Castlevania: Land of Dracula's Army of Japanese Gamers

The last month, between bouts of being disappointed with Mafia II and frustrated with Halo: Reach, I've been indulging in unhealthily huge doses of Konami's latest (and possibly last) throwback Castlevania game, Harmony of Despair. As 'throwback' suggests, it resembles in all but console the 2D Dracula-slaying platformers of old, only this time with a new co-operative multiplayer component. Instead of venturing into hell on earth alone as Alucard, Soma, Jonathan or any of the other protagonists, Harmony of Despair throws 6 classic characters all into one adventure, thus allowing for fun if not chaotic 6-player online co-op. 

Of course, regardless of the quality of the game, the people who play this online must clearly have a taste for games from the good ol' times when you weren't given any tutorials, you were expected to put in a lot of hours to get anywhere and what we now consider 'hard' difficulty was standard. So basically, the Japanese. 

I'm not saying there were no American or British players online, but even the most hardcore of these simply did not compare to the Japanese - or sometimes Korean - players in skill and speed. My man Ruairidh (LordDoUrden) and I struggled for hours of pure grinding just to beat Dracula by the skin of our teeth on Normal, but I will never forget joining a game with four Japanese players on Hard difficulty and seeing them beat him without Ruairidh or me in under a minute. I've always had a slight apprehension of the Japs due to their utterly baffling culture, but seeing four guys casually pummel through what seemed impossible in such a short time was something I had to admire, despite it being something I'd undoubtedly call 'a bit sad' if it was a bunch of Americans or Brits. It put me in my place as a Western gamer; we call ourselves 'hardcore' with our silly FPS games and our easy RPGs, but at the end of the day we'll always be beaten effortlessly by the people who invented the corn-flavoured KitKat.

I'm thanking my stars Konami dumbed down Lords of Shadow for people like me...