Wednesday, September 2, 2020

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #4: CASTLEVANIA III: DRACULA'S CURSE (1989)

 1.

The land of Castlevania is invaded by monsters and the undead. 

A man prays at a church, and then sets out to kill all the monsters and the undead making the land unsafe and rather stressful to dwell within, or so it would seem.

This determined man is named Trevor Belmont.
He is one ‘e’ away from being associated with a brand of bananas. 

Trevor Belmont walks everywhere.

Trevor is also pretty good at jumping. 

The dude clearly takes his Leg Days pretty fucking seriously. 

So, like, respect.

 

2.

Trevor kills monsters and the undead as he walks and jumps about, and tries to avoid falling into death pits and deep waters, ‘cause he can’t swim. 

His goal is to eventually make his way to the uppermost chambers of a sinister castle, and kill Dracula, who, apparently, is, like, the dude commanding all the monsters and the undead in the region, and so, I guess, Trevor’s overall strategy is to cut off the head of the command-and-control Dracula Invasion System.

Trevor kills Dracula, and shit settles down in the area. 

Makes sense. 

 

3.

Trevor’s got his whip, which he’s looking to upgrade into a ball-and-chain.

Once he gets the ball-and-chain, he doesn’t wield the whip anymore.

He’s also looking to pick up one other weapon, that is neither a whip nor a ball-and-chain.

He’s willing to pick up a throwing axe, a Molotov cocktail, a boomerang, a throwing dagger, a magical pocket watch that can freeze enemies, 

no firearms, no rocket launchers, no lasers. 

If he picks up one secondary weapon, like, that’s it.

If he comes across another weapon, he’s willing to pick it up, but he’s gonna toss the other one, if he’s got it. 

Now, if Trevor picks up a cross, that’s, like, apparently, some kind of a Mystical Nuke which will instantly obliterate all monsters and undead on the screen in a searing blast of light.

Also: the cross doesn’t take up a weapon slot, which is nice.  

Christianity is some kind of a tactical nuclear weapon in Trevor’s hands,  which is interesting to think about.

It would seem that Trevor was praying for nuclear weapons capacity at his church, at least in some kind of a mystical capacity, which is interesting to think about as well.


4.

As Trevor battles along, he occasionally will run into someone who asks to join him in his one man war against Dracula, thereby making it a two man war.

If Trevor agrees to a partnership, they will shake hands, and this new ally will mystically phase themselves into Trevor’s body, because it’s easier to just have one body walking to Dracula’s castle as opposed to two.

Or so it would seem. 

If Trevor decides that he needs a break he will mystically metamorphose into his partner, who takes up the slack until they get tired, and then they will mystically metamorphose back into Trevor. 

This sounds strange, but this is how Trevor operates.

If Trevor is already in a partnership, and he encounters yet another potential partner, then Trevor may take on a new partner BUT this means ditching the old partner, okay?

This sounds strange-because you would think that having as many people in your crew as possible would increase your odds of fucking up Dracula’s shit proper-but it would seem that Trevor prefers to work with only one partner at a time. 

This may be tied up with some kind of religious conservatism to do with monogamy.

Or, alternatively, it is equally possible that Trevor got burned in a previous polyamory arrangement thus pushing him into radical monogamy. 

The game is not explicit on this point.

However, all available evidence seems to indicate that Trevor is quite serious about only being partnered to one person at a time in his walking war against Dracula. 

And there’s probably something more to it, something in Trevor’s relationship history, something we would all be gratified to know, but since there’s no social media in the land of Castlevania, it’s difficult to ascertain Trevor’s background in this regard. 

But the absence of hard evidence is never a barrier to creative inference. 

Or so it would seem. 


5.

Overall,

Trevor only likes to carry two weapons at a time,

while being partnered to only one other person at a time,

this partnership being confined to a single, mystically variable body,

all in the pursuit of an obsessive war-to-the-death against Dracula and his whole fucking crew,

Therefore,

One Must Conclude,

that this Trevor Belmont guy?
He must be heavy into the Voluntary Simplicity Scene,

in his own way.


Or so it would seem. 


Which is interesting to think about.