Castlevania: Lords of Shadow -- Initial Impression.

I'll be playing Castlevania: Lords of Shadow on the Xbox 360. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is intended as a reboot of the Castlevania series. Faced with ever diminishing returns on the stale handheld Symphony of the Night clones, the disastrous fighting game on the Wii, and unsuccessful attempts at console iterations of the series over the years Konami had little choice but to start over. Konami tasked Spanish developers Mercury Steam with development, with supervision by Kojima Productions. The game was of course published by Konami. Longtime series producer Koji Igarashi has had nothing to do with the game. From the time I've spent with the game thus far, which amounts to through the first boss, the game initially comes off as a rather drastic departure from the series. The game is a 3D action title that follows the standard path. You know the drill, light and heavy attacks, combos, jump, block, dodge rolls, sub-weapons, magic, and quick time events. The game really only feels like Castlevania in name only at this point. I'm using a chain whip, I'm controlling a Belmont, I'm fighting dark fantasy creatures somewhere in Eastern Europe sometime around 1,000 AD. Maybe the biggest reason it has yet to feel like Castlevania is the music. I haven't heard any track from the series thus far. It's all new. And it's all cinematic score in style. I can say the game sure does look great. The graphics are impressive, in a too shiny sort of way. The controls seem solid. I'm also struck by how segmented the game is in its structure as well as how cinematic they've gone with the game. Lots of camera pans to reveal this or that. My interest has definitely been piqued. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.