3DS E3 2012: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate Suffers from Erratic Framerate, Dull Combat

[x3sphere]

As a franchise, Castlevania has suffered a rocky relationship with home consoles, at least up until 2010's Lords of Shadow reboot. While transitioning to 3D was a struggle for Castlevania throughout the PS2 era, portable installments that retained the classic side-scrolling gameplay with Metroid-like exploration elements flourished during those dark times.

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[slicer4ever]

i watched some gameplay on G4, it didn't really impress me much.

 

[Trigun]

Dull combat? Wha

If it's anything like any castlevania game ever. It will be fine and fun.

Erratic Framerate? Unless it's chugging down to less than 20FPS it will be fine.


LOS had crazy Framerate fluctuation and that didn't mar the experience at all.

 

[x3sphere]

LOS had crazy Framerate fluctuation and that didn't mar the experience at all.

Yes it was similar, but I don't know, I found LoS way more tolerable. Maybe because it was 3D? The combat in this feels incredibly sluggish anyway, was definitely dipping down to mid 20s at times.

I'm a pretty huge CV fan so I wanted to like this game but walked away very disappointed. Hope they improve it.

 

[Trigun]

Framerate analysis of LOS has shown the game stays regularly under 30 a lot of the time. So to me that's not a big deal.
Still it'd probably be smarter to just Cap it at a fixed rate at which it doesn't fluctuate so much. And as for Aliasing, what can you do with a 400x240 screen in 3D mode? Usually some developers will add AA in non-3D mode but I don't know about LOS:MOF because LOS I didn't have any AA at all on either console.


I've got bigger issues with certain aspects of the LOS games that could be improved.

Like the music implementation system which is NOTHING like Castlevania should be. Instead it uses standard Generic western music implementation where they want the music to "React to what the player is doing" Which is all wrong for Castlevania.

Not to mention in LOS it didn't even have a proper title theme, or a proper credits theme. Both were just reused songs from the game. And a lot of times with my experience when I played it when I got out of battle it would crossfade into a completely different song than the one that was playing before I got into battle. Which was highly frustrating.

That brings us to HOW music SHOULD be implemented in a Castlevania game (Not the music itself. Because even though it's incredibly different and could've easily featured tons of Motifs of castlevania themes in the music;as well the arrangement of Vampire Killer was abysmal; it's still great and reaches further in to bring out human emotion in the music than standard Vania music does)

Game starts up
>Logos and licensing with respective musical cues
>Title Screen -Should have a completely unique and it's own musical theme(If related to a theme in the game music, it should be a variation or different arrangement of that) OR no music at all. This is how Title music has worked in Castlevania forever.

In game>
Cutscene music independant of area and other event music.

Gameplay music, Every single Area should have it's own unique theme that loops with no crossfading into random percusion theme #0103 OR when you run into an enemy the music that should play should be a more chaotic arrangement of the area theme(ALA Metal Gear Solid) or just add an element to the existing loop track that says to the viewer "You are in battle now" but it should be very closely related to the music of the AREA and thus as such should immediately return to that theme when battle is over.

Event music and jingles> If you walk into an area and there is some sort of Event that isn't a cutscene, that could have it's own music as well. But again it should immediately return to the area theme afterwards. Same with Jingles, if you get a new Shadow Gem and the jingle plays that's totally fine. But should return to the area theme afterwards.



These are all things LOS did mostly wrong for a CASTLEVANIA game. These may work for others (like Crysis for example) but not Castlevania.



The story, They talk about how they want to have a more involved story , yet in LOS there was hardly any story sequences or dialogue at all in contrast to how much there should be if they really want to have the story be a priority. Most of it was relegated to Loading screens with narrations. Which felt really lazy and uninvolved.






These are things I hope that are fixed and or improved on with the sequels but I won't hold my breath and I will end up enjoying them anyway.

Even if I doubt David Cox truly knows what and how Music in Castlevania should be and how it should work. I should know, i've played almost every Vania game in existence and Castlevania's music has been one of my biggest influences for me as a musician throughout my life.

/To each his own however TL;DR

 

[FrozenIpaq]

Every E3 it seems that we've gone to there's always been a game that has had framerate issues. 2010 it was Dead Rising 2 and last year it was Luigi's Mansion on the 3DS (when 3D was on at least). Good to see they're keeping up with the tradition at least.....