Staying up late the night before a test is the mistake of students the world over. You know that you shouldn't stay up late cramming or partying with friends and yet you do it anyway, waking up for that exam exhausted from the night's activities. Tiredness prevents you from acing the test, eking out a passing grade instead. Castlevania Judgment is the same situation, giving us a passable fighting game that should be much more. Conventional wisdom would assert the inability to craft an in-depth fighting game on Wii; here is proof-in-point, a game that tries hard with what limited resources it's given and yet fails to deliver the precise, responsive controls so fundamental to any fighter. Knowing full well that such control is unlikely on Wii, Castlevania Judgment tries anyway and the results are barely passable.

Heroes and enemies from the scores of Castlevania games released over the last two decades come together to duke it out in this 3D action-fighter. Playing as a few of the characters in the game's main story mode serves up quite a big chunk of gameplay, but Castlevania Judgment generously packs in several other modes that add serious value. Castle mode has you clearing floors in Dracula's castle one-by-one in order to reach the Count himself. Like Story mode, you advance by engaging enemies in head-to-head battles, earning new items with which to customize your characters. Survival and Arcade modes let you combat the computer in endless and one-off matches, respectively. Lastly, multiplayer--both versus and online via Nintendo WiFi Connection--rounds the game out.

None of this is what's wrong with Castlevania Judgment; in fact, it offers an incredible amount of content and variety. Both Story and Castle modes encourage you to invest time progressing through a collection of stages and floors, acquiring new weapons and customizing your character. There's an enormous number of items and sub-weapons to unlock, which naturally give the game depth and incentive for extended play. As with every game bearing the Castlevania name, you won't be complaining of a lack of value.

That's because you'll be criticizing the controls, instead. Castlevania Judgment mistakenly chose the Wii as its platform to its own detriment. Motion controls do work well for a fighting game of this sort where precision and responsiveness are important. Issuing attacks with waves of the Wii Remote may sound entertaining, but it's hardly conducive to a sophisticated gaming experience. Particularly here when there are so many nuances and great variety in moves, the controls falter. Watching the game devolve into a motion-controlled mess is disappointing, even frustrating.

Basic actions are easy enough to execute using the default controls. Normal attacks can be done with a shake of the Wii Remote, with continuous shaking, triggering a combo. Using a sub-weapon takes a quick press of the A button. Both normal and sub-weapon attacks can be charged for additional damage too. There are also finishing moves, super finishers, block breaking attack, evasive rolls, and jump attacks. Each type of attack demands a certain amount of button pressing and control wiggling. The controls are grossly unintuitive, demanding too many buttons to be pressed for simple maneuvers. Motion controls make things worse. Occasionally, light shakes of the Wii Remote fail to register an attack, leaving you vulnerable to enemy attack as you fumble with the controls.