Castlevania is one of my absolute favorite series of all time, and Bloodstained is the new Castlevania series in everything but name. The developer, the music, the look, the feel. It's all classic Castlevania. And Curse Of The Moon is the intended 'prequel' of the series. It purposefully mimics the original 8-bit CV games - a trilogy very near and dear to my heart. Luckily, unlike say, what Mighty No 9 did with Mega Man, this game pulls off the feat flawlessly.
Curse Of The Moon looks absolutely stunning. I'd say that of the original trilogy, this game leans hardest into Castlevania III, which is cool with me. I've always felt that one was underrated. Most notably, Curse Of The Moon has you recruit three other characters that you can swap between - each with their own unique skill set. Also, even though the levels are pretty much linear, there are alternate paths through them, some of which are only accessible to certain characters. I'm bad with names. But the main dude is your standard Belmont type. His main weapon is a little dagger thing sort of like when you start out in Symphony Of The Night. But he can get some whip sub-weapons. Then there's the girl who's my favorite to play as with her higher jump, longer range whip, and slide ability. There's an alchemist who feels less interesting to play as offensively, but has a cool little forcefield thing he can use. And then there's a vampire dude who... well, you've played Castlevania III. You get it. Oh, real quick: the music is amazing. So good. Classic Castlevania soundtrack right here. Love it. The first level starts out as a throwback to the first level of the original Castlevania and feels so authentic. Then you're on a train, and it concludes with a boss fight against a big train thing. His patterns are really easy to figure out and he's mostly a pushover. Though I should note that the inclusion of these last sort of desperation attacks the bosses throw at you are interesting. The second stage is sort of an icy level and you fight a big turtle thing at the end. Third stage feels like some kind of labyrinth and the boss fight is against... a big pile of money or something? It's weird. But unique. The fourth stage concludes with a fight against a giant two-headed serpent that takes up most of the screen. It's amazing. I love this boss fight. And I loved the game enough to see it through to the end. Which is something I've had a tough time doing with classic 'Vanias at times due to their intense difficulties. Well, I mean, I beat the normal mode. There's still Nightmare Mode and all that. But hey, that just means replayability for later. Curse Of The Moon is such a fantastic "new Castlevania" game. It really nails the feel of those early 8-bit entries. And I thought that the four characters were really unique and interesting enough that it made swapping between them actually feel like it mattered in how a level was approached. There's a boss that's pretty clearly just Elizabeth Bathory, and that part was AWESOME. The last level that had the swarm of bats chasing you was pretty tricky at times. Tense at least. And the last boss was interesting and challenging enough that it took me a few tries to figure out what I even needed to be doing. And I LOVE the art design of all the bosses in this game. Super impressive stuff. It was just announced that Ritual Of The Night finally has a release date for next month, and I'm pumped.
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I don't even know why I started playing Paladins. I think it was because I saw an announcement that it had been released on Xbox One so it was fresh in my mind again. I had forgotten all about it since it had been in Early Access for quite a while, and I normally shy away from playing "unfinished games." But I don't know. Coming to consoles meant - to me at least - that the game must be pretty finished. Yeah? So I figured I might as well check it out. If nothing else I thought maybe if it was decent then I could convince all my friends who didn't want to spend money on Overwatch to at least play this free alternative.
A couple of spoilers:
Apparently Hi-Rez were the ones that made Smite. I don't know anything about Smite. So while some of these characters may be familiar to Smite players, they were all new to me. But that's fine. It meant I had no preconceptions going in. The game gives you a handful of freebies to get started with and there's many more to unlock. A single payment of $20 will do it all at once (at least while the game is still in Early Access) but I've had a far better time slowly unlocking the roster one by one using the in-game currency I've earned from just playing the damn thing. At its most basic, Paladins really does feel very Overwatch with its bright colors, diverse roster, and various objectives. But there are some defining differences - the most obvious being the card system. As you complete various daily quests or level up you'll receive loot boxes; and in these loot boxes you'll get cards. Basically, you build various loadouts of five-cards that will augment each character. And you can choose which loadout to use for each character at the start of a round. So you can think of these as perks, right? And it's a hugely interesting way to make each character personalized even down to deciding which loadout makes sense given the characters that your teammates have chosen. The card system gets even deeper thanks to the in-match credits. Just staying alive will slowly grant you credits. But more importantly, you'll get way more credits if you play well. Killing enemies? Sure. But you're also encouraged to - get this - pay attention to the objectives. So getting on the payload will instantly start throwing more credits at you. Healing teammates will do the same. And so on. What the credits can do is then further buff the cards that you've got in your current loadout. This feature can make for some interesting turn-arounds by allowing you to further tweak your character in-game. It also makes Paladins feel way closer to a first person MOBA than Overwatch really does. Paladins has done a great job in encouraging me to try new characters. Actually it was able to kick me in the ass more than Overwatch ever managed to. In all my hours with Overwatch, there has been a hugely disproportionate number of them spent with just a small handful of characters (Hi, D.Va!). On the flip, Paladins doesn't open up Competitive play to you until you've leveled a whopping TWELVE characters up to level four. This creates a nice incentive to get experimental. And it pushed me to keep buying new characters, and trying classes I didn't think I'd like. Which is a good thing as it resulted in me having favorites (Fernando) that I wouldn't have thought to even attempt on my own. It took me 40 hours to get twelve characters leveled up enough to unlock the competitive mode. And chipping away at each of those characters was actually a lot of fun and kept me feeling like I was making progress while offering up some real variety. Of course actually playing competitive mode was a whole other thing. That's serious business! But in a good way. I only played a few rounds to see what it was like. It took much longer to get in a ranked match, and picking characters is something you do in turns. And one team cannot have a character that another team has already picked. Plus each team gets one ban. So it certainly helps to have knowledge of a larger share of the roster, and their various positions. The few ranked games I played were far from toxic. But they were indeed serious. And that's not exactly what I'm looking for right now. So I'm mostly giving up Paladins for the time being, calling it 40 well spent hours of fun anyway. There is one exception that's kept me coming back. Remember those stubborn friends I talked about? Well, one has decided to at least try Paladins so I've been playing some matches with him sporadically. Do I see Paladins as some kind of Overwatch killer? Nah. But is it super fun? Is it something that's unique enough to complement Overwatch as a palate cleanser? Is it perhaps possible as a free gateway to Overwatch? Yes, yes and yes. ...but wait, there's more! After I wrote that last paragraph I've spent about a month now playing nothing but Paladins. I've unlocked all the characters. I pretty much only play competitive mode. And I love this game. It's still not perfect - and to be fair, it's still in Early Access - but I love it. So maybe you should have just jumped to this final paragraph huh? Oh well. |
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