Finally! Symphony of the Night is in my grasp! Well, sort of – it’s on my Xbox 360’s hard drive. This is the first of the “Metroidvania” style Castlevania games, and I’ve just been playing it. As always (well, except for that GB one and the PS2 one…), it’s great. I’m Alucard, who plays much like Soma did in Aria of Sorrow, and the graphical style is much like Circle of the Moon, so it’s like a kind of mish …
Hmm. Some of the flaws are starting to show in this game now. The map isn’t as easy to navigate as in Circle of the Moon, especially in the way that there are rooms which serve no purpose than to slow you down. No baddies, no spikes, just a poorly laid out room to navigate. They’re not hard, just annoying. Then there’s the structure of the bosses. You don’t seem to have to do them all in a specific order, …
And so it’s out with Circle of the Moon, and in with Harmony of Dissonance. I’ve played it for almost an hour and a half already, and I’m enjoying it. There’s something not quite right about it, though. Maybe it’s the way Juste (your character) has a bizarre blue glow and shadow trails. Maybe it’s the fact I had to start again completely powerless. It could be that L and R perform dashes rather than special moves. Or perhaps it’s …
It’ll probably take longer to read this post than it took me to complete the game. One Strike is a one-on-one fighting game with the sort of graphics early Game Boy Advance games had, with colour palettes to suit the very dark GBA screen. Games like Castlevania: Circle of the Moon looked hideous when blown up on a big TV via an emulator, and so does One Strike. As the name suggests, you need to strike your opponent just once …
Viva Pinata (360 12/01/2007) New Rally-X (360 14/01/2007) Super Castlevania IV (Wii 25/01/2007) Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (GBA 30/01/2007) Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (GBA 04/02/2007) Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA 10/02/2007) Super Mario World (Wii 11/02/2007) Kirby’s Adventure (Wii 17/02/2007) The Castlevania Adventure (GB 18/02/2007) Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge (GB 19/02/2007) Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (DS 25/02/2007) Gunpey (DS 01/03/2007) Kororinpa (Wii 03/03/2007) Kirby Squeak Squad (DS 08/03/2007) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (360 14/03/2007) Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (DS …
Ah, the Game Boy Advance. To many, a portable SNES without enough buttons to effectively be a portable SNES, and one with a screen invisible in all but the glow of a 100W lightbulb. That didn’t stop it from having arguably the best catalogue of games of any system, however, and with the lit screen of the GBA SP (further refined in the GB Micro), it became and remains my favourite handheld ever. And I loved my DS and 3DS a lot. …
I’ve been gaming for a long time. This is obvious to anyone who has perused the rest of my site (the Gaming Diary and Museum both give clues to this). I’ve played a lot of games. Hundreds. Thousands, in fact. It would be naïve to assume that, having played so many games, gaming ideas are only ever used once, and so each game is an entirely unique experience. This is, of course, not true. Some things come up all the …
So, the end of the year is nigh, and I thought I’d round up this year’s games. That is, the games I’ve played this year, rather than just those that have come out this year, although in most cases it’s the same thing. January The year started as 2006 ended – with Castlevania. Specifically, Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance on the GBA, supplemented by Super Castlevania IV for the Wii’s Virtual Console. There was also a lot …
