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Over three years after the release of the original Lords of Shadow, the things I remember about it are all pretty good. MercurySteam's first attempt at a Castlevania game may have ditched the cartographical intricacy that made the series so satisfying in 2D, but it offered players a sumptuously rendered 3D action-adventure instead, and delivered it with real spirit. Uncharted-style platforming across expansive outdoor levels was mixed with clean, crunching combat against a variety of towering foes; a stoic Belmont took the fight to the forces of ancient evil and was - eventually - consumed by vampirism himself.Lords of Shadow 2 plays many of the same cards, but I doubt I'll ever recall it quite as fondly. The nimble platforming and the combat both return - now coupled to a player-controlled camera that behaves pretty well and feels like a natural fit - and Gabriel Belmont's back too, newly cast as Dracula, and nursing the mother of all undead hangovers. This is a far more ambitious game, however, and it's not always successful in those ambitions. In its shift to a contemporary urban setting it loses a lot of the earlier game's cinematic sense of scale and place. In its desire to draw a handful of wayward plotlines towards some kind of conclusion, it sacrifices pace and coherency in the service of a story that, ultimately, isn't really worth the hassle.
But still, all change: Dracula awakes in the present day to find that he's an old, dribbling wreck, and that a massive glass and steel city has risen up around his crumbling castle while he's slept. He's dragged back into action by his old pal Zobek, now some ill-defined manner of horror executive with a suit and a cigar, and he's told about a dangerous new threat to civilisation. A team of depraved acolytes are trying to resurrect Satan, which will presumably be bad news for everyone, even a bloodsucking vampire who's killed most of his own family. If Dracula will help Zobek stop the antichrist's reappearance, Zobek will allow Dracula to find eternal peace. This narrative seems simple enough, perhaps, but the developers immediately get lost within it.
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