Dark Castle Review - Is it a shame to like this game?Dark Castle for the Sega Mega Drive. I'll tell you one thing, this was a game I dreaded to play. When I saw the AVGN review, I could tell by looking at the game play it sucked, and sucked hard for that matter. Yet, I don't know what's wrong with me, but I feel compelled to complete really terrible games. Dr. Jeykll and My Hyde, Back to the Future, games that seemed unbearable I feel must be completed. Sometimes, it isn't worth the time and effort (GhostBuster for the NES....*shivers*), and I hardly get anything from it. This is one of those games. The game originated from 1986 when it was on Macintosh by Silicon Beach Software. From what I've heard, the game was highly credited for it's amazing music, smooth graphics and animations, and compelling and unique controls. Then there were some ports here and there, one coming to the Sega Mega Drive, and what do you know, it was said to be not only the worst port of the series, but one of the worst games ever created. Let's have a look, shall we?
The story is you are Duncan (sometimes it's "Prince Duncan", but I find that hard to believe), and you accedently volunteered to fight against the Black Knight, who has....killed a lot of chickens.....or drained the local lake to make coffee....or for that matter, is drinking too much coffee....or wants to over rule the entire world with.....his stuff....Whatever reason, it doesn't say, you are there to stop him. And out of all the hero's that went to defeat the Black Knight, of all the guys that can take a punch or can survive the onslaught of mice and bats gently getting to your face, you can to be the one to fight him. Duncan is most probably the weakest hero in video gaming history until proven otherwise. The proof is everywhere. Let me start the on-going list...
If you jump on some stairs, even if that stair is just one up from the ground, you'll tumble down the stairs and die instantly (which for the record, you'll normally be falling down a flight of 8 steps, enough to knock someone out in unlucky, but not kill unless if you land your head on a rock). If you so even touch anything classed as an enemy, you'll die. The very thought of fear will send him into a stressed state, and if they come so close and to about to touch him, he'll die from a double heart attack or something. The idea that the bats and mice have the plauge on them, and if they bite you, you'll get the plauge and die. But the plauge doesn't cause you to die in an instant! Is that's the case, why aren't the bats and mice dead already? Maybe Duncan is super allergic or something. Fall in water, you die. Fall from too great a height, you die. Walk into some brooms, you die. Touch some rocks on the ceiling, you die. Get hit by boulders, you die....oh wait, that's logical.
Let's continue with the actual levels, shall we? Much like in Mega Man, you can select what level you can go through. There are two doors with question marks on top of them to the left, in the middle there is one with BK on top, and to the right there is one with a shield on top. However, unlike Mega Man, it isn't very clear what doors they do, so let me help. The far left door is completely useless. It's call the Trouble Door. Enter it to make your way to the torture chamber, where there, you can collect a key to unlock the door you just entered to return to the level select room. Since you'll be seeing the torture chamber as many times you will be swearing in this game, and the only use of the torture chamber is to get out of there, the far right door is completely useless (unless you want to train your aim, I guess...).
The question mark door to the left of the BK room is known as the Fire Ball level. Go through all these levels and you'll get to use a Fire Ball. Pretty cool, eh? Well, it's not cool, it's hot! Readers these days....Oh, right, what I meant to say was the Fire Ball is pretty useless. First off, you attack with these rocks you find on the floor. These rocks can instant kill anything, apart from the Gargoyle in the BK room. When you throw a rock, one is deducted from yout total (you can have a max of 89, why not 99, I do not know). With the Fire Ball, you lose one rock from your total when you use it, it can instant kill anything you throw it at (including the Gargoyle), and it can be supplied with picking up rocks. It's not a Fire Ball, but more like "Setting your Rocks on Fire". Now, it is true the Gargoyle will be your death unless you can kill it with the Fire Ball, but the truth is, you don't need it when you have the shield. Yep, the shield is the best thing in this game....Wait....what's that? Hand writing? Oh yeah, the Nerd mentioned this in his review, but I must bring this up. What is Saddam doing in a dark castle, writing "Saddam was here" and "Gamers rule!"? I have a feeling someone is trying to frame him somehow, and who can blame him?
Anyway, the far right door is the Shield Room. Completing this level will get you the Awesome Shield of Pwnage. I was pleased to have done this, feeling real satisfaction when getting the shield, with only one problem. The guy can't handle stairs, mice, bats or water without so much as dying, yet he can handle a bolt of lightning being struck on a metal shield....wtf....? Sure, the shield is magical in which it won't hurt Duncan, but I would have thought he would get a tripple heart attack for the mere though of being so close to getting stuck by lightning. Anyway, this shield is awesome. You can no longer duck when you get this item, but why duck when you can become invincible
Ov when ever you feel like it for as long as you like? This can allow you to dodge the Gargoyal's attack by using the shield, and he'll just fly right past you. This works with anything else so long as you can stand still.
The final room is the Black Knight's Door. These will take you to the Black Knight himself. The Gargoyal can appear at random to take hold of you and drop you to the torture chamber (unless you have the Fire Ball....ahem, "Setting your Rocks on Fire" or shield). When you get there to the man himself, it's finally true how much he needs to be defeated. He's drinking all the supply of coffee (I would say ale, but then that would make sense), and you need to defeat him to save all the coffe in the world. He also throws the mugs he drank from at you. This is a very funny sence. I doubt he even knows yout there, he's just going "Yuck, too sweet" *throws mug* "Ug, too strong" "throws mug* "....just right! *sips for a long time, then throws mug* "I hate this mug!"
Ok, those are the levels, lets more onto the game itself, like graphics and music and stuff like that. The graphics....are just terrible. One could mistaken this game for a NES or Master System game, they resemble 8-bit graphics. Not only that, but they are very muddy, washed over blury grapics, making it the thin line between Atari 2600 graphics and the NES/Master System graphics. If there was a system inbetween those those, then it would have graphics like this.
The music is very cliche. It's that sterotypical Dracula music that loops over and over and over. I kinda just drown it out after some time, but what I can't drown out it the annoying as hell sound effects. Those mutants go "nynyny" over and over unless you kill them, and they are just soooooo annoying. WHy create an enemy that goes "nynyny" and have several in a room? Honestly. The bats....I can't even remember how annoying they were, but the most annoying sound effects of them all are the noises you make for tripping over every little thing, and you;ll be doing it a lot.....and I mean a lot. The only thing I can credit the sound effects is that it sounds very clear, and not like they were talking through a fan, which is fairly rare in a Mega Drive game as far as I'm concerned.
Now lets move onto what most people complain about in this game: The controls *Cliche Dracula music plays* Damn it! You are going off, music! *selects the music and turns it off, and waits a minute as the note it was cut at fades away* Damn that's annoying. Now, believe it or not, I think the controls made the game what it is *arrow flashing over me with the words "Crazy" and "Your Serious?" interchanging*. They are unique and make you interact with the game more There's a jump for certain situations you must use like in real life. People are generally annoyed with these controls as it doesn't follow the linear standard platformer controls. There are three jumps, yes, three.
There's the Standing-Still Jump, which is needed to grab onto things such as ledges and rope. There is the Running Jump, which will make you move faster than walking and cover a larger area when jumping. And finally, there is the Kinda-Useless-But-Can-Be-Kinda-Useful-At-Rare-Times Jump (or KUBCBKUARTJ for short =D), which is executed when pressing down and the jump button. This will make you hop a little bit, useful for when you need to, say jump off a cliff, but not by a lot. Kinda like, you know, just walking off a cliff. The jumo doesn't even affect how you fall, it's the same as falling off a cliff. Some people will find a use for the KUBCBKUARTJ, but not me.
The annoying thing is that you trip over pretty much everything. If it's one pixal high, and you walk over it without juming, you'll fall flat on your face (and suprisingly, not die....), if you fall by just a few pixles, you'll spins around for a stupid length of time before regaining your senses. Then there is the throwing the rocks....I quite like this idea, actually. You "rotate" your arm around with the directional pad, and then throw a rock in that direction. This allows you to be more precise with your aim and I even enjoy the frantic times of rotating my arm quickly when a bat in near by, and enjoy the near-death experience that Duncan is feeling. By the way, you know those suits of armour that hold guns that fire lighning bolts? Yep, I don't know what they are either. FYI, I don't quite get what people are getting to with the hole ducking situation. "Oh yeah, the 'logical Up and B to duck thing'". Well, let me blow your mind, you don't need to press Up and B to hold your duck, you just need to press and hold the B button. Tap it for a brief duck.
Overall, I give it a 6.8/10. It's quite a fun game, actually. I enjoyed it partly, but was not to pleased when I completed the game and just got a weak "Congratulations" sign. What I don't understand is that the Macintosh version gets a better reputation than the Mega Drive version. And I played the original as well and the Sega Mega Drive port. From what I can tell, the core game is very much the same (maybe a bit more forgiving on the Macintosh version), yet the Mega Drive port gets a terrible rap. Key word here is
at the time. Back then, the graphics for a game like that were amazing, they were sharp, smooth and pleasing to the eye. The music was good, and the control system was unique. However, the Mega Drive was just that. It has terrible graphics for a system that could produce twice the bits, jerky animations, unforgiving (well, more unforgiving) controls, it felt slow and clunky, and was in no means used as an improved version, but rather just a coloured version which might have slowed down the game (....maybe, don't look at me....I don't know what causes jerky lag in cart games like these). I might like this game, but that doesn't mean it's awesome. It sucks as hard as the rocks you throw in the game. Call it another one of my guilty pleasures.
None the less, once you get into this game, and get used to the controls a little bit, you'll see why this was,
was, credited for being different before it was ruined by the port you are playing, which I told you to play.....which kinda conflicts with what I said about you playing this game, because it's good, but it's bad.....it's a mixed bag. If you can play the original, do so. However, if you want to say "I beat Dark Castle on the Sega Genesis/MegaDrive" like I did, then go ahead and get that Black Knight!
Graphics
3 Sound
2 Addictive
7 Depth
4 Story
1 Difficulty
7
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