Castlevania: Lords of Shadow PS3 Live Gameplay – E3

Ah, nostalgia, nostalgia, nostalgia. Remember Castlevania for the original NES? Yeah, the one with a dude who could throw knives, axes, boomerangs, collect hearts, find hidden treasures, whip the snot out of any candle hanging around, and cause general mayhem for the evil demons of lore? Simon Belmont!!! That’s him, our 8-bit pixelated hero. Konami brought some of the best games ever to the Nintendo systems of old, but now with the move into HD, Konami is making the transition and taking it in stride. I had the pleasure of visiting the Konami arena by appointment to demo a ton of games – which I will cover in a separate article – but I experienced Castlevania: Lords of Shadow running on the PS3 at Sony’s arena first.

Gabriel, the new protagonist in LoC

I met with PR agent Steve Willis, who blessed me with Konami’s press kit. A press kit includes “assets”, or tons and tons of screenshots, renders, artwork, and fact sheets about the game(s) in question. I have such assets for my beloved BSCreview.com audience here and now. I’ll let the screens do the talking, but briefly, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is a third-person action game that is rumored to be (or not so rumored, as it were) a reboot of the franchise. Moving into 3D in such a big way is no easy task, but the demo was amazing and lengthy, so I had a chance to really sink my teeth (no pun intended) into what the developers are trying to do. Epic battles, fluid and God of War-like combat (never a bad thing), items, power-ups, and some cool voice-acting rounded out the demo. A storybook presentation and menu navigation system was easy to use, but in this very early code stage, I can’t imagine much will stay the same. It would be cool if it did, but we’ll see.

The Black Knight

The demo opens with Gabriel heading into a small town at night, during a torrential downpour. The action soon dispenses in plenty. Several townsfolk armed with pitchforks nervously pace the grounds as they greet Gabriel (the player), but all is not well. Wolf-like demons with red eyes and gnashing teeth climb the fence and attack. A quick tutorial explains each action: short and long range attacks, etc. The control scheme, though I can’t recall exactly which buttons did what now (sorry), were easy to use. In an action game, ease of controls is a must, and I was impressed with them in Lords of Shadow thus far. Once the square is clear of the smaller demons, a massive version of the Wolf demon leaps the fence and mauls one of the townsfolk, then focuses on Gabriel. The Dodge technique is shown in the tutorial because this larger demon has an unblockable attack that Gabe must dodge rather than block. Kept the action moving, and forced the player to get the timing right and keep the attacks short.

Graphically, the demo wasn’t impressive, but in this early stage no game really is. The potential is, of course, off the charts on the HD consoles – Lord of Shadows will be available for both PS3 and 360 – as you can see by these screenshots taken straight from the game in development. These screenshots were not taken off-screen, and were not part of the E3 2010 demo.

Castle courtyard

Rip out their souls!

Gabriel and Carmilla...is that top necessary? Really?

The Evil Butcher takes a swig!

As you can see, the game is going to look amazing and offer up some fantastic imagery. Enjoy the off-screen video footage below of the game’s demo in motion. BSCreview will be watching this game’s progress closely in the coming months. Release date is “TBD 2010″. Cross your fingers!