Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate announced, is 2D/3D hybrid for 3DS
Mirror of Fate is an interesting marriage of Lords of Shadow and the classic 2D Metroidvania games. The game is played on a 2D plane, but features the combat of its 3D console counterparts.
What is Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate (other than a mouthful)? When the title was leaked, many feared that the upcoming 3DS game would move away from the franchise's 2D heritage. The Castlevania games were among the best titles on Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS--so Konami wouldn't want to abandon such a winning formula, right?
Mirror of Fate is an interesting marriage of Lords of Shadow and the classic 2D Metroidvania games. The game is played on a 2D plane, but features the combat of its 3D console counterparts.
At first glance, Mirror of Fate will look like your standard 2D Castlevania game, albeit polygonal. The lower screen is reserved for a map, and in typical fashion, it is a maze filled with alternate routes, dead ends, and passages that can only be accessed with later abilities.
Once entering combat, however, the game feels drastically different. It plays very similarly to Lords of Shadow, with a quick dodge that moves you away from enemies. Counters are vital to combat efficacy, although the window for timing the move is quite narrow. By countering right before an enemy's attack, you're able to kill it one hit.
In addition to a revised combat system, there's also environment puzzles as well. In one section, I pulled a switch which opened a timed gate many rooms above me. I had to rush to make it, ignoring any enemy spawns that might get in the way.
Mirror of Fate has the potential to mix the best aspects of Castlevania and Lords of Shadow: offering the deep exploration of the 2D games with the deeper combat of the 3D games. It also plays a pretty crucial role in the story as well. Taking place after Lords of Shadow, Mirror of Fate follows Trevor and Simon Belmont and sets up the events for the newly announced sequel. And by existing in that universe, it's likely we can expect the long-winded, but still gorgeously designed production values of the console LoS games.
Watch the Shacknews E3 2012 page to follow all our coverage of this year's show. This preview is based on a hands-on demo shown at a pre-E3 event.
-
Shacknews
replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate announced, is 2D/3D hybrid for 3DS.
Mirror of Fate is an interesting marriage of Lords of Shadow and the classic 2D Metroidvania games. The game is played on a 2D plane, but features the combat of its 3D console counterparts.-
Looks like I'm getting a 3DS....what are the chances this game will come with its own themed system bundle? I'd freaking love that.
-
"Mirror of Fate has the potential to mix the best aspects of Castlevania and Lords of Shadow: offering the deep exploration of the 2D games with the deeper combat of the 3D games."
I would say it has more potential to shallowly emulate what made 2d castlevanias great and continue with the boring, repetitive combat of the 3d games.
This game is going to blow, Castlevania as we know it may be dead.-
Opinions, opinions, opinions...
-
Didn't they say somewhere that Lords of Shadow was the most successful Castlevania game of all time? I guess that means it's just as dead as PC gaming.
http://www.shacknews.com/article/74065/castlevania-lords-of-shadow-2-announced-coming-to-ps3-and
There are opinions, and then there are wrong opinions. And yours sir, is wrong.-
First, successful game /= good game.
Second, when I say Castlevania is dead, I mean true castlevania is dead. Just slapping the name on a game doesn't make it so. The 3d "castlevanias" are more like poorly designed clones of Devil may Cry or God of War.
If you want to see a franchise transition from 2d to 3d successfully, check out Metroid Prime or Mario 64.-
I loved it, and I have every castlevania ever. See how opinions work?
-
-
LOS does have a bit of a "and he was Dracula the whole time!!" M. Night Shimshamsaladosaladim to it though. It seems like such an uninteresting choice to make the antagonist of the series related to the protagonist after 25 years of history.
Also, there are some things that are distinctly un-Castlevania about it that bothered many long time fans of the series:
1. Chupacabra - off-putting, annoying time waster that they used 3 times
2. Annoying "reminder" sound clips from supporting cast - yes, I know I need to gather crystal pieces, THAT'S WHY I'M HERE
3. The music. This was a huge part of Castlevania, and they removed all of the melodic pieces for orchestral snoozefests, aside from maybe 1 piece that I liked which reminded me of an SCV4 piece.
4. References to portal, in MY CASTLEVANIA??
That said, there were a number of things I liked, some of the advanced relic attacks were interesting (especially the holy cross), and shadow and light modes made the combat seem more bad-ass and reminded me of the old flame whip and item crash attacks. A lot of the art was spectacular.
Many fans of the series hope that these new games will incorporate more of the classic elements, and I am hopeful that the developers have learned from some of the mistakes in the first game. Still, I'm a sucker for CV and I will be buying both of them immediately upon release.
-
-
-
-
-
I, too, am having a hard time believing they'll be able to emulate what made the 2d castlevania's so good. Developers who do action oriented games never seem to get this stuff right. I'll hope for the best, though.
-
-
I am hoping that it pulls an "Avengers" and completely shocks me with quality after expecting the worst. I really liked LoS, and I am a noted fan of the 2d games, hopefully they play to what I love about both CV flavors.
-
-
-
