feitclub

I have beaten Guacamelee and I’m here to say you should buy Guacamelee. Reasons for doing that include:

• It is Metroid minus the dead ends and the getting lost. Every time you explore an alternate route you’ll be rewarded for your curiosity. Maps and pointers ensure you always know where the next plot point lies. The world map also clearly indicates when you’ve uncovered every secret in a given level.
• The main character is a luchador A.K.A. Mexican Mike Haggar. Punches, body slams, suplexes, head butts - all your moves look cool. The game even has a Street Fighter-esque training room where you learn combos.
• Checkpoints, saving, and continuing are all generous. Aside from a few “listen to the boss talk” moments, when you fail you’re never more than a few seconds away from where you were.
• It’s funny. Background gags and nods to other games are abundant but do not impact the fourth wall.
• It works on PS3 and Vita and looks great on both the big and small screen. Cloud saving means you can easily swap between versions.
• Chickens. Great video games always have chickens.

Counter-points? OK, sure, but don’t take these are reasons not to buy this game because you really should.

• The upgrade store is uninteresting. There are only three “moves” to buy, the rest are incremental upgrades that are negligible.
• It’s another damsel-in-distress story. Yawn. Still, the ending is cute.
• Cross-controller doesn’t work as it should. You can play on PS3 using your Vita, but the lag and lack of proper map scrolling make it a waste.
• No co-op on Vita. Local-only co-op on PS3. Bummer.

I hope this has been convincing because dammit, if Nintendo won’t make any more Metroid games and Konami has taken Castlevania away from its rightful master, somebody has to step up and make cool 2D action games where you explore a space. Give Drinkbox money, they’ve earned it.

mudron:

NES Castlevania maps are now available for pre-order! 

I couldn’t decide which map people would prefer, one colored to look like a real 17th-century map or a more gothic-looking black and white, so I’ve made both available. (An excerpt from the color variant was used as the back cover artwork for 1up.com editor Jeremy Parish’s fantastic Anatomy of Castlevania book.)

Either than color (or lack thereof), both maps are exactly the same: 24x36-inch inches, heavy-duty giclee prints on heavy matte stock, depicting the interior of Dracula’s castle (as seen in the original NES Castlevania game) and the surrounding Transylvanian countryside (as seen in Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest and Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse).

Good idea to offer a choice, but I could never pass up a colorful Castlevania. The series has always made such great use of them (well, almost always)

Now how do we get one to IGA?

1updotcom:

Akumajou Bakula.

Simon Belmont is still upset about “A Night in Sickbay”

1updotcom:

Wait a second. Silver face, red collar over a black outfit, a huge medallion… the implications are staggering.

And both their names begin with D. What is happening help

mudron:

I was hoping to have this completely finished before Halloween (I’m still fooling around with adding color to this map, and I want to add enemies/treasure locations to the cutaway of the Castle on the bottom), but that’ll have to wait until mid-November.

Until then, enjoy these jpegs of the realm of Castlevania circa 1476 - 1698, covering the time period between Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, NES Castlevania and Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest.

Happy Halloween!

You take your time. I will buy this treasure whenever it is ready. WHENEVER. IT. IS. READY.

1updotcom:

I have played a lot of Castlevania games over the years, but I think the one I’ve played most just might be Dawn of Sorrow. Something about that particular title really clicked for me: The graphics, the music, the play mechanics, the portability. I’ve ground a complete game file, played New Game + on top of that, and basically just turned the thing inside-out. The addition of Julius Mode extended its playability considerably on top of that. I don’t know what the best Castlevania is, but both “Sorrow” entries are up there in the running in my book.

That’s why I defaced Ayami Kojima’s great artwork with a sprite sheet. You destroy what you love.

Aria/Dawn of Sorrow represent a rarity among Castlevania games - the two games are truly linked and part of one tale. You can draw lines between Rondo of Blood & Symphony of the Night and even Castlevania I & II, but none of them are as connected as Aria & Dawn are.

As an aside, it was a real shame when Konami dropped Kojima for Dawn of Sorrow and started anime-ing up the joint something fierce. I’m not an anime hater but the drop in quality was massive. Glad she came back for Order of Ecclesia and seems to have stuck around.

(via retronauts)

1updotcom:

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance has gone down as one of the less-beloved entries in the Castlevania franchise, and not without reason. It has issues. The castle structure is cumbersome and frustrating to navigate. The color scheme represents an attempt to compensate for the dimness of the standard GBA screen, but came out around the time the SP launched, rendering it garish and ugly. Much of the design feels uninspired, especially the bosses, most of which are just large versions of common foes. And the music, while well-composed, is kind of screechy on the GBA’s miserable sound hardware.

That being said, it features my favorite artwork for the series by Ayami Kojima. The magic system is interesting (it feels like an attempt to salvage Circle of the Moon’s DSS debacle). And I dig the attempt to draw upon the series’ lore for the story.

So, basically, I guess I’m saying it’s best appreciated from a distance, which sounds harsher than it’s meant to be.

When I caught up on portable Castlevania games by playing them in order, I found Harmony of Dissonance much more enjoyable than Circle of the Moon which I couldn’t even bring myself to finish. The above criticism is pretty much on the nose, though I dig the music despite its crude quality.

However, HoD was throughly outshined by its successor Aria of Sorrow, a terrific game that stands as one of the best in the whole series. You can actually buy these two titles together on a single GBA cartridge which I recommend - at least until Nintendo gets it act together and sells us digital versions of GBA/DS games. But I wouldn’t hold my breath on that.

1updotcom:

littlepemo:

I can’t be the only person to backslide through all those screens.

Yeah, this GIF makes me angry. Backdashing is the only way to traverse Symphony’s loading screens, just like you’re always supposed to jump through Mega Man’s boss gates.

If playing as Ritcher, you must slide -> leap through these interludes. MUST.

(via retronauts)

littlepemo:

There was a post on Did You Know Gaming a while back about how Dracula X borrowed directly from Miyazaki’s first film, The Castle of Cagliostro. I’d argue the Castlevania series has been doing so since the beginning.

Well NOW I want a Metroidvania Lupin III game, thanks for nothing.