Castleween (PS2) - Level 24: The Mad Professor
0Happy Halloween!
I had previously made a point of putting up videos of European exclusives, or atleast platform specific examples of such a thing. Curiously, while this one did see the light of day in North America, atleast on Gamecube, on PlayStation 2 it never saw any 60Hz release outside of Japan. Sadly, despite the spooky inspired gimmick, Castleween (also known as Spirits & Spells in USA/CA) is a nothing platformer, and deserves to remain that way.
Made by Kalisto Entertainment, a developer known for, and only for, Nightmare Creatures, Castleween has a boatload of technical problems: It runs choppy, has horrendous collision detection, and some of the worst controls I've ever dealt with in a PlayStation 2 platformer. It neither looks very pretty, nor offers anything uniquely original or distinctive from its peers. The limited level design snaps you on a linear route, a la Crash Bandicoot, and yet suffers from bad signposting, as progression can be confusing and accessing platforms themselves are not made particularly clear either in some instances. It doesn't help that Castleween's camera often happens to have a mind of it's own, never properly tracking the action as appropriately as it should, but in some instances choosing angles that hide nearby threats, and stage hazards, leading to nothing but frustration. Controls similarly lack any sort of finese that platformers of the 128-bit generation became renowned for. There is no analogue movement, with no accelerating and decelerating speeds in movement, no 360 degree navigation, as we have been accustomed to since the days of Super Mario 64 either. Even button mapping is awkward for special abilities as you hold in one button for an extended spell (pardon the pun), let go, THEN press another button to activate, before pressing once more to deactivate. It doesn't sound complicated when laid out, step by step, but doesn't come-off intuitively enough during gameplay and ultimately feels CLUNKY. When the frame-rate erratically paces itself anywhere between 10 and 15 frames one second, then 20 to 25 the next, it plays just as sluggishly in action too.
I genuinely wish I had nice things to say about Castleween, moreso given my time on this comes directly after an equally disappointing playthrough of Shox, another PlayStation 2 oddity that has gone on to be lost to time. There is a reason why these games disappear into obscurity, not because they were ever truly misunderstood in their time and more in that they never were particularly memorable, or fantastic, releases in their hey-day, and that is a sad fate to befall on any computer game. There is an equally obscure Japanese localisation of Castleween, known as Mahō no Pumpkin: Anne to Greg no Daibōken, which has incredibly adorable artwork. So there is that going for it atleast. Yeah.
Alas, Castleween deserves to be forgotten, lost in attic, never to be played again.
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A LEGAL NOTICE:
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Any copyrighted footage I use is covered under fair use laws, or more specifically those listed under Section 30(1) of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1989 and under section 107 of US Copyright Act 1976. This video exists purely for the purpose of research and criticism. I do not make a profit from any uploaded content, nor do I intend to. Thank you for watching.
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