Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough "suck" puns in existence to properly illustrate how badly this game misses the mark.

Lords of Shadow 1 suffered from feeling like a God of War clone with poor platforming. Lords of Shadow 2, on the other hand, no longer feels like a clone. It just feels like a generic action game. It has a story you don’t care about, a mashy combat system, and generic enemies and locales. The only good thing about this game is its voice acting, but even Robert Carlyle can’t save this one.

Awkward combat, frustrating stealth sections, lack of originality and a hammy story are a few of the many nails in Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow 2's coffin.

Lords Of Shadow 2 waddles on for 20-odd hours and would’ve been twice the game if it was half the length, with the all the unwanted padding and repetition taken out. It’s such a shame because the first game, and MercurySteam, showed such promise. But this is a huge backwards step and we fear the undead charms of Castlevania may finally have been killed off once and for all.

A big budget project gone horribly wrong. The graphics and voice acting are top notch, but everything else is a complete wreck. Environments are boring and repetitive, combat is uninspired, platforming is a joke and the stealth elements are some of the worst ever conceived from a major publisher. It’s a dismal affair through and through and an absolute slog to finish.

Lords Of Shadow 2 is clunky, ugly and deeply misguided. It’s a game that sees the lord of the damned as a vehicle for rat-powered linear stealth, and that takes a future-Gothic London setting and then sets the action in tower blocks and sewers.