Count Crackula: Castlevania Portrait of Ruin

It's only a matter of time before the Nintendo DS unseats Sony's PlayStation 2 as the bestselling game system in history. Nothing, not even the Nintendo Wii, is as universally salable as Nintendo's tiny two-screened sales phenomenon. Count my family down for three contributions after Christmas. My brother hops flights to Norway monthly to see his girlfriend -- he's a World War II wonk, so it was Panzer Tactics for him. My sister bounces between Wyoming and D.C. periodically to see her boyfriend, so we picked up New Super Mario Bros. for her. My dad's prepping for catheter ablation surgery this spring to remedy a recently developed case of atrial fibrillation. His new addiction? Brain Age 2 and "How many times can you subtract eight from 127 readysetgo!"

Me, I've been playing Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, which came out over a year ago. I've been stalled at 350% complete, i.e. Pretty Early On, for over half a year, and I'm happy to report that after half a dozen hours in a cushy chair pruning plates of Christmas cookies and tapping diligently at the d-pad, I've soldiered forward to just shy of 800% total. Flight-sticks and rudder pedals festooning a PC recently rigged with Nvidia's new triple-SLI 780i chipset and dual Geforce 8800 GTX cards, and all I can think to do is whip-snap through Yoricks and Fleamen and Killer Clowns and Mummy Men on a low-res three-inch-screen handheld. (Oh yeah, if you have any tips for beating the blast-from-the-past protagonist to get the whip-thingy toward game's end, let me know, because he's beating the stuffin' out of me, and I'm stumped.)

Konami's tried on more than one occasion to make Castlevania into a 3D game but they've never really succeeded. After Mario 64, it was like this big dare to classic franchises to follow suit. Some did, while others tried and fumbled. (I'm looking at you, Castlevania's Legacy of Darkness and Curse of Darkness.)

A classic 2D sidescroller, Portrait of Ruins only suffers from problems the series developed after Symphony of the Night, two of which I'll jot down here:

1. Thematically recycled levels. There's the desert level you beat here, then the same desert level with badder bad guys over there later on. Same with the theater-in-fetters schtick that crops up twice. I don't mind the same monsters resurfacing in more powerful configurations and only slightly different fashion wear, but recycling backgrounds in a game that's already pretty short just seems lazy. Besides, the theater level design was hatefully annoying; having to play through it twice feels sadistic.

2. All the come-back-later-ism. On a ledge at the tippy-top of Generic Scary Room are the Boots of Bounciness, which you can't reach until you find the spell that turns you into a fly-up-high bird of sorts. Float up, nab the boots, then pawn 'em at the in-game store, since hey, you can change into an owl for cryin' out loud -- who the heck needs spring-loaded galoshes? I'm not flatly opposed to "see it now, come back for it later" gameplay, but slogging through "Metrovania" style levels to find every last nook and cranny for what too often amounts to dime store tchotchkes is simply borrrrrr-ing.

Otherwise I love Portrait of Ruin. I can pick it up for a five minute dash between save points, or mull over end-boss strategies for hours. My biggest challenge? Playing until two or three in the morning without getting whopped by my wife with her fingers in her ears and trying to sleep a couple inches over.

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