Review: CV:SotN

(this review is for the benefit of my friend Steve)
Travel back with me, it's 1987 and there was this game. It was called Castlevania. A good friend of the family had a Nintendo Entertainment System and also had this game. (he pretty much had every game) Many hours and days were spent playing this game with a group of friends. Trading off the controller whenever someone died. I can still remember being the first one to beat the Grim Reaper, and what a huge accomplishment it was. We never did beat Dracula, he was just a little too much for our skills. But we played the game a ton anyway, we loved it. The game spawned a number of sequels, most of which lived up to our childhood nostalgia and general expectations of the time.

Fast forward to the more recent past. It's 1997 and Konami releases it's newest Castlevania game for the PlayStation. A good friend of mine from high school lived above me in the dorms and owned a PlayStation along with this game. No one played it much since it wasn't 3D and thus wasn't cool. I didn't care about that crap, I cared that it was Castlevania. From the moment I stormed the fabled castle of Dracula I knew I was going to enjoy this game. Every nuance, every movement, everything just resonated with me. It had everything. A cool main character, mostly cool secondary characters, tons of awesome monsters and enemies. Tons of secrets to find, plenty of items to collect and use. Are you getting the feeling that I like the game?

I played it for hours, all spent sitting on the floor or couch of my friend's dorm room. He and his roommate and some of our other friends would sit around for hours watching and helping me remember little hints about what I needed to be doing. They said they did it because they were bored, they certainly didn't like this "crappy 2D game". I'm pretty sure they could have found *something* else to do.

Anyway, after many toils and twists and turns I finally beat the game. What a great feeling, though it was a little bittersweet, as I knew there was nothing more to be accomplished except for exploiting glitches in the game.

But, the story doesn't end there. This is the only game that I can remember enjoying so much that I've gone back and beat it TWICE again, for no reason other than I just really enjoy running around the castle.

Okay, I didn't get into any specifics, like every good review should, but who cares about that. And I'm sure there were some negative points about the game, but I can't remember what they were. So I can't say everyone will love this game as much as me, but it's just about as good as gaming gets as far as I'm concerned.