Castlevania The Adventure Rebirth Review

If you’re walking into playing Castlevania Rebirth, rubbing your hands together gleefully at the thought of the first `Metroidvania` game on WiiWare, then prepare to be disappointed.

Rebirth isn’t an attempt by Konami to expand what has become a very convoluted franchise. Instead it’s an attempt to give the loyal, stalwart fans something they’ve been dreaming of for a very long time; a fresh, but thoroughly traditional, Castlevania adventure. Make that almost fresh, because as the title suggests, this Rebirth title is a remake of the original Gameboy title from 1989. After such a long time has passed, and having been given a visual tart up, the game certainly falls more into the category of freshly reanimated corpse, than stinky rotting cadaver.

It’s somewhat ironic that Konami have decided to update the age old Gameboy title and release it as a Rebirth title, given that this is the same year that they’ve announced they’re working on a new Castlevania game for current gen machines. The two games couldn’t be further apart from one another and from the moment you start playing Rebirth, the intended feeling of 8-Bit retro just washes over you.

The music sounds like it’s coming from a NES or Megadrive, the graphics and animations have that charming chunkiness and restricted colour palette, but there’s enough of a loving touch applied so that you know you aren’t playing some cheap, thrown together conversion. There’s even a rough edge to the Mode7 style visuals, confusing your brain as to whether you’d be playing this in 1986 or 1992. But, because everything feels so familiar, from the music to the reoccurring enemies from the series, Rebirth does exactly what Capcom managed so well with MegaMan 9. It’s a title that will make gamers of a certain age think they’re back in a much simpler time, reliving their long lost youth.

You won’t find any item inventory here. Nor any in-game map screen to navigate, or huge interlinked levels with shops and characters to interact with. You won’t be drawing any fancy symbols to invoke spells, swapping between characters or using rapiers, spears or chain-mail boots. This is Castlevania at its purest. We’re talking side scrolling, leather whipping (and we’re not talking any of that fancy `jiggling the pad to make the whip spin around` whipping either), holy water throwing, axe tossing, heart hoarding, Castlevania. The kind you just don’t see these days.

Of course all the positives can also be classed as Rebirth’s negatives. There are no save points to be seen and there are only limited lives with harsh restarts to the beginning of a level if you lose them all. The game is also short, taking only an hour of dedicated play from start to finish (although judging it on this is somewhat missing the point given that all the Rebirth games to date have been more about bite sized gaming).

Rebirth’s success in makeing it feel like an older style title that fell straight out of the 90’s, works so well that it may not hold the attention of those who have come to expect more after playing the 3D or DS titles. But for those longing for a more traditional Castlevania game, it’s a dream come true that will delight them no end.