Friday, November 20, 2020

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


D.I.S.: Dracula Invasion System

Yoke the iconic image of Death-the Grim Reaper-to your unholy desires

This figure is current in the collective imagination of humanity 

Deploy the undead

All the graveyards in the land are full of conscripts-and-saboteurs-to-be

Put ‘em to work: skeletons, zombies, ghosts, monsters manifesting out of some blood-soaked battlefield past, enraged nature spirits taking the form of outsized swamp critters,  

the Dracula Invasion System shows how to employ a rigorous metaphysical logos to call forth beasts of mythos

reshape the land into ruthless gauntlets of traps and strenuous stair-climbs and asshole-clenching leaps-over-deadly-voids

it’s not just about your people in the field

it’s about total dominance of the landscape

which you must make hallucinatory at key moments

suddenly the blighted towns and forests give way to Atlantean ruins

the glories of yore beguile, perhaps things are not so bad, it could even be the Golden Age come again-

-this is the mindfuck you put onto Enemy

with the Dracula Invasion System

as this or that Protagonist Aspirant stumbles dreamily through your custom trip

now sic the fish people and the dragons and loose the flooding waters

break the will-to-resist

with overwhelming illusions

of total battlespace dominance

With

D.I.S.

Dracula Invasion System

-November 2020