Heavenly Sword Comments by Tom Bramwell

DAMAGE.INC.
30-Jul-07 17:17:39

Its had a very troubled development this one, bad sign. this is not going to sell the PS3 no way.
ignore poster

Who the fuck are you? Yoda?

Put up a link, or shut up. LOL

Both Lair and HS were made backwards from day 3 of development. Thats the fundemantal problem. This lead to a "lateral sixaxis" problem with the main GPU. A 360s GPU is spherically round and the PS3s is mostly square so a load of teraflops can get gnarled up in the "bloody bottleneck" (barney 7.8) which is a problem.
Hope this helps.

Im hearing alot of people saying that the game is choppy but i have not seen this issue, is this more of a tv refresh issue and have u got ur ps3 ticked to output 720p

Unbelieveable. Sony release an old and extemely short demo and lo and behold the internet 'experts' (that's most of you who posted here) somehow know the finished game is 'shite'.

Tossers.

The game looks cool and i bet all of u have played it more than 10 times, yes it may be short but it is a demo. What more do u people want do u not remember the days when u had to buy a £5 MAG to get a demo?

>"That said, examples of games that got away with them include Tomb Raider Anniversary and God of War (9/10s both), "

SHENMUE SHENMUE SHENMUE.

Shenmue did it first (dragon's lair doesn't count, as it was a quick-time game) and shenmue 2 did it best. Respect the mue.

As for this. I forsee a 7-8. Production seems high, but the gameplay may be a bit simple.
Still more promising than KZ.

But I'm a sucker for action-adventure involving swords. So I've got a keen eye on this baby.

"Its had a very troubled development this one, bad sign"

Yes, agreed here. I've met a lot of people that work/worked there and they bang on about design (especially lead) being pants. Not too easy to create a great game when one or two people let it down is it? God knows its hard enough when everything goes to plan :/

In some ways demos can can be really unhelpful. You'd feel a bit silly if you missed out on the next GoW/NG on the back of a easy 5 minute demo...but you should equally feel silly if you ignore the shortness and easiness of the demo and end up buying a game which is short and easy.

Unbelieveable. Sony release an old and extemely short demo and lo and behold the internet 'experts' (that's most of you who posted here) somehow know the finished game is 'shite'.

And yet you somehow know the finished game will be amazing. Wow.

"I've met a lot of people that work/worked there and they bang on about design (especially lead) being pants."

If that were a measure of quality there wouldn't be any good products...

Headbog, your name is spot on. Congratulations at least on getting one thing right!

Learn the principles of the combat and the demo opens up. Looking good, to me.

"And yet you somehow know the finished game will be amazing. Wow."

Does he say so?!

Eighthours said - And yet you somehow know the finished game will be amazing. Wow.

What's amazing are your powers of speaking bullshit. Pray tell me where I said that?

well, havent played it. Nor will i be anytime soon as i dont own a PS3. Still, from the screenshots, it looks lovely. Will it be shallow? Now you people tell me and if i should be envious :)

Back to playing Paper Mario again :D

That was cold Matsuo isn't Paper Mario STILL not launched in Europe?

I cannot find the demo in the Playstation Store, and I have the suspicion that this is because I am in Germany. Can anyone confirm this? Am I being forced to wait for a "localized" version of the demo? Is Sony really such a retarded company?

I thought it'd be Germany's censoring stuff, I mean a guy's cojones gets.... i can't even type it, infact did I even see a german dialogue option in the demo? o_O

Liked the demo although very short. Gfx were very good and i didnt notice any slow down (where did people notice it?).
Agree that there should be a jump button but i guess i'll get used to that.
Shame about no 1080p upscale, but still looks good in 720p imo.
Not really my type of game but may give it a look when released as there'll probably be nothing else available. Thank god for r6v online :)

Is Deutsch German?

WOW I was looking at the combo list thinking I did it all and then I pressed right and BAM there's the air combo's.

Shame she hasn't got the nuts cruncher move would have been cool to pull off.

@Canadian_Mike

"Put up a link, or shut up"

I also heard HS had dev problems. If people know this from knowing those that have worked on it, how exactly are they going to post a link to that, smartarse?

yellowtruck: This is not Sudeki :) That's quite easy to see from playing the demo.

I swear all these people whining about choppy framerate and tearing were playing a different demo. Heck, I barely noticed any slowdown. The combat did seem a bit button-mash, but I'll confess I didn't really try combos. Plus it was apparently the first level, excluding tutorial... I mean my god, you'd have to hope they give you more moves and such after the first level?!

Also - Xbots hiding as "concerned PS3 wannabes" and saying "ooh, it looked so good but now im worried, PS3 holiday looks crap"... We see through you. Go back to Gears and cry yourselves to sleep, stop clogging our threads up.

You're camoflauge is about as obvious as Snake's barrell in MGS4 - while he's moving.

I like Vandrius, it seems that if anyone has any problem with the game after they played the demo, they're a XBox fanboy.

Just because you're a Sony Robot who's been programmed to love every single game and has been told never to criticise anything they do, it doesn't mean that those of us who do find certain faults have our tongues up Big Billy's bottom.

:)

My main problem with the Heavenly Sword demo is that it doesn't really showcase anything (beyond HD and a few nice graphical effects) that hasn't been done on PS2. Or, more specifically, God of War II.

Personally, I think the tagline "Goddess of War" is bang-on.

After listening to a lot of gushing coverage of this game from the press in previous months/years, responses to both the demo and the full level many sites have had access to indicate a general sense of disappointment.

I rather hope it turns out to be an excellent game, but my experience with demos this close to release is that you are 99% playing the finished game (warts n all).

I'll probably buy this on day one because, quite frankly, there is sod all to play on PS3 right now (if you're a 360 owner, anyway).

What's amazing are your powers of speaking bullshit. Pray tell me where I said that?

You implied it by automatically dismissing any negative impressions of the game. Of course, that's also Sony Zealot Defence #1.

@Eighthours

"You implied it by automatically dismissing any negative impressions of the game."

I hate to jump in on this playground scrap, but my debate-diversion-technique allergy is flaring up again.

As far as I could tell, all Goodfella implied was that you were jumping to conclusions without really having enough info to hand. He could have said exactly the same thing if you had said HS was going to be great (actually, I think there is baggage on all sides, but that doesn't change you putting words into someone elses mouth).

/pulls head back into hole

"You implied it by automatically dismissing any negative impressions of the game. Of course, that's also Sony Zealot Defence #1."

I'm, like, so totally impressed by your debating skills...

So let me get this straight
you check a five min demo and you have it crusified it how does that make sense?

i wonder how brilliant it would be if it were on 360 or if you fought with the Wiimote

i dont know if i m gonna buy it or not but i sure aint gonna decide over a demo
that hasnt happened since DMC1 but all the negative fuss and press from a the first chip on ps3 to the last pixel on a pre-build demo is getting rediculous.

i dont have to be a sony fan to say what i see and the demo simply needs work lots of it but for a demo its fine till we see the final game to judge for sure
till then any of you that are blindly against sony neednt waste your beautiful nails on the keyboard to say how much you hate everything with its brand on.

@morriss

I know you're a PS3 hater, and fyi your take is the suck.

For PS3 owners who like good fighting games read this take on HS:
http://www.gamesradar.com/gb/ps3/game/ne...

"That was our first reaction, too, when we played the same demo during E3 - until we sat down with the game's producer, Kyle Shubel, and he told us what we were doing wrong."

So, let me get this straight Hansi - in order to enjoy the game you have to sit down and have the game's producer explain to you how to play it?

0_0

To be honest, if button mashing effectively means you don't play the game in the way that was intended they should have made it so you die if you button mash just like NG. This sounds like its fundamentally broken.

Yeah Hansi. I'm a PS3 hater, which is why I spent close to £500 on one...

I'm not entirely impressed with the machine so far, that's a statement. It doesn't mean I hate it though.

Oh, and all comments are welcome on the First Impressions, both positive and negative. However, you don't seem to have read it, as I did say at the end I had fun playing it.

:)

@ lambtron

Are you really an idiot or just pretending to be one?

/hint: with the full game a tutorial and/or manual will be included

I'm not an idiot Les but thanks for being so aggressive. I realise you have to justify spending nearly 500 quid on a piece of hardware and so far there hasn't been much to make that justification - no need to take it out on me. Before you get too narky check my game collection and see I own resistance, NG Gaiden and Motorstorm. But I don't understand this attitude that Sony games are beyond criticism is all.

The game itself will probably be an ok laugh. not a classic this early in the machines life cycle but certainly a reasonably strong early title.

What I find more interesting is that PS3 is so starved of releases that a demo gets 2 page coverage plus this many comments.

@Hansi320

Thats a good article. I didn't even know aboutb the aftertouch feature.


@lambtron

"So, let me get this straight Hansi - in order to enjoy the game you have to sit down and have the game's producer explain to you how to play it?"

Dude, its not a competition. If reading that link means you can play the demo again again and have more fun doing so, thats a good thing right? There is a whole indsutry based on publishing books that tell people how the play specific games. People buy them because they in many cases they make playing the game more fun.

Sure we can write HS off because all of its features weren't immediately apparant to a gamer just storming in without reading any instructions, but that sort of smacks of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

@Les

I second lambtron. You need to cool down a bit mate.

@ Kanga - Well if there is hidden depth then that is excellent news but it would have been best if perhaps that was a bit more obvious. Also what I was trying to say was that generally if button mashing is not the point of the game it would have perhaps been more logical to make it so that was not a viable way of playing the game. Although I accept this might have made it too hardcore for the mass market.

Hmm I guess time will tell :).

@ lamtron

‘Kay, my reaction was a bit strong but I stand by it that your comment wasn’t that clever. Mistook you for a fanboy and have given up on reasoning with them (even I've got my limits).

“But I don't understand this attitude that Sony games are beyond criticism is all.”

They’re not. No game is.

@morriss

Ok, that's fair enough. I too have issues with my PS3, but for what I use it for it's been worth every penny (actually norwegian krone). There are no really impressive games out yet, the only game I play right now is Super Stardust HD, this game is really addictive. I'm not so much into FPS or sports.

The HS demo suffers a bit from screen-tearing, specially in the opening platform, also I have some sound issue on the HS demo wich applies only when the PS3 is connected to the reciever through optical connection. These issues have been taken care of by the devs already, this according to the ninjatheory forums -> http://www.ninjatheory.com/forums/showth...

Regarding your first impressions I get the feel that you say something positive about HS so you can make your negative points more valid. Hm. Could be just me but that's the feeling I get after reading it.

edit: I read your "Heavenly Sword – First Impressions" again and it's not as negative as I thought it to be at first.

"Also what I was trying to say was that generally if button mashing is not the point of the game it would have perhaps been more logical to make it so that was not a viable way of playing the game"

I think the 3-5 minute demo is not enough to tell you wether it is a viable way to play the game. On my first play-through I button mashed and reached the end with limited health. Without a health booster I probably wouldn't have survived the next one or two waves of enemies.

It might still very well be possible to button mash your way through the whole game, given an ample supply of health packs but right now we don't know nor can the demo tell us anything about it.

@lambtron

"it would have perhaps been more logical to make it so that was not a viable way of playing the game. Although I accept this might have made it too hardcore for the mass market."

I think you have hit the nail on the head there. I was having this exact discussion with a couple of colleagues the other day.

Games of this type often require the player to learn how to use the combat system more effectively if they want to make progress, so button mashing will only get you so far. However, the early stages of the game are where also sorts of lessons are learned, even the basic stuff like how the camera controls work and how reactive the basic strieks are. If you require players to learn the full combat system at that stage you don't give people any kind of space in which to learn.

I'm sure Street Fighter 2 suffered the same critisisms, as did Halo in its day. On an easy setting on the early stages, basic pummeling will get you by, but on harder settings on the later stages, another level of skill is required to progress. To the "uninitiated" the initial stages of the game set their perception of the whole title, i.e. "its all just button mashing".

Every person I have spoken to who held that opinion of GoW turned out to have not played much past level 2. Everyone I know who finished the game had a whole different opinion on the matter. I suspect we will see the same thing here.

Hansi: Fair enough. Although I don't know how you can say it's been worth every penny in the same sentence as there aren't any really impressive games out yet and all you play on it is a mini-game downloaded from the PSN for around 55kr.

Hopefully in January after the Christmas releases I can it's been worth every penny, but as someone who own both consoles, the PS3 never gets switched on. Not because I hate it, but because there's nothing interesting to play on it. IMO, of course. :)

@morriss

I use it as a Blu-ray film player and I use it as a media center on my LCD screen playing music and showing pictures also wirelessly from my computer.

That's worth every penny I paid for it for me. The games are a great bonus. :)

edit:
I have bought many other devices like Pinnacle Systems - MediaCenter or Squeeze Box Wireless or the Linksys Wireless B Music System, all these systems that really suck compared to a PS3. Comparing the PS3 and all it's functions with the myriad of devices that are supposed to provide some of the same functionality that the PS3 offers, the PS3 is a bargain. Not cheap, but a bargain non the less. IMHO that is :)

ABOVE: My PC also does everything you mentioned but more and way way better. PS3 is no way near a multimedia player compared to the PC. Not even close. Why buy a Ps3 for something the PC surpasses so easily. 360 does it too (HD optional), but with dowlaod tv. So PS3 is still overpriced for it's purpose.

On Heavenly Sword, nice but DMC4, Too Human, look and seem to play better from what I've seen. A bit disappointed with the graphics in HS too. Though very nice and fine animation, it doesn't look like the game that will say my PC/360 can't do. A good but not a AAA title the hype had built it up be from the demo I played.

@TRUTH

No noisy PC is getting anywhere near my living room.

@Truth

This is no longer the case in the future. PC hardware is quickly become irrelevance. Why an advantage Joe require 4 gig of ram to type a document? Especially when there is a 256mb machine cost cheaper can do the same thing.

PS3 is that machine. In the next five years, PS3 price will go down while PC goes up. When PS3 hit $250 price point, it is Blu-Ray player, Game console(more games than PC by then) and a computer(Linux). On the other hand, high end PC will cost twice as much. Without game application to adjust high end PC's valve, PC market will fall.

"Why an advantage Joe require 4 gig of ram to type a document?"

Because MS says so.

Everything PS3 - The 360/PC can do & in some cases do it better: Online gaming, video chat, HD download tv on demand, music, movies, photos, video chat, email.

In four or five years the PS3 may have a price drop and be getting into it's stride, but also something better, faster more power will be coming a couple of years later. This will be a problem for Sony. Do they continue to support the PS3 (It's making huuuuuge losses for Sony right now!), or do they compete with the next super-hi def console (Super Hi-Def will take over as it's happening already on PC's, with many companies from Pioneer, Phillips, Toshbia, LG already looking to build tv's in approx 5yrs).

So far every cross platform games DO look better on 360, and play better esp with better frame rates. Has more exclusives and interesting games: Mass Effect, Alan Wake, Bioshock, Cry-On, Halo Wars, Fable 2 etc...As for gamers that buy these console is for exactly that - Games Games Games. This is where Sony is failing. Nothing has proved Sonys's hype as yet. And may come to late - if it comes.

@TRUTH

whatever gets you hard