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Konami Trademarks Harmony of Despair

duckroll

Member
This is amazing. I love Iga. I knew he would deliver. I've been waiting so long for an announcement of his new project and man, he never disappoints. This is going to be awesome!
 
If it's fake then why would people play a bad joke like that? I'm liking the title screen a lot. Especially Shanoa in Kojima's style.
 

LaneDS

Member
Shadow Red said:
If it's fake then why would people play a bad joke like that? I'm liking the title screen a lot. Especially Shanoa in Kojima's style.

Well I mean, so long as it has a nice title screen, right? Should be easy to forgive Gameboy Advance sprites scaled and filtered to HD resolutions!

The game looks like it runs on an engine based on Photoshop. Ugh.
 

farnham

Banned
i will buy this for XBLA if its true :D :D

LaneDS said:
Well I mean, so long as it has a nice title screen, right? Should be easy to forgive Gameboy Advance sprites scaled and filtered to HD resolutions!

The game looks like it runs on an engine based on Photoshop. Ugh.
they are basically reusing assets since Turbographix 16

nothing new
 
If this is real then... :lol Even when they're forced to work in HD they reuse their assets. But this time they went even FURTHER back on the scale. :lol

Princess Skittles said:
People still believe this is a possibility.

Cute.

People actually think it isn't possible to create 2D games with HD graphics despite them existing? "Cute" indeed.
 

Ridley327

Member
I'm still trying to comprehend the thought process behind this. This is just DoS's crappy Arrange Mode with actual backgrounds and more players. Who was clamoring for Konami to expand that?

This is Silent Hill Shooting levels of dumb.
 

LaneDS

Member
farnham said:
they are basically reusing assets since Turbographix 16

nothing new

It's not such an egregious offense when you're using those assets on a screen that has a resolution of 240x160 (or slightly higher on the DS). Reusing that stuff for an "HD" Castlevania would be hilarious(ly awful).
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Wait, im confused. This is BAD news for people? You DON'T like playing with your friends?

"FUCK! A GAME EXISTS! THIS SUCKS!"

Ridley327 said:
I'm still trying to comprehend the thought process behind this. This is just DoS's crappy Arrange Mode with actual backgrounds and more players. Who was clamoring for Konami to expand that?

This is Silent Hill Shooting levels of dumb.

We must be looking at different things. Boss rush with friends is basically the best thing any game could ever have, and this time, it's the entire game! :O
 
thetrin said:
Wait, im confused. This is BAD news for people? You DON'T like playing with your friends?

"FUCK! A GAME EXISTS! THIS SUCKS!"
I think people were expecting a new Metroidvania, not a multiplayer boss rush.

I mean, I'm glad you're happy, but IGA has not proven very competent outside of aping a very specific formula and I doubt this is going to go any better.
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
He hasn't really been competent at aping that formula, either.
 

LaneDS

Member
thetrin said:
Wait, im confused. This is BAD news for people? You DON'T like playing with your friends?

"FUCK! A GAME EXISTS! THIS SUCKS!"

Castlevania is not a game that has ever been screaming out for multiplayer. The portable entries that had multiplayer were (in my opinion, obviously) not very good and I can't say I know many people that tried it more than once or twice.

And I mean, c'mon, if those screens were still there... that's a super disappointing way to get 2D Castlevania in HD.

So yeah, bad news (if true!).
 

dallow_bg

nods at old men
2mn21s1.png


You remember that new Castlevania trademark you heard about and thought was for Nintendo DS? Well, it's not called Harmony of Despair for nothing.

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair (aka Castlevania HD) is an Xbox Live Arcade mashup featuring all of your favorite past Castlevania protagonists, made to work together in full Metroidvania fashion. We have obtained the first screenshots from this amazingly different kind of Castlevania game, as well as some vague information regarding gameplay. Hit the jump for the full story.

From what little we've seen of Castlevania HD, it's difficult to describe exactly what kind of Castlevania game this is most akin to. As you can tell from the screenshots, it's a 2D game using sprites instead of 3D polygons and looks very similar to the post-Symphony of the Night style Metroidvania GBA\DS games. You load into a game and can play with up to 6 friends on a single map, all at the same time. You're given a boss target that you must reach and destroy, helping your friends along the way to the same goal. Known playable characters at this point are Soma Cruz, Alucard, Jonathan Morris, Shanoa and Charlotte Aulin. We've only seen Soma, but we imagine each character will have it's own special abilities (think classes, like Team Fortress 2).

It drops you in with a wide camera angle where you're able to see most of the target area. It's not huge, so there wasn't much of an exploration factor. Clicking the right stick will change the viewing angle to the entire map (where you will see a teeny little Soma in the bottom left), or to the standard, close angle that we're all used to.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to see more than a couple minutes of play, but what we did see got us incredibly excited.


6 people being able to get together and play a giant game of party-Castlevania? I knew Konami was a smart company, but it's like they hooked up a machine to me at night while I'm sleeping...so they can record my dreams.

Here we go.
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
LaneDS said:
Castlevania is not a game that has ever been screaming out for multiplayer. The portable entries that had multiplayer were (in my opinion, obviously) not very good and I can't say I know many people that tried it more than once or twice.

And I mean, c'mon, if those screens were still there... that's a super disappointing way to get 2D Castlevania in HD.

So yeah, bad news (if true!).

To be honest, Uncharted wasn't screaming out for multiplayer either, and Uncharted 2's Deathmatch is pretty awesome.
 

Foffy

Banned
So does the fact the page was taken down give any legitamacy to the title?

After all, there have been leakers (or leaker, really) who's leaked stuff about a chunk of the more recent titles.

But I guess this is just a non-canon co-op gimmick title?
 

Ridley327

Member
thetrin said:
To be honest, Uncharted wasn't screaming out for multiplayer either, and Uncharted 2's Deathmatch is pretty awesome.

We've already had a taste of Castlevania's multiplayer, though. It's not very good.
 
thetrin said:
He hasn't really been competent at aping that formula, either.
To put it another way:

When he apes that formula we get:

Aria of Sorrow
Dawn of Sorrow
Harmony of Dissonance
Portrait of Ruin
Order of Ecclesia

When he doesn't ape that formula we get:

Lament of Innocence
Curse of Darkness
Judgement
Nanobreaker
 

LaneDS

Member
thetrin said:
To be honest, Uncharted wasn't screaming out for multiplayer either, and Uncharted 2's Deathmatch is pretty awesome.

It's not like Castlevania hasn't tried MP already. It has, and it's been entirely forgettable. Basing a game around that with scaled and filtered decade old 2D assets does not fill me with hope.

But I love Castlevania and will hold out hope that (a) it's not true and (b) it will surprise me by being a great game if it is legit.

Struct09 said:
Damn, I missed it :(

You missed nothing.

Or, just find someone that has pieced together any of the maps from previous Castlevania games into one giant image, and there you go, that's pretty much what we saw.
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Segata Sanshiro said:
To put it another way:

When he apes that formula we get:

Aria of Sorrow
Dawn of Sorrow
Harmony of Dissonance
Portrait of Ruin
Order of Ecclesia

When he doesn't ape that formula we get:

Lament of Innocence
Curse of Darkness
Judgement
Nanobreaker

Well, I enjoyed LoI, and Harmony kinda sucked. :S

But hey, my interest is always piqued by new things. Retreads rarely get my mojo working.

LaneDS said:
It's not like Castlevania hasn't tried MP already. It has, and it's been entirely forgettable. Basing a game around that with scaled and filtered decade old 2D assets does not fill me with hope.

But I love Castlevania and will hold out hope that (a) it's not true and (b) it will surprise me by being a great game if it is legit.

Well, I'm kinda hoping that this 6 player boss rush idea is meant to be some cash in on the Monster Hunter formula, as i suspect. If that's indeed true, it could be pretty awesome if they ape the right parts.
 
jett said:
With one douche posting a link to a website that requires me to have an account to read and the other not posting a source to check the screens I'm pretty fucking pissed right now.
The original link worked before without asking for authorization, they took down the page suddenly.
 

Instro

Member
jett said:
With one douche posting a link to a website that requires me to have an account to read and the other not posting a source to check the screens I'm pretty fucking pissed right now.

You dont need an account, the story was taken down from the site.
 

Dascu

Member
jett said:
With one guy posting a link to a website that requires me to have an account to read and the other not posting a source to check the screens I'm kind of fucking annoyed right now.
It looks exactly like the DS titles, just zoomed out. Reused character, enemy and boss sprites.
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
ShockingAlberto said:
Uncharted 2 did not use assets from Crash Bandicoot for Nathan Drake

Re-suing assets makes a game bad now? You probably shouldn't play any Capcom fighters with Morrigan in them, then.
 
Segata Sanshiro said:
To put it another way:

When he apes that formula we get:

Aria of Sorrow
Dawn of Sorrow
Harmony of Dissonance
Portrait of Ruin
Order of Ecclesia

When he doesn't ape that formula we get:

Lament of Innocence
Curse of Darkness
Judgement
Nanobreaker

Lament is a fine game.
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Freyjadour said:
Lament is a fine game.

Agreed. Lament was a perfectly serviceable game. I never got the hate.

ShockingAlberto said:
If MvC3 used the same Morrigan sprite, I agree, that speaks to intense laziness.

But the last 10 years of using Morrigan didn't?
 
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