Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Castlevania - The Bloodletting: Free Download and Short Review


Sticking with my Castlevania theme of yesterday, I decided to download and start playing Castlevania - The Bloodletting, a free fan creation for the PC with gamepad support so no Joy2Key for this guy.  The download link is at the bottom of this post.

To give a little history, Castlevania - The Bloodletting is a fan creation that has the retro feel from the original, Castlevania III, and Super Castlevania IV (why the hell did every Super Nintendo game require that the word Super be a part of the title?)  Originally, it was intended to be released on the Genesis 32X but never saw the light of day.  More than likely, that was due to the underwhelming sales of the 32X so the team working on it began working on Symphony of Night for the PSI (one of my favorites of the series).

Since there is nothing to really go on for the fan made game, it is more of an original title than anything.  The original 32X game had a "supposed" screen shot (which extensive research by yours truly never came to fruition (if you have said screen shot, shoot it on over to me at geekyclown@hotmail.com - I would love to take a look at it).  So, all they really did have is a sprite from the original game and that is what they went with.

Now, I can't give a long drawn out review since I just started the game last night and am only on level 2 of 8.  I can say that this is a beta and it does show in spots (a good reason that I am on level 2 and may stay on level 2).  There are some bugs.  For example, the staircase room in level 2 (think the long staircases with the annoying jumps in Super Castlevania IV) I kept getting stuck on the staircase and couldn't walk off of it.  It was a small glitch that I am sure will be cleaned up in future versions.

My other complaint is the backflip jumping technique is a pain to get the hang of.  If you are going to give this a try, I would recommend just practicing getting the hang of that first before even trying to conquer the game.

I am through bitching.  Now, on to what is good.  Let's start simple, it's free.  On top of that, it is a retro Castlevania title that plays like an old Castlevania title.  Graphically it is sound and the music is pretty good.  It is also pretty tough (medusa heads and long backflip jumps on the first level - that is a little sadistic).  

In the end, it is definitely worth a download and playing through.  I will be interested to see the polished version after they get rid of some of the small hiccups.  I will give an update if I am able to advance further.

Download it here - http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?qwamnyjxjeu 
or
Download it here - http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UW2FYWF3

No comments:

Post a Comment