Castlevania- Lords of Shadow is a great game but far from the best.
You play as Gabriel Belmont, whose bride to be has been murdered and the world is falling to pieces as evil creatures of various sorts take over the world. The story is good and keeps you interested even if it isn't always presented in the most likeable ways. The loading screen voice over is melodramatic and can be really annoying, but on the whole the voice acting is good and worth listening to.
Gameplay wise catlevania- Lords of Shadow is a big change for the series gone is the side scroll and in is the beautiful 3D world. Gabriel has one main weapon and 4 secondary weapons at his disposal. His main weapon has the standard direct attack and a ranged attack with various unlock able combos. The game is quite hard but not when the going gets to tough you can always change the difficulty.
Boss battles are up there with the best, fighting colossal ice giants, even bigger stone titans and a huge skulled bird of death, defiantly gets your blood pumping.
The world and presentation is very good. Levels are varied stopping the game from getting repetitive. Graphically it is stunning. Characters look well designed and all have a lot detail.
There are however a few flaws. Firstly and most frustratingly the player doesn't have control of the camera which makes exploration considerably harder. It also often distracts from the amazing environments. Secondly, the slight freeze when executing an enemy, the game is smooth most the time, but there is always a freeze when executing your foes. My final complaint is that often you have to return to earlier levels to unlock certain items and weapons upgrades. While this does encourage replay, I found it boring going back and doing levels, they just lack the excitement of the first time.
Castlevania- Lords of Shadow is a great game but doesn't make the grade compared to other games out there. So if you have a little money to spare and a lot of time. Then castlevania might be worth picking up!!!!