When I first saw a copy of Castlevania: Judgment on the shelves, I had a brief interlude of wistful memories of my boyhood, playing eight-bit Simon Belmont, taking on legions of ghouls and other assorted monsters in a flurry of whip-cracking, heart-finding action and adventure. I even began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the Wii would manage to do something commonly regarded as impossible and give me a taste of my childhood back.

Imagine my shock when all they managed to deliver was a cheesy fighting game.

The plot is downright baffling in its over-complexity, and requires that you have a basic understanding of pretty much the entire series in order to fully grasp it.  I’ll do my best to sum up here:  Galamoth, a recurring character from earlier Castlevania installments as well as something called “Kid Dracula”, is out to destroy his rival Dracula (oh, that makes sense, kind of) by sending something called the Time Reaper ten thousand years into the past to take care of Dracula while he was still just Kid Dracula.  Anyway, this doesn’t sit well with a time traveler from earlier games named Aeon, who uses his time travel capacities to gather up a whole legion of possible “heroes” to defeat the Time Reaper and keep the timeline as it is.  Thus, you’ll pick one of Aeon’s possibilities and start beating the hell out of everybody you come across to prove that you are sufficiently The Ham What Am enough to go and take out the Time Reaper.

Basically, this is Soul Calibur with a completely different set of licensed characters, and for the Wii.  I’ll tell you straight out, this is not the best kind of game for the Wii to actually put out.  Why?  Because my arm hurt like crazy after just one fight.  You walk in as Simon Belmont himself, and you KNOW what weapon Simon Belmont has.

Yeah, a WHIP; thus, you know exactly what you’re doing in order to fight your opponents—you’re pulling your arm back and snapping it forward almost relentlessly.  And your opponents aren’t shy about blocking, either—it might take you a few dozen hits in order to actually win a fight.  Oh, sure, you can use different controllers to take down some of the strain on your arm and shoulder, but then all you’re left with is just another fighter game with some different licensed characters and not a whole lot in the way of good storytelling.  Sure, there are some unlockables to be had here, and that’s always a plus, but considering the river of crap you have to Shawshank your way through in order to GET to that Zihuataneho of unlockable glee, you may well not be that interested.  And if you’re not sufficiently interested to play for the unlockables then there’s really not that much point to the entire game.

I give them due kudos for taking chances, and don’t want to discourage anyone from doing likewise.  Sadly, this time around, it just didn’t work.  So the verdict on Castlevania: Judgment is to stay at least one hundred feet away from it at all times unless you’re an absolute Castlevania addict who can’t get enough of these characters and is prepared to slog through a nightmare of a game to enjoy them fully.