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Subject: Iphone: Castlevania Puzzle
I should preface this by saying I'm a huge Castlevania fan. Or at least, I was. Actually, I'm kinda not. I don't like the MSX or NES games, but I love the PC Engine and SNES versions, and of course adore the fantastic Playstation Symphony of the Night. Then the series soured for me, the GBA and DS releases delving too far into RPG-land with collect-em-up gameplay and annoying addons that distracted from the core whipping experience.
And so now we have an iPhone Castlevania. Unlike Java-based phones, which got a real platform Castlevania game, the iPhone game is a remake of Konami's old arcade game Taisen Puzzle Dama. Created back when PuyoPuyo and Columns and a hundred other falling block Tetris-alike games were drowning players worldwide, it was re- and re-re and re-re-re-released under many different names: the Twinbee shooting series had a Puzzle Dama release, so did the Tokimeki dating sim series, and so did the Pop-n music series. Konami has a long history of flogging this concept, and now it's Castlevania's turn. And this time there are RPG elements stacked on top with level-ups and weapon-gets and fruits and gems and medals and shit stacked so high you might forget the game itself is pretty average.
![[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-TaisenDama.png]](http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-TaisenDama.png "http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-TaisenDama.png")
![[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-TokkaeDama.png]](http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-TokkaeDama.png "http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-TokkaeDama.png")
Left: Twinbee Puzzle Dama for PS1 (stolen from HC101)
Right: Tokkae Puzzle Dama arcade game (stolen from System16.com)
As you might expect, re-hashing this much material results in a game that is far less than the sum of its parts. It's hugely disappointing in fact, and shows all the hallmarks of a rushed product built from scavenged pieces.
![[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-3.png]](http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-3.png "http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-3.png")
It's exactly the same, but different.
It looks a lot like Capcom's Puzzle Fighter, but this series predates it.
The graphics are completely random. Some of them are glorious and more or less authentic, ripped from SotN and looking great. Others are decidedly less so - some screens have badly stippled images that look like they've gone through one or more too many colour reduction filters. When you start a match there's a too-long-to-fade-in segment where Alucard faces off against the opponent. Alucard is nicely rendered in high res, but the opponents are made of large pixels. Now, I love pixels, I literally wrote a book on pixels, but this sort of inconsistent treatment is jarring. Why is one of them high res, the other not?
![[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-2.png]](http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-2.png "http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-2.png")
Thankfully you can skip these slow-ass screens.
The music is comprised of short, looping tracks. They don't end well or segue into each other, they just fade out and start again, and tracks with long intros get annoying, 'cause the boring intro is a significant amount of the overall track time. While you're adjusting your stats between rounds you'll probably hear the menu music loop two or three times. It's perhaps expected on a downloaded game, but it's no less disappointing.
The controls are fiddly and I'm not sure I'll get used to them. There are several things that piss me off: swiping your finger down in a large motion drops the current crystal pair swiftly, but if you're even the tiniest bit sloppy with your vertical movement, you'll fling the falling crystals left or right so you can never be confident about their eventual destination (especially when you're under pressure!) If you do a quick short swipe, they drop immediately. Ultimately I feel this is a bit too random for my taste - I think I'd probably be happy if I could turn off the left/right slide while dropping with a long swipe. Otherwise, it's fine.
![[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-1.png]](http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-1.png "http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-1.png")
You navigate through the familiar castle, now with random battles.
Do you remember 90s-era games that would have the warning "Made with Macromedia" on the back of the box? That's what this feels like: it's basically a product cobbled together from scattered pieces and the whole never really gels.
Even the menus annoy, selecting some options with your little cursor bat shoots off a full two-second fireball, so you're just waiting while they show off their nice little fireball animation from one side of the screen to the other. The graphic style is essentially random as well, with hard-to-read fancy fonts and carefully rendered buttons mixed with what appear to be fillers, plain square buttons with a regular old font inside. Did they run out of time? Was the budget maxed out and placeholders left in?
The sliding of gems isn't smooth, the sounds rarely change, the voices don't seem to match the theme, the font's hard to read, etc etc etc. There's an absolute ton of content here, but it seems like they took an average game and heaped stuff on it again and again until, by sheer weight of stuff, it justified the price tag.
![[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-4.png]](http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-4.png "http://nfgworld.com/grafx/games/iphone-Castlevania-4.png")
There's just so much shit trying to distract you from the core game.
And it's so dull! I've played more than 20 rounds, gathered some unremarkable armour and a half dozen fruits, and I've never come close to losing a round. Map navigation is clunky and ugly too. Argh, it's just a thousand tiny cuts, really. No real show stoppers, but nothing really awesome, and a core game that's just average.
So ultimately I cannot recommend it. Perhaps if you're a puzzle-loving RPG fan, you might be happy, but I am not. It's the first time I feel I've wasted my money on an iPhone purchase.
Konami's touch dev blog
Euro iTunes link
US iTunes version
And so now we have an iPhone Castlevania. Unlike Java-based phones, which got a real platform Castlevania game, the iPhone game is a remake of Konami's old arcade game Taisen Puzzle Dama. Created back when PuyoPuyo and Columns and a hundred other falling block Tetris-alike games were drowning players worldwide, it was re- and re-re and re-re-re-released under many different names: the Twinbee shooting series had a Puzzle Dama release, so did the Tokimeki dating sim series, and so did the Pop-n music series. Konami has a long history of flogging this concept, and now it's Castlevania's turn. And this time there are RPG elements stacked on top with level-ups and weapon-gets and fruits and gems and medals and shit stacked so high you might forget the game itself is pretty average.
Left: Twinbee Puzzle Dama for PS1 (stolen from HC101)
Right: Tokkae Puzzle Dama arcade game (stolen from System16.com)
As you might expect, re-hashing this much material results in a game that is far less than the sum of its parts. It's hugely disappointing in fact, and shows all the hallmarks of a rushed product built from scavenged pieces.
It's exactly the same, but different.
It looks a lot like Capcom's Puzzle Fighter, but this series predates it.
The graphics are completely random. Some of them are glorious and more or less authentic, ripped from SotN and looking great. Others are decidedly less so - some screens have badly stippled images that look like they've gone through one or more too many colour reduction filters. When you start a match there's a too-long-to-fade-in segment where Alucard faces off against the opponent. Alucard is nicely rendered in high res, but the opponents are made of large pixels. Now, I love pixels, I literally wrote a book on pixels, but this sort of inconsistent treatment is jarring. Why is one of them high res, the other not?
Thankfully you can skip these slow-ass screens.
The music is comprised of short, looping tracks. They don't end well or segue into each other, they just fade out and start again, and tracks with long intros get annoying, 'cause the boring intro is a significant amount of the overall track time. While you're adjusting your stats between rounds you'll probably hear the menu music loop two or three times. It's perhaps expected on a downloaded game, but it's no less disappointing.
The controls are fiddly and I'm not sure I'll get used to them. There are several things that piss me off: swiping your finger down in a large motion drops the current crystal pair swiftly, but if you're even the tiniest bit sloppy with your vertical movement, you'll fling the falling crystals left or right so you can never be confident about their eventual destination (especially when you're under pressure!) If you do a quick short swipe, they drop immediately. Ultimately I feel this is a bit too random for my taste - I think I'd probably be happy if I could turn off the left/right slide while dropping with a long swipe. Otherwise, it's fine.
You navigate through the familiar castle, now with random battles.
Do you remember 90s-era games that would have the warning "Made with Macromedia" on the back of the box? That's what this feels like: it's basically a product cobbled together from scattered pieces and the whole never really gels.
Even the menus annoy, selecting some options with your little cursor bat shoots off a full two-second fireball, so you're just waiting while they show off their nice little fireball animation from one side of the screen to the other. The graphic style is essentially random as well, with hard-to-read fancy fonts and carefully rendered buttons mixed with what appear to be fillers, plain square buttons with a regular old font inside. Did they run out of time? Was the budget maxed out and placeholders left in?
The sliding of gems isn't smooth, the sounds rarely change, the voices don't seem to match the theme, the font's hard to read, etc etc etc. There's an absolute ton of content here, but it seems like they took an average game and heaped stuff on it again and again until, by sheer weight of stuff, it justified the price tag.
There's just so much shit trying to distract you from the core game.
And it's so dull! I've played more than 20 rounds, gathered some unremarkable armour and a half dozen fruits, and I've never come close to losing a round. Map navigation is clunky and ugly too. Argh, it's just a thousand tiny cuts, really. No real show stoppers, but nothing really awesome, and a core game that's just average.
So ultimately I cannot recommend it. Perhaps if you're a puzzle-loving RPG fan, you might be happy, but I am not. It's the first time I feel I've wasted my money on an iPhone purchase.
Konami's touch dev blog
Euro iTunes link
US iTunes version
BLEARGH
This post was edited on 2010-07-23, 16:38 by 