Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate

Developer: MercurySteam
Publisher: Konami
Release: 2013
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Genre: Metroidvania

Being a Nintendo portable spin-off of the high-end Castlevania subseries Lords of Shadow, Mirror of Fate is a beast of its own. High production values are crammed into the 2.5D metroidvania layout, as the traditional tactical/exploratory gameplay is overruled by some straight-forward action. Anyways, throughout the game its pros and cons come from the same place: a cinematic approach.

It brings an unprecedented (in Nintendo platforms, mind you) level of gore and horror to the series, and its flair for spectacle delivers. Regular skirmishes are as satisfying as bosses ones, the camera ensuring you’ll get the best seat while at it; the same goes for presenting new environments or showing off the gorgeous, eerie vistas—especially when strolling outside the castle.

Unfortunately its metroidvania-for dummies (or God of War players) level design has nothing of “Mature” in it and would serve a younger audience better. So would do the Quick Time Events triggered in certain situations, the player helplessly travelling back to 1983 for an involuntary taste of Dragon’s Lair.

And the double-edged sword thrusts on. Almost an interactive movie as it is, lore and fan service go terribly well together—while the same can’t be said about the controls, for the sake of not dropping presentation (and a few animation frames in the process) over gameplay.

Cutscenes are beautiful and work well due to running on the game's engine--but with cel-shaded textures.

Ups and downs here and there, the real game breaker still stems from that very same root. Bosses battles are preceded by seamless cutscenes, and even though they pump the upcoming battle up they grow plainly annoying over fail-and-repeat. Worse, they are unskippable. Worser, they can even glitch in preventing you from reaching areas where you fought a boss before, thus rendering a proper completion status unattainable without starting a new game—with the very same unskippable cutscenes along the way.

The later patchable HD version can rid it of some bugs, but not of the breed of such diverse creatures.

CRUSH3D

Developer: Zoë Mode
Publisher: Sega
Release: 2012
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Genre: Puzzle

Shovelware probably was the biggest adverse effect from Nintendo’s Blue Ocean strategy of expanding videogames demographics beyond known frontiers in the Wii era. Akin to Atari’s (and thus everyone else’s) crash in the 80s it still was lucky enough to get away with it (sorta) due to the inability of that very audience in distinguishing gourmet from junk. Having nothing to do with it, CRUSHED suffered some collateral damage in that scenario.

After putting a small amount of time into it CRUSH3D’s personality starts to come through naturally since its plot, dialogue and game design testify a team of thoughtful developers behind it. Unfortunately it painted itself in a corner when picking up some a-bit-too-generic art style for dressing it all. Despite being likeable (and even cohesive) the trendy models/palette possibly sent the wrong messages for both casual and hardcore audiences—that it was an easy time killer to the first and cheesy to the later. That’s a real shame; it’s neither.

I personally like it, but still could see it coming.

The “crush” mechanic of shifting 3D levels to 2D back and forth was novel in the first PSP iteration—and it makes a lot more sense in 3DS’s 3D display—but it’s not only about gimmickry: level design is smart, challenging and satisfying.

Not that it hasn't its share of downsides. At times it may communicate shadily when it comes to surmountable walls, for instance; or crank the knob too high when ramping the difficulty; but CRUSH3D is meatier and more solid than anyone would expect from seeing its cover in shop shelves.

Kirby & the Amazing Mirror

Developer: HAL Laboratory, Capcom, Flagship, Dimps, Arika
Publisher: Nintendo
Release: 2004
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Genre: Metroidvania

Picture yourself playing Metroid. You dig down through a big deal of planet, surviving tricky menaces along the claustrophobic way, until you hit a missile hatch sealing the path. That’s when you realize you need to get back to grab some since you could only carry one equipment at a time, and you’ve chosen the Morphing Ball. In a less dramatic and more colorful way, that happens a lot in Kirby & the Amazing Mirror.

Of course, the backtracking is diminished by the very enemies you find getting to places since Kirby’s copycat ability can be put to use at (almost) any time, but needed abilities are often too far for bothering—or you can easily get lost in the pure chaos of the world’s map and don’t even know how to get back.

Anyways, that’s part of the problem of a Kirby built from ground up to be a multiplayer experience. There is a clever “cellphone” system (with battery life and all) for making it up to a lonely player—it allows you to call reinforcements in the form of other kirbies—but the friendly AI is too dumb to rely on. That can render particularly frustrating moments when it comes to simple environment puzzles like standing on a button to open a door or helping moving a heavier stone, for instance.

Bosses pose a decent challenge to a lone wolf as well, and the final boss stretch is borderline absurd. Kirby’s unruly physics don’t add up well either—he can even climb ramps faster than he threads regular terrain—and the short (at start) health bar bring the Zelda syndrome up (that meaning “dying happens more in the beginning than towards the end”).

But Kirby is charming as hell, and the presentation delivers that in spades. One of the best pixel work to ever grace GBA can be found here (despite the heavy slowdowns when the screen gets busy), and that’s no small feature given the competition.

SNES³

In the end this Kirby should be approached more like an adventure sandbox than a proper action platformer. It just doesn’t go that well when it takes itself too seriously.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

Developer: Sculptured Software, Bits Studios
Publisher: Virgin Interactive
Release: 1991
Platform: NES (played), Game Boy
Genre: RPG

Learning that Sculptured Software actually had to strip down Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in order to release it was a shock. There are so many ideas thrown into it already, and they are so decently realized that the game should be praised at least for its technical achievements.

Kicking off as a top-view action-RPG with PC-like menus and inventory management (weird on a console per se), it soon starts to bare its teeth. Bumping into specific enemies transmutes the game into a 1-on-1 sidescroll action duel, and not a barebones one: huge sprites do regular and somersault jumps, crouch and roll dodging enemy attacks and stance defensively as something that could have been sold as a standalone game by a greedier publisher.

Still, it goes on. Being ambushed brings up a wide team battle perspective, in a quasi-RTS mini-game; scavenging bodies for goods, wearing a disguise to enter a certain location… even a horse escapade was put together for a small bridge segment.

RPG, fighting, RTS... you name it

It’s almost like it’s too ambitious for its own good since it walks the line between being varied and lacking personality, but in fact everything works fine enough: combat is weighty and satisfying, the soundtrack kicks ass, etc. What’s missing then?

Well, mainly a better “save” system, since it hasn’t a proper one. Passwords are only available through code, so chances are a player must beat the somewhat meaty RPG in a single sit. Using digitized art for portraits and story segments didn’t help either since there’s no resemblance to the movie’s actors to begin with—yes, tie-ins often produced good pieces of gaming back then.

What is left is to imagine what it could have been with more development time or a console generation ahead.