

Firstly, there is no open world here - there is only a slight non-linearity of the passage, allowing that you can come to the same place in different ways. At first, it seems that there isn’t even one here - the developers always indicate exactly where to go, and almost lead you by the hand (and towards the end, they even draw a route right in the air). But this is only at first glance.

As soon as you carelessly turn onto another path, it turns out that this path is much easier and simpler than if you just went straight, and you understand that, despite the feeling of a linear corridor, here you can take a roundabout path and scour in search of one or two secrets. You just need to look around a little more carefully.

Local diaries do not carry any special meaning, but they provide some background to what is happening.

There are even some hints at the ecosystem (yes, yes, I'm talking about a slasher movie), when small enemies fight with larger ones, and you can use this to your advantage. But with these words, you don’t need to picture Bioshock or, for example, Half-Life: Episode Two in your head - all such scenes are tightly scripted and placed here solely to create the illusion of a living world.

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See it while you can...

... because you will spend most of your time here.

What's next on the list... Oh yes: move the game to our time. But here the developers want to ask one question: people, why? What didn't you like about Dracula's castle? Do you want some variety? Well, they would have thrown him in the year 2099, like Ghost Rider, for example. Why waste time on trifles?

For the past hundred years, players have been diligently convinced that the best place For this stories with a vampire - this is the largest and most pretentious castle in the Gothic style. And no one was going to convince anyone of this. Well don't look good normal vampires in the 21st century. The developers, apparently, realized this themselves at some point, so you won’t spend much time in the modern world.

As in God of War, the reflex “saw a stool - broke it - collected the money” works flawlessly here.

A reasonable question arises: what have we actually forgotten in the 21st century? And here we have to start talking about probably the weakest part of the game - the plot. But there’s not much to say about it - it’s just another monosyllabic fairy tale about how “You are our only chance!” Ask for whatever you want in return!” At the same time, it is clear that the developers honestly tried to give this fairy tale at least some depth. Confidently clear camera angles in the videos, good facial animation, dialogue without a single extra word - outwardly they almost succeed. But internally...

Why do you need all the intimate local chatter if the next second they tell you, “Go and bring me a piece of mirror.” No, there are emotional moments here too, but they are given once a year, a teaspoon, and against the background of battles, jumping on platforms and diving into dark corners, they are simply lost in memory. There are also few characters (in every sense), much like in Mafia 2.

The main thing is – what is this all for? Or for whom? Why am I jumping on these ledges, beating all these evil spirits, using my mouse to scurry back and forth across all sorts of ventilation vents? Why is all this? And in response - silence. You just don't believe what's happening. And it doesn’t make me want to play any more.

With such sincere promises and a kind face, all Zobek needs is a priest's cassock.

Conclusion

As you noticed, throughout all of the above I have not revealed the thought with which I began - what is the outrage committed by Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 on the image of the vampire? And the answer is indecently simple - the real Count Dracula in life will not stoop to anything that you have to do here. Just imagine - a sophisticated, fabulously rich (in)man, capable, for a second, of buying half of London (according to Stoker) - and climbs through sewers, chemical weapons factories, and smashes garbage cans with a whip.

The image that created a whole movement in culture around itself, MercurySteam was relegated to the picture of a port grunt, to whom all the greatness of a vampire is simply alien.

Local stealth is the only thing you'll have to endure here. Although the first two times it even works.

Approximately the same mixture of bewilderment and rejection is caused by this game - a sequel that plays exactly like the original, but has lost half of its advantages along the way. And there is nothing unexpected here - the first part was a hodgepodge of everything good that was invented in slasher films, and repeating all this was not so difficult.

However, it was a game with its own face, and to call it a God of clone craft War language I couldn’t turn around no matter how hard I wanted to. And when the time came to make a sequel and start coming up with something of our own, this is where the developers turned out to be, to put it mildly, incompetent.

One of the few advantages of the modern setting is several good spatial puzzles.

MercurySteam are excellent craftsmen, capable of giving you hundreds of other large-scale, majestic views. At certain moments I want to cut the game into postcards: “Me and my castle”, “Me and my throne room”, “An audience with servants with a whip” and so on and so forth. Craftsmen - but not artists. They made the engine, they painted the scenery, and it’s all really nice to look at. But playing is not so much anymore.

Don't think anything bad, the gameplay of Lords of Shadow 2 is very good, and if you are able to close your eyes to the ideological emptiness of what is happening, you like elaborate combat and interesting acrobatics - welcome. After all, God of War and Uncharted are unlikely to ever appear in our Palestines.

Verdict: A good alternative to God of War if you don't have a PS3. Just as interesting in gameplay and just as empty inside.

Rating: 7.0.

Nikolay Plesovskikh aka Latendresse

We express our gratitude to:

• NVIDIA for providing the key for the game.

• Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2: Performance Testing
  Testing twenty-eight video cards and sixty-three processors in a couple of resolutions and two operating modes.

From the restart of an ancient series Castlevania— — it turned out to be a spectacular slasher film in the spirit of . In general, it was not bad, but it was connected with the original series only by numerous Easter eggs and references. Lords of Shadow 2 continues to follow the same line: this is not quite Castlevania, it is still Lords of Shadow, and almost the same one at that. True, now with Dracula.

Best Award

Gabriel Belmont, the famous knight of the Order of Light, who defeated Satan himself in mortal combat, surrendered to darkness. He exchanged divine protection for sharp fangs and eternal life. For hundreds of years he hid from people and sunlight within the walls of his cold castle and almost forgot his real name. Now he is Dracula - the Dragon, the Prince of Darkness. And he would have languished in his castle quietly until the end of time, if not for one old acquaintance named Zobek.

While Dracula was hiding, Zobek wasted no time and managed to create a private scientific corporation.

Satan decided to return to earth, and Zobek did not like this prospect at all. He asks Dracula to help him deal with the devil's minions and prevent the return of the Beast. What can the former Lord of Darkness offer Gabriel, for whom eternal life has become constant torture? Obviously, only death. For such a gift, Dracula agrees to help even his old enemy, because of whom he ended up in this position in the first place.

The intriguing premise quickly degenerates into a not very skillful imitation: the notorious minions of Satan, as in the game from Ninja Theory, are hiding among people. However, Dante explored a truly unusual city and fought with incredible creatures, and Dracula is driven into the gray alleys of a modern metropolis and the basements of scientific laboratories, forcing him to crush mechs, soldiers in power armor and mutants.

In a modern setting, the game loses its own identity, and the atmosphere of the original Lords of Shadow evaporates somewhere...	...but the developers reveal Gabriel’s vampire essence properly - blood is literally everywhere, and the hero will not miss the opportunity to taste it.

What is happening is reminiscent of a fan fiction written on my knee on the theme “The Return of Gabriel”. The boring world could be brightened up by interesting characters, but the local villains (and there are definitely no good heroes here during the day) are boring and stereotyped. Only Dracula himself and the notorious Zobek are more or less expressive - and even those, since the first part, seem to have completely lost interest in what is happening, and it’s not easy to expect any emotions from them.

Fortunately, only half of the game takes place in stuffy back alleys. We have to spend a lot of time in Dracula's old castle, where the Prince of Darkness meets the ghosts of the past, fights with internal demons, sees his dead son and desperately struggles with guilt. This is where it gets more interesting: the tired vampire Gabriel begins to show “live” emotions again, and besides, the majestic interiors of the castle are much more pleasant to look at than the musty cellars scientific complexes. Sometimes I even remember the old parts of the series - and it becomes a pity that the entire Lords of Shadow 2 did not turn out like this.

Technically, the old castle and the modern metropolis are two huge open locations. True, in reality they are not so open: freedom of movement is severely limited and people are not allowed to go where they don’t need to go ahead of time.	Between the old castle and modern world you can move freely. The guide between the worlds is a huge white wolf, mysteriously connected with Gabriel.

Song of Ice and Fire

Dracula's "elemental" abilities can be used outside of combat - blowing up flimsy walls and freezing waterfalls to climb higher.

Wandering around locations takes much longer here than in Lords of Shadow, but battles are still our main activity. Things are going much better with them than with the plot, although this is largely due to the fact that the basics of the combat system were transferred without any special changes. But they added a few interesting details: Dracula wields a bloody whip, using the techniques that Gabriel possessed back in the first Lords of Shadows, only instead of the “healing” mode of the whip, he now has a separate magical weapon, the Abyss Blade, successful attacks of which add health to the hero. If you want to really ruin the lives of your enemies, you take the slow but crushing Claws of Fury or the same whip; if you want to improve your health, you grab the Blade.

Additional attacks can still be purchased for the souls of defeated monsters, and this should not be neglected. If Lords of Shadow could be completed by rhythmically pressing the attack button and without experimenting in any way, then this trick does not work in the sequel: if you come to the second half of the game unprepared, even ordinary enemies will make you nervous. So it makes sense to try different types techniques - each has a separate experience scale. You hone several different attacks, and your overall mastery of, say, a whip increases - the blows become more painful and more effective.

Another thing is that Lords of Shadow 2 rarely combines different types of opponents - usually it’s a couple of serious monsters of the same type and their retinue, which is blown apart in no time. You don’t need to adapt to each enemy and dodge: yes, the monsters are strong, but there are relatively few of them, and they fight the same way.

The situation with bosses is also quite sad. In the second part, battles with them became easier; remembering the algorithm of their attacks is not difficult. The big guys either furiously wave their claws or hit the ground with all their might, after which you must jump, otherwise you will be knocked down by the shock wave. Shadow of the Colossus the game no longer quotes, no one forces Dracula to climb huge titans. Only two bosses were made with imagination, but the trepidation with which we met the dangerous monsters from Lords of Shadow is no longer there.

Some glimmers of hope are only visible in side quest, where Dracula is asked to find needles scattered around the world for a talisman. For every four, you are sent through the looking glass and asked to go through a series of tests there. This is where Castlevania finally stops pitying the player: it throws up interesting combinations of enemies and assigns tricky conditions (do not use magic, do not receive damage, and so on). Very reminiscent of the challenge mode in God of War, except that Lords of Shadow 2 is a little more tolerant of errors.

Rat King

During rock climbing sessions, you can even highlight active points that you are allowed to grab onto.

In the first Lords of Shadow, we often had to climb ledges and jump across platforms. Such episodes were not particularly exciting and were more annoying: the wayward camera and inconvenient controls kept sending Gabriel into the abyss. Now the platforming episodes have almost been removed, and the parkour has been made simple and spectacular - Gabriel climbs much more gracefully and gracefully than before, and the chance of falling into the abyss is almost zero. The approach is ambiguous: there is nothing complicated in such “uncharted” parkour, but it turns out that the developers chose the lesser of two evils.

The developers did not limit themselves to old ideas and decided to add something radically new! Thus was born the most monstrous thing that MercurySteam could only dare to do - stealth. From time to time, Dracula is literally forced to inhabit rats and sneak around behind the backs of his opponents. I wonder who came up with the idea to force the Prince of Darkness to hide, who in the first part even overthrew the titans with his own hands?

Dracula can also possess his opponents, but this is only necessary to pull some hard-to-reach switch and move on.	Sometimes the hero is not forced to inhabit anyone and is forced to simply hide behind boxes and columns. This doesn't make it any more interesting.

And God be with her, with the idea - the problem is not so much in the idea, but in its implementation. In any stealth situation there is always only one correct solution. Either you find the path invented by the designers, or you catch the eye of the enemy, die and start again - there is no third option. And if at first the local stealth is not very difficult, then closer to the end it becomes more and more difficult to find the path trodden by the developers. It's a shame that the only truly fresh element of Lords of Shadow is executed so carelessly.

For the first time in the history of the series, in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 the hero of the game is not another Belmont, trying to put an end to the tyranny of the main vampire of all time, but Dracula himself, who longs to get rid of the burden of an eternal and not the happiest life. We will keep silent about the reasons for this desire, so as not to spoil the impression for those who have not yet played the first part of Lords of Shadow. I will only say that for a successful suicide, a vampire needs Belmont’s signature whip, but he will receive it only after he helps our old acquaintance Zobek defeat Satan. Again.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2

Genre Action-adventure, slasher
Platforms Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Developers MercurySteam
Publisher Konami
Website konami-castlevania.com

Grade

Visual style, boss fights, rich arsenal of moves, duration

Extra stealth elements, monotony of some locations, pseudo-open world

A sequel that's only partially better than the original

The events of the game, unexpectedly, take place in the future. Zobek, not the last person in the city that grew up on the ruins of Dracula’s castle, finds a bloodsucker who has fallen into a coma and begins to prepare him for a fight with Lucifer, who is about to come and threatens to destroy all life. True, his henchmen themselves are coping well - before Dracula has time to properly get used to the city, the virus that has broken free turns everyone around into disgusting-looking monsters. Dracula himself is weakened by centuries of hibernation and suffers from memory lapses, so in between searches for Satan’s adepts, he spends time with the ghost of his son, trying to remember what happened a long time ago and what does the Mirror of Fate have to do with it, the fragments of which his son collects.

At times it seems like several different teams worked on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. The first created an incredibly epic prologue, drew opponents and the hero himself, worked storyline, generously flavoring it with references to the previous parts, built the most gorgeous Wygol City brick by brick, in which Gothic cathedrals and the remains of Dracula’s castle fit perfectly into the landscape of the modern metropolis, which is why the city subtly resembles everyone’s beloved Gotham.

The second team got a combat game that was played this way and that, trying to organically combine classic weapons and techniques with the unique characteristics of the main character. In the end, we decided not to bother too much and do almost everything as before, except maybe repaint it red. Need a whip? Let it be from blood. Daggers? But of course, they are also bloody and let their supply now be restored over time. The Blade of the Void (blue magic) will be responsible for restoring health, and the Claws of Chaos (red magic) will be responsible for powerful blows. Instead of the fairies from the previous part there will be bats, and we will add the transformation into bloody fog, which is mandatory for all vampires. This way, Dracula will be able to both evade enemy attacks and slip through various gratings. To be sure, let's spice it all up with an insane number of combo attacks that will need to be unlocked and improved; we're making an AAA slasher after all.

And the guys seem to have coped with the combat, and it looks great and the arsenal of techniques is very rich, but, alas, there is no need to use all the capabilities of Dracula. Worthy of special mention are the artifacts dropped from monsters, which allow you to discover hiding places, inflict damage on all monsters in the area, slow down the enemy, and much more, but over time you catch yourself regularly using only bottles of blood that restore health . But okay, that's actually not the worst thing.

Because one day a third team joined the development, whose members for some reason remembered that in the early games of the series there was a pseudo-open world and the Belmont family rushed back and forth through the levels, which made the players incredibly happy. True, a game about a man in a raincoat running freely across the roofs of Gothic buildings will be suspiciously similar to the recent Batman: Arkham Origins, so let's just in case, divide the world into locations and kick Dracula off the streets more often. Into the sewer. And in monotonous warehouses. And also to the bio-lab. Still similar? Hm…

Well then, let him still fall into the past, during sudden attacks of epilepsy. And we’ll also add a castle where there will be a Chupacabra store with all sorts of goodies and many other rooms that the player will not see due to their complete uselessness. Let's also add stealth to the game, because everyone loves stealth in slasher films, right? Dracula will turn into a rat and run around the back streets, great. We’ll also add unkillable enemies that you’ll need to possess by sneaking up behind you. And boss fights, let's diversify them. After all, simply overcoming huge monsters is boring; you need something unexpected. For example, how do you like this idea - the player first hides from the boss in a small labyrinth, then finds an elevator, rises to a higher level and punishes the adversary there? Why couldn't he do this earlier? Well, in the labyrinth the boss will kill him with one blow. How is this why? Because.

Of course, there were no three teams, there was only one MercurySteam, which inexplicably managed to combine the beautiful and the ugly in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. At one point Lords of Shadow 2 seems almost best game in the world, and fifteen minutes later you are already cursing the game designers with the last words.

The logic of the game is also not all right. As we remember, Dracula's main goal is to get legendary weapon Vampire Killer and with his help leave this mortal coil once and for all. At the same time, every monster he meets can effortlessly break the neck of the hero who has lost his strength. Zobek even warns that some enemies are too strong and Dracula shouldn’t try to deal with them with bare hands, they’ll kill you and won’t ask you your name. Why Dracula does not follow the path of least resistance, choosing instead a twenty-hour race around the neighborhood, is decidedly incomprehensible.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 has a strange, broken style of presentation. Scraps of the story stubbornly refuse to form a whole picture, and in the end the developers try to present obvious facts as a sudden plot twist instead of shedding light on many other, less clear things. This is partly due to constant time jumps, partly due to the connection to the events of past games in the series. Of course, there are dozens of manuscripts and diaries scattered around Wygol City, after reading which the player can better understand the plot, but collecting waste paper to obtain historical information can hardly be called the right decision.

Still, Lords of Shadow 2 is worth playing. Despite a sufficient number of disadvantages, the game gives much more bright and memorable moments than the first, consistently “normal” Lords of Shadow. It's also amazingly beautiful, if you forget about the boring sewer levels. And Dracula’s personal drama compares favorably with the hackneyed “bloodsucker villain stole my girlfriend and now I have to kill him.” Just choose a higher difficulty level so that the battles are not only spectacular, but also interesting.