honestgamer's Castlevania: ReBirth (WW) review

Really good review. I give it an A+. Studying these revivals of old games can tell us so much about modern gaming design and how it is simultaneously better and worse than the old days.

Thanks, Zipp. When I was writing it, I was writing my third review in a single day and it didn't seem like it was really coming together the way that I wanted. I'm glad that it still managed to impress you (and maybe make you stop to contemplate something). Reading it now, I... don't hate it. It does cover the points I wanted to cover, at any rate. :-D

Seems like you went for a more descriptive, elaborate writing style than usual. I enjoyed reading it and you selected some cool images (e.g. eyeballs dropping from portals). One point I don't agree with is the implication that SOTN is better because it's more. 8 and 16-bit Castlevanias were far more exciting than the Castlevanias that follow the SOTN formula. There were no lulls in the action -- just 8-10 levels of action that build in intensity and difficulty until the final confrontation with Dracula. I would say that an hour and a half is the perfect length for this type of gameplay.

My intention wasn't to imply that SotN style is necessarily better for the franchise or in general. I perhaps could have fleshed that out a bit more, actually. My point was that the length that style permits is why the series is done that way now--because so many gamers seem to think that length is the primary indicator of quality--but that this game is a throwback to the short and intense days that helped to estabish the franchise. I don't want the review to turn too much into a history lesson, though, so I probably won't make any changes like that to the text itself.

As stated previously, the writing is eloquent, succinct, and covers everything one would need to know about this game.

I'm not sure about the main thesis, however. It's a valid point, but I also feel like it detracts from the rest of the review to a certain extent. If you take out the whole bit about why modern Castlevanias follow the SOTN, your review still works.

Jesus dude, did you even play this game? It's easy as fuck and you'd have to be absolutely terrible at games in general to even describe it as mildly challenging. The graphics are completely half-assed and total shit (mixing awful rendered looking crap with pixel art is about as lazy as it gets), and the game doesn't even support wide screen. The bosses are all lame and boring, the music sucks (the SNES and Genesis Castlevanias kick the shit out of it aurally as well as graphically), and even the level design is bland as fuck with not a single memorable set-piece or one-off like the old Castlevanias were full of.

Don't be a tool and give these lazy, garbage updates good scores. Anybody here who grew up with SNES and Genesis can tell you this game would have been laughed off the shelves if Konami had tried to pass it off as a Castlevania game back in the day.

I can't tell you how happy I am to see someone complaining about a review here who doesn't use the Cheetos as their avatar.

Also, this person has actually submitted a few reviews instead of making roughly twenty posts that average about five paragraphs about how he/she/it is not a fanboy while spouting a bunch of useless dribble and nonsense that seems to indicate he/she/it is a fanboy.

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Don't be a tool and give these lazy, garbage updates good scores. Anybody here who grew up with SNES and Genesis can tell you this game would have been laughed off the shelves if Konami had tried to pass it off as a Castlevania game back in the day.

Can't judge ReBirth, not having played it, but Super Castlevania IV was a lot more bearable than what came before it (and the admittedly tough as nails followup). Infinite continues played a big part in this though, especially for the final stages.

The Genesis game's difficulty rides a lot on the version, I suppose - I always thought it was relatively easy when I played European version The Next Generation on a Megadrive, but then I tried US version Bloodlines and I was seriously beaten to a bloody pulp. The fact that it runs just a tad faster (50 Hz vs 60 I guess?) is only the start of the nightmare.