You know how a ninja game is supposed to look like? Just play Mark of the Ninja. The ninja are supposed to be sneaky assassins, not squadron slaying killing machines.

I played 1, 2, brotherhood, revelations and bit of 3. I gotta say the series started to bore me somwhere in the middle of 2. There was just too much stuff. Too much weaponary on someone who is called an assassin. I loved how they did it in the first part weaponwise and it was hard. When you want to use hidden blade in a fight you could instantly kill an enemy, but also you had to be quick and precise, because you couldn't block. In 2 they just turned your character from Kasanova into super killing machine in a day (yes, you get "trained" by Mario but by the time I got to training part I already killed hordes of soldiers using every tecnhique avaliable. In 1 we know that Altair was trained since he was a child to became what he came to be, but Ezio just puts the hood on and can just kill everybody even better than Altair. Also, story become very tiring with all those historical characters just thrown at you at the end of 2 and almost every one of them is an assassin.
3 finally made me decide to quit the series. Firstly, it was too demanding for my pc (but if a game's good, that shouldn't stop you, would it? you wait for a while and improve your pc, just like I did for witcher 2). Secondly, the story became very very boring (with all the assassins which are good guys and templars which are bad guys). 1 had very nice conspiracy concept and you knew which are your goals: kill couple of main dudes (because that's what assassins do) and in the end you get interesting ending with mysterious apple. And also assassin codex (like never use poison) was a very cool thing. In 2 they just said "**** the codex, kill howerver you like!".The gameplay also became horrible. You used to be an assassin, sneaking upon enemies, avoiding direct fight whenever possible, but now the game throws you from the very begining fighting a battle with bunch of soldiers side by side with some npcs. And even when you do fight alone, you're just too powerful, the fights are too easy, they don't have a feeling of deserved victrory.
All in all the series became just what Danny said in the article: a mass product, a golden goose. And everybody heard of that golden goose and came to take an egg (not "an" egg, but as much as they can carry) from it. They placed it on pedastel and demanding with their eager eyes "make more! make more!". But the goose is tired and should just be put down.

ps sorry for the long comment

I'm sick of people complaining about games being unplayable with mouse and keyboard. Buy the goddamn gamepad if you like playing action video games! There are pretty cheap ones which can be used with some sort of xbox gampad emulator (since most games insist on using xbox controllers). Keyboard and mouse are great for shooters, but for games like DMC, Darksiders, Batman and Castlevania gamepad is better and a must have.

As for Castlevania, I really enjoy playing it. Annoyance of the camera is overshadowed by great story, atmosphere and action. It's just what I would expect from Castlevania game. Very well designed beautiful levels (especialy vampire castle, both inside and outside). I'm big Castlevania fan and now I'm really happy it came on PC. Can't wait for LoS 2.

I might get too far with it, but I would even put it in front of DMC and Darksiders anytime. Far better atmosphere and story.

Replayed III and Vice City about a month ago. Good times :) And yes, radio stations brought back memories, and when you get a bit tired of them, you put your own music, and switch to keep it fresh.

:D Will somebody start that World War III already and wipe us all from the face of the earth... Just too much stupidity and absurdity :\

Why this sudden need to change voice actors in bunch of games (Batman, Metal Gear, Splinter Cell)? While new Batman voice (can't remember his name) and Keifer Sutherland sound ok for the characters they are portraying, I gotta say that this new voice doesn't suit Sam at all. There were just too many Splinter Cell games to drastically change his voice.. The voice and the goggles are his signatures, you just can't whipe them out

Too bad it won't be out on PC. And about QTEs: I don't see it as a problem. You already mash X and Y for strikes so why is a problem to mash the same buttons in a cool slow mo execution. And it seems more realistic that way. You know, you strike your enemy with a sword maybe and just maybe once and the next strike would be lethal.

But then again they could just put an execution animation without player intervention. I don't know. Does anyone have an idea how this game's gameplay should actually look like instead of this?

@tempertress When the time comes, they should hire you to anounce that the WW III has started. People would take the news much more... cheerfuly.

@Kickable I just exited the game. :) Thought I'll get it in couple of days but sometimes I love when I'm wrong. I gotta say that I like it. I'm not saying this to piss you off or something. It's just how I expected it to be. Damn fun and hilarious :D. Real refreshment. When you start sneaking up on someone and his movements... just priceless. I don't give a damn about shitty scores..

edit: and note about the camera. It's pretty much controlable with right analog stick, so I can't see what's the big deal

@Kickable @Srdjann Maybe. But read most of the comments here and you'll see that most people agree with my opinion. I'm just considering reasons reviewer named as minuses which produced such a bad score. Untamed camera and bit too much enemies is not enough to degrade score like that. Camera is pretty much a problem in bunch of action games, at least in older ones, and these games were fun despite that problem.