The Castlevania Judgment demo featured three playable characters – Simon, Maria and Alucard – and showed off a handful of the stages. There are a couple of neat touches, especially the classic music – the “Dracula’s Castle” theme from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night has finally been remixed, along with the usual classic themes like “Vampire Killer” – as well as the zombies which aimlessly attack both combatants during the match. But it’s not entirely clear on how the game system actually works.
You attack by waggling, but I’m not sure if waggling in different directions will cause different attacks. As a result, it seemed like there was just a single canned combo, which would sometimes just drop out if I wasn’t shaking the remote hard enough. There are secondary weapons, like the old daggers and holy water vials, but they’re very difficult to aim efficiently. It also seems to be a very defensive game, since you can block practically any attack and then wait for an opening to counterattack. Unless there’s something deeper that’s not apparent, it seems quite shallow, and I’m not sure any Castlevania fan will really dig it outside of the fanservicey concept.
Images courtesy of Konami.
Published: Sep 17, 2008 11:41 am