I doesn’t get any better than this I tell you. I thought I’d swing by the Finchley Hollywood Bowl to play a few games and was extremely pleased to see Castlevania Arcade on test there! I’ve now played it, photographed it and videoed it, but what do I think of it?
As we know Konami have gone for an enclosed type cabinet, much like thier Silent Hill cabinet but on a grander scale. You step in to the the play area, insert a credit and pick up your wand. You are immediately reminded of the Wii, which I guess is unavoidable. You are then prompted to place you feet in the correct position, which I presume is to keep 2 players at a safe distance from each other. The usual opening game cut scene begins, not really sure what it’s trying to tell me, pretty standard then for a video game and I don’t really care anyway because I just want to play.
Enemies consisted of skelton dudes, bats and zombie type creatures and were relatively creepy looking. Like a light gun shooter you move around the various locations on rails and must defeat the enemies, but instead of shooting you are either whipping or pointing and firing blades at them. I found the whipping a little inaccurate at times, perhaps I was doing something wrong, but I found myself relying on the blades to bail me out when an enemy was about to strike.
Graphically the game looks good and there’s a nice atmosphere to it all. I quite like the way the game sets up scenes by looking around quickly at all the surrounding enemies and then taking them out one group at a time. By doing this it allows the player to roughly know what to expect. Hopefully this is an early game mechanic and gets a bit trickier later (not that I breezed through the first level myself!)
In summary the game felt a lot more polished than Silent Hill did and is definitely better than that katana game Muzan, even with it’s minor inaccuracies.
I’ve got more pictures on the way and a video but currently am working off a very slow connection. Should have it all up by tomorrow. Stay tuned!
And in case you were wondering, this was where Konami tested Silent Hill, and yes it’s still here, in the very same spot!
