Nerd Mentality

MIA Files - N64 Edition #2

Posted July 14th 2005 by J Edison Thomas.

If you've been lucky enough to play Resident Evil 4 (and if you haven't, this isn't going to spoil anything) then you probably remember a little stint in which you have to navigate through a castle's garden maze, hunted down by mutant dogs and beset on all sides by almost-confusing twists and turns. Ah yes, the garden maze. When it comes to sinister traps I can't think of anything I like better; life and death hang in the balance, and yet the hero treads on for hours trying to find the exit rather than simply plowing through a hedge. While playing through just such an obstacle in Resident Evil 4, I couldn't help but be reminded of a similar concept used much more effectively in one of my favorite games from the Nintendo 64 era, the oft-overlooked Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness.

For the ignorant, Legacy of Darkness is the sequel/prequel/sidestory to Castlevania 64. In the original Castlevania romp, Reinhardt Schneider embarks on a quest to destroy Dracula. I forget his reasoning, but I think it's simply that Dracula has resurrected and somebody's got to kill him, and since Reinhardt is a member of the Belmont family, he feels obligated. Legacy of Darkness starts with a story that takes place eight years previous, starring the man-beast (that means werewolf, it just sounds different and thus cooler) Cornell. He returns to his village after months of training to find that his little sister was kidnapped and brought to Dracula's chambers, where she was to be used as a sacrifice to bring the Dark Lord back to life. For obvious reasons Cornell is not cool with this, and so he sets off to break everyone's neck who had to do with the kidnapping until he finds his lost sister.

This game is excellent for many reasons, but a fair share of them have to do with the fact that Cornell is just so damn cool. He's got a bit of an Ocarina Link thing going on, plus, you know, he's a werewolf. As far as combat goes, he's pretty tough for a skinny guy. He can slash with his bare hands, and when Cornell punches he generates a wave of energy that fires off in the direction of his punch. His ace-in-the-hole, however, is that whereas some other man-beasts are stuck in man form due to some magical seal passed down through the generations, Cornell was able to tap into his powers of true werewolvism through long, hard training. So at any time Cornell can morph into a hulking (but graceful!) werewolf that can both dish out and take massive damage. Righteous.

Cornell also wears stylish Colonial-style shoes that click when he walks on stone surfaces. They make a double-click when he makes a jump, which always brings joy to my heart. This brings me to the sounds in the game. Usually I wouldn't even mention sound because it's just such a review-by-textbook thing to mention about a game, but I love the noises in this title. The crackle of skeleton's bones when you punch them into pieces, the rustle of the undead climbing out of the ground to attack, the squeak of a rusty gate... I think the reason I love them so much is that this game has a serious lack of variety in sound files. You'll hear all of these throughout every level of the game by every enemy they pertain to, and usually in scenarios that employ such quiet and unsettling music that they stand out every time you hear them. After you play this game you won't be able to hear a soundboard "gate opening" creak in any movie or television show without thinking of Castlevania.

Another reason Legacy of Darkness is awesome is that it's one of the few games that I've ever played that's actually scary. Remember the castle with a garden maze I touched on earlier? I dread that part of the game, even though it's also by far my favorite. Cornell finds himself in a villa that in the original Castlevania 64 is the home of many vampires, yet in Cornell's timeline it's the home of the well-to-do Oldrey family and it's only just then being taken over by demons. The master of the house was turned into a vampire by Dracula, and he loves the world of death so much that he decides to spread the joy to his wife and son. While snooping around following your sister's scent, Cornell gets caught up with the task of getting the son, Henry, the hell out of there and into the forest, by way of a back door at the end of a garden maze. And there's this huge Frankenstein-style lunatic who's decided that little Henry is not getting through the maze alive.

Now, it's one thing to be a bit jumpy because you know at any corner there could be a demon or zombie or whatnot, especially when you have the added stress of watching out for a completely helpless second party. That'll rack your nerves pretty well. It's an entirely different situation to know that there's a giant zombie on your tracks and that no matter how many times you take him down, he's going to get back up in a matter of seconds, rev up his chainsaw, and lumber back your way. Oh yeah, did I not mention the chainsaw earlier? He has a chainsaw. And by "lumber your way" what I really meant was "walk for a few steps and then charge faster than you or your little buddy can hope to run." To me, there is nothing scarier than leaving him for dead, trying to find your way through the maze for the few moments he's disabled, and then hearing that chainsaw start up in the distance. God I hate that guy.

Now, once you save Henry and beat the game, you can play as him, eight years later (in the game's storyline, you don't actually have to wait eight years to play as Henry). While Reinhardt and/or Carrie are off trying to destroy Dracula, Henry decides that he's going to save the local children from a fate he nearly faced himself, and so he runs off with a suit or armor and a gun (both courtesy of the Eastern Orthodox Church) and does just that. Wheras Cornell punches through his enemies with an energy blade, Henry blasts them in half with his trusty six-shooter. It's pretty cool. Well, finding kids isn't cool, but shooting vampires in the face is always cool.

When you finish the game with Henry, it unlocks the original adventures of Reinhardt and Carrie, which makes a total of four slightly-different takes on the same basic adventure, tied together into one (all together now) "legacy of darkness". Although Cornell and Reinhardt eclipse the others as far as their stories go, only Henry feels like a "bonus" quest, due to the fact that the other three adventures have fairly compelling stories to push the action along, and Henry's just has an intro scene. But since he's the only guy with a gun, he's still definitely worth playing through a few times. The other three are all awesome, and while some might say that it's lame that some of the levels overlap from Cornell's timeline to Reinhardt's, the game has so much replay due to the difference in characters and the slight tweaking of levels that it's really not an issue at all. In fact, I enjoy that it lets you see the different locales in the process of being swallowed up by demons. Very similar to Eternal Darkness' theme, you could say.

I also enjoy the "Cornell wuz here" concept when I play as Reinhardt, especially in the villa with the garden maze. I keep looking around for tags that read just that, but then I remember that there is no spray paint in Castlevania and get sad. But then I remember that there are vampires to kill, and I get happy again.

Legacy of Darkness was one of those games that I picked up solely based on the box art and the back-of-the-box rundown, just like I used to when I was a kid and didn't have the internet. I rented this game several times before buying it, and even then I'd have paid double the current asking price for it, which looks to be around $15. It's a little harder to find than the original Castlevania 64, but the improved control, camera, and graphics, (and obviously the two extra adventures) are definitely worth searching for, worth killing for, worth going to Hell for. Amen.

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