Heavenly Sword is "half-assed"

Team Ninja boss Tomonobu Itagaki has taken the gloves off to have a dig at a couple of rival games.

Landed most recently was a jab to Heavenly Sword's chops, where the Ninja Gaiden creator called the upcoming PS3 title "half-assed" for its on-screen button pressing sequences.

"I've never played a good game where the developers put a big icon of the button you're supposed to press onscreen," Itagaki told Electronic Gaming Monthly. "I look at Heavenly Sword and it seems really half-assed, because it's asking you to do all these button-timing sequences but you are not getting much pay-off from it."

Resident Evil 4 and God of War 2 were awful then, evidently.

His criticisms were parried by Heavenly Sword producer Kyle Shubel, who said the events were put in the game to empower the player, and would be frustrating if they had to be completed manually each time. Decision went to the judges.

The dust-up comes just days after too-cool-for-school Itagaki laid into fighting series Tekken. When asked by Jostiq how excited he was about the new instalment, the Dead or Alive creator responded: "Tekken sucks. I don't know what you're talking about."

Currently Tomonobu Itagaki and Team Ninja are working on two mysterious titles for Xbox 360, Project Progressive and Project Impact - the latter expected to be Ninja Gaiden 2.

His gang is also conjuring a DS game called Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword.

They'll all be better than Tekken 6 and Heavenly Sword, obviously.