Lords of Shadow is going to be a great game and, more importantly, a great Castlevania game. The MercurySteam and Kojima Productions collaboration offers everything you'd want from a modernized Castlevania adventure: platforming, puzzle solving, and, yes, even some backtracking and exploration, with a level of polish that catapults it all into a sublime experience.

At Konami's "Boot Camp" event, I was able to spend time with a near-final version of the game and play as much of it as I wanted to. This wasn't a cleverly cut demo reel, highlighting the game's best moments. This was the full game -- all I had to do was press the Start button. Immediately, I was drawn into the world through the powerful soundtrack, beautiful graphics and the spot-on narration.

As the game begins, the solemn protagonist approaches a rain-soaked town besieged by werebeasts. He's not as flamboyant as Kratos or Dante, but no less deadly. The game immediately throws you into battle against the beasts as tutorial on the basic mechanics of the game. It's no surprise that comparisons to God of War have been made: Gabriel's whip feels a lot like Kratos' Blades of Chaos. With Square, Triangle and X performing the same functions as in Sony's brawler, it's very easy to get a feel for the combat. (There's even a counterattack that works just like GoW's Golden Fleece.) But it's not just the combat that invites comparison to other games. The violence is no less graphic and gruesome than in God of War.