Alright, it's been a while but we're back again to cover the PC Gaming Show, the Xbox Showcase and the Ubisoft Forward. After this, that's it, that's all, we're done here. PC Gaming Show The Most Questionable Stuff 3. Road to Vostok (???) Choosing to look down on a game for overt familiarity from the word ‘go’, even if all it has done at this point is have its existence announced to the world, is not inherently an act to be proud of. Much of gaming iterates and builds upon what came before, much of the medium as it stands (for good or ill) exists because someone looked at a past work and were inspired to develop their own take on the material. How many excellent games would cease to be if people decided that “it’s just a clone of X” was a valid argument in itself? I establish this now to make it clear that I do not roll my eyes at Road to Vostok for taking the form of a sparsely-populated shooter set in a post-apocalyptic wilderness area… but rather because it loo
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! Complicated feelings abound for me when I think of my experiences with the original Castlevania . I find it enticing and alluring in its presentation. Its mechanics are at the bedrock of the action-platformer genre, deftly riding the line between challenging and accessible. The monster designs, the hero's design, the sound work, the colour scheme - all of it excels at what it sets out to do. BUT ! I'm very much in the camp of players who don't enjoy being deliberately screwed over by infuriating design decisions in otherwise excellent games. And it saddens me to declare Castlevania as one such game - it really does tread into the realm of unfair one too many times for my liking, despite the surrounding experience being so promising. For the uninitiated: Castlevania puts you into the boots of Simon Belmont, a monster killer who ventures into Dracula's castle to face off against the infamous vampire himself. Armed with only a whip (albeit on