At Konami's Gamer's Nite NYC event, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow was clearly the star of the show. My impressions were that Konami, developer Mercury Steam and Kojima Productions are sending notice that in the right hands, the Belmont lineage is going to be just fine as a big-budget, highly cinematic action game experience. Everything I saw, heard and played on both the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions was extremely high quality and extremely worthy of the Castlevania name. Yes, the game riffs on Shadow of the Colossus, the God of War games and a few other titles, but there are also visual and stylistic influences from Guillermo del Toro and some familiar Kojima storytelling elements that make the game highly engrossing right from the opening scene.
