[4/365] Venetica vs. Castlevania
Image by Ben Dodson
After a long day of doing household DIY (building furniture, unpacking, cleaning, etc), I decided to spend a couple of hours playing some new games that I’ve recently got for my Xbox 360 but haven’t yet had a chance to play; Venetica and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.
Venetica
My friend Phil and I seem to have a Christmas tradition of going to the local GAME store and then choosing a game each and making the other pay for it – this year he wrapped my present in front of me before giving it to me on Christmas Day. So far, I have always just picked a game off the shelf that I’ve never heard of going purely on the box art and description. Last year I chose Dragon Age: Origins which was fantastic. This year I chose Venetica.
The box made it sound like such a good game with the story described as "the daughter of Death has been called upon to defend her father against a cunning necromancer" and features such as "a visually stunning cinematic RPG with a truly unique atmosphere". I was expecting something akin to Oblivion which is one of my all time favourite RPGs. Unfortunately, it feels as if the developers had seen Oblivion and then tried to make something similar on a much smaller budget. The graphics are far from "visually stunning". Indeed, Oblivion is a far superior looking game and that was released near the beginning of the Xbox 360 debut. The issue with the graphics isn’t necessarily the 3D or the main game (although these are severely lacking), but the fact that menus look and feel very cheap with standard web fonts being used in combination with bad colours. It feels like nobody with any UI experience even looked at it let alone designed it.
The control system is good but the camera system gets in the way and pressing certain buttons seems to do nothing but create sounds. For instance, pressing RT makes a noise you’d expect from pulling a sword from it’s sheath yet that doesn’t actually happen… you have to press RB for that. Another audio annoyance is that dialogue only seemed to come out of the left hand side of my surround sound setup. Other noises (e.g. a blacksmith hammering on an anvil) would appear in the correct locations with the sound traveling around the room as you moved the camera, yet dialogue only came out of the left.
However, the real killer for me was the truly awful voice acting. I can cope with bad graphics and bad camera controls, but bad voice acting can turn a good game into something barely playable. The opening sequence (in which somebody tragically dies) had me in stitches of laughter as it sounded like a rehearsal for a school play. This wouldn’t be an issue in some games but an RPG is at its core a story-driven affair with nearly everyone you meet having the power of speech. Oblivion was amusing for the fact that it had about 8 voice actors and so you’d frequently come across people who had the same voices but you could ignore it by the fact that they sounded good and made the characters believable.
There was a lot of potential for this game as the story line and combat system looked pretty solid, but poor graphics and awful acting make it hard to get into the atmosphere of the game and make it ultimately unplayable.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
After being disappointed from an hour of playing Venetica, I turned instead to the latest installment of the Castlevania series. I didn’t know anything about this game until I saw it in a store recently but I knew I had to get it. I was a HUGE fan of Castlevania 64 (another of my all time favourite games) so was ready for a bit more 3D Castlevania action.
Firstly, this game is big. It comes on 2 DVDs and I think the majority of that is probably the high quality textures that have been loaded in as this game is graphically stunning. The opening movie looks great as they often do but what surprised me is the way it seamlessly goes from video to gameplay without any change in graphical quality. These aren’t just HD movies with poorer quality gameplay added inbetween (I’m looking at you Final Fantasy XIII) but actual in-game footage. The opening is ambitious from a graphical point of view by taking place during heavy rainfall yet the refresh rate was steady and the detail is exquisite.
Moving onto gameplay, the story feels incredibly solid and you can immediately immerse yourself in the world that is created. The control system is easy to understand with complexity and combination moves being added on gradually as you play through. There are plenty of over the top action scenes and big boss battles that use a system similar to Star Wars: Force Unleashed in that you have to wear the enemy down and then press buttons in a certain sequence in order to deliver the finishing blow. The whole thing is made even more cinematic by an immersive soundtrack with every effect coming through in perfect 5.1 surround sound.
But what about the voice acting? I knew it was going to be good when it started with a narration from Patrick Stewart (drawing parallels with Oblivion again) but later characters also have strong voice actors. One of the first minor roles you meet (a peasant who has 2 lines) sounded far more professional and believable than any of the characters I encountered in Venetica.
This is definitely a game I’m going to enjoy over the next couple of weeks!
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