Heavenly Sword

[CarbonCore]

EDGE UK ---> God of War 2 = 7.0

 

'nuff said.

[KnackChap]

EDGE is probably the best mag available and also the harshest

heavenly sword-6

warhawk 8

BIOSHOCK-8

 

 

here are a few previous EDGE reviews

oblivion-8(GOTY)

gears of war-8(g\GOTY runner up)

god of war 2-7(GOTY 07 contender)

[uberxen]

EDGE UK ---> God of War 2 = 7.0

 

'nuff said.

 

Wow. Did not know that.

[CarbonCore]

What that means is 6 from EDGE for a Hack'n'Slash is good score. But does it really matter? You've seen the videos, you've played the demo, do you still need some mag writer to tell you if the game is worth the play or not ??

[CarbonCore]

god of war 2-7(GOTY 07 contender)[/b]

 

Thank god there's someone other than me on this forum who thinks that way. GoW2 is the strongest contender for goty so far.

[KnackChap]

the review code has been sent out,only if vinit was here.

btw EDGE also gave resistance a 7 only

[KnackChap]

a 6-7 from edge is like a 8-9 from IGN

[uberxen]

the review code has been sent out,only if vinit was here.

btw EDGE also gave resistance a 7 only

 

This was review code, at Milestone office.

 

Sorry -- asked a colleague to post this when I should have done it myself. We got to play Heavenly Sword, Uncharted and Warhawk over two days at Milestone. Impressions follow (copy+paste from my NeoGAF post) --

 

This is mostly going to be about Heavenly Sword: we got a chance to play the finished game over the past two days and its great.

 

The Good:

 

- GREAT characters and dialogues. Can be very funny at times and is always captivating on this aspect

 

- Amazing animation

 

- Good combat system. Not very deep, but its layers of stances, button combos and finishing moves give it satisfying depth. It also has a decent counter-system

 

- Uses SIXAXIS pretty well for the ranged combat (you can guide arrows through fire, the resultant projectile can then be used to explore barrels. There are some really cool sniping missions that make use of this aspect)

 

- The characters are REALLY awesome. King Bohan rocks (and is borderline obsessed with his crotch). Flying Fox is doubly cool and Kai, I pure <3. She is my kind of weird

 

- Cool unlockables including a couple of episodes from the animation series

 

You will basically have a good time playing it, which brings me to the biggest Bad:

 

- Very short. My friend reached the last boss in six hours

 

- The boss battles are also few (about six, according to him)

 

- There is the occasional screen tearing and frame drop (very rare)

 

 

Don't know much about replayability since we haven't actually finished it yet, but it convinced me that I need a PS3 asap. The game's THAT fun to play/experience.

 

We should have a video of our thoughts up by tomorrow (need to edit the footage today). I'll also edit this post with Warhawk (final build), Uncharted (E3 build) and Lair (almost final build) impressions -- although I did not spend much time with these.

 

We is Zapak.TV btw, an Indian website (www.zapak.tv). This was at a distributor press invite.

 

Lair impressions

This game did not impress. It looks ok, but for me the gameplay was meh and nothing grabbed me about the game. Personally, I hated the fact that the dragons don't feel organic -- like a creature ought to, but rather like a "skinned" aircraft. This is not a review, just my first impression.

 

Unchared impressions

One to watch out for. We played the E3 build and my impressions:

 

- Main character's voice needs changing (just didn't connect with me, YMMV)

- Melee combat is good, ranged not so much. Combat, on the whole, needs work

- Looks great

- Platforming is awesome

- AI/encounter-rate needs tweaking. Seems to swing from one extreme (easy) to another (bloody hard)

[uberxen]

DP.

[KnackChap]

OPM reviews Heavenly Sword

a very solid

89/100

 

http://uk.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_m...pic_id=25873285

[KnackChap]

gamepro reviews the game

 

# GRAPHICS: 4.75

# SOUND: 4.50

# CONTROL: 4.50

final 4.5/5

 

someone on this forum said that sony's last killer/exclusive title this holiday has been slammed by reviewers,well obviously the guy doesnt know that this game got over half dozen reviews around or over 90,and secondly he doesnt know that this is just the start of the season,the bigger titles with bigger and much more reputable developers like insomniac,naughty dog,free radical,epic,PD etc are coming

[Ne0]

"Just when I want to get out, they pull me right back in" !

 

Good Now stop dissing in our x360 forums calling us xbots and commenting on halo 3 (or gaylo as u call it) Make some use of ur Black paperweights....oh, u might want to dust it off first with a mop !

 

Now don't say I'm trolling again, I was provoked this time !

 

P.S: KC dude, u r the last person whom I expected would take potshots at ppl....but what the heck, as long as u dont take these fanboy wars seriously, I'm all game for it. PEACE !

[sanjoy]

IGN final review

 

9.0 Presentation

The cutscene work is fantastic, as are the extras (even though you can get most of them freely online).

9.0 Graphics

Beautiful in every respect. Character models are great, and the vistas are a-plenty.

9.0 Sound

Sound effects are fantastic as is the music and voice work.

7.0 Gameplay

The combat system is mostly very good, though the battles get repetitive very quickly and some of the extra stuff (like the button matching mini-games) needed more polish.

5.0 Lasting Appeal

The experience is over fairly quickly. There are a number of really good unlockables to go back and earn, though you can already get them online right now.

7.0

Decent OVERALL

(out of 10 / not an average)

[CarbonCore]

Yep, thats the most contrasting score, three 9s, then 7, then drop it right to 5 for lasting appeal. Hope they release some downloadable content in the future. They've said DLC coming in Nov. so fingers crossed.

[K'dash]

"Just when I want to get out, they pull me right back in" !

 

Good Now stop dissing in our x360 forums calling us xbots and commenting on halo 3 (or gaylo as u call it) Make some use of ur Black paperweights....oh, u might want to dust it off first with a mop !

 

Now don't say I'm trolling again, I was provoked this time !

 

P.S: KC dude, u r the last person whom I expected would take potshots at ppl....but what the heck, as long as u dont take these fanboy wars seriously, I'm all game for it. PEACE !

 

TOTAL OWNAGE...

[K'dash]

HS looks like a promising game...but i hv this feeling that its just a rip off of the Godly God Of War...

[KnackChap]

Heavenly Sword gets a 10/10 from Tilt

[CarbonCore]

Checkout IGN's video review. It somehow gives a different picture than their UK text review.

[KnackChap]

EGM heavenly sword reviews

8

9

8

[KnackChap]

Heavenly Sword Updated Hands-On

We got our hands on a near-final build of Heavenly Sword to see how the anticipated action game is turning out.

By Matthew Rorie, GameSpot

Posted Aug 27, 2007 6:34 pm PT

 

It looks like PlayStation 3 owners will be in for a dose of sword slashing action when Heavenly Sword finally arrives. Everyone has already played the demo, and earlier this month we took a look at the entire second chapter of the game, but a near-final version just landed on our desks. Here's a look at what to expect when the game finally hits shelves in early September.

 

We had previously only played the second chapter, so we were in for a surprise when we booted the game up for the first time. It plops you right down in the middle of a huge battlefield in which Nariko, the game's heroine, is surrounded by thousands upon thousands of enemy soldiers. (This appears to be taking place near the end of the story; the title card for this section reads "The Final Battle.") With nothing but her sword to rely on, she wades into the troops all by her lonesome, chopping them down by the bushel. The game's scale is breathtaking here, though it does have some frame rate chops that are no doubt caused by the hundreds of onscreen troops and catapults.

 

Although Nariko easily dispatches her foes, her fortune quickly takes a turn for the worse: the curse embedded in the eponymous sword that she wields overwhelms her, and she falls to the ground while mystic text burns itself across her body. When she awakens, the sword is gone, and she's been transported into a large, tranquil field where she implores an unseen, silent interlocutor to let her return to the battlefield. This area acts as the level select for the game, and you return here after each chapter to continue Nariko's pleas. You play through the game in a series of flashbacks that relive the last week or so of Nariko's adventure, presumably until you reach the current moment and continue from where you collapsed on the battlefield.

 

During the first of the flashbacks, which takes place five days before the events on the gigantic battlefield, Nariko and her clan are being hounded by Bohan, an evil general who wants the Heavenly Sword for his own. After being chased into an abandoned fort, Nariko has to help fend off attackers with nothing but a plain sword; at this point in the game she's fairly weak, and can only use a few simple combos.

 

The next morning, the fort falls under fire from massive catapults that storm across the field outside. It's Nariko's job to provide cover while the rest of her clan escapes across an icy river. She does so by taking control of a massive cannon that can fire on the advancing troops, thousands of which flood across the field. You can rapidly fire the cannon to attempt to hit the troops, but you need to use the game's aftertouch controls to guide the cannon shots into the catapults' weak spots to destroy them.

 

Aftertouching involves pressing the fire button, then guiding the projectile in slow motion toward its target. You can do this with the Sixaxis controller's motion-sensing capabilities if you like, but if you don't hold the controller correctly as you fire, the shots veer off course very quickly and are difficult to reorient. However, switching motion sensing off lets you use the analog sticks, a much easier solution.

 

After the catapults are destroyed, your clan takes off, but you still need to destroy the invading army to make cover. You have to reach 700 kills here, but luckily the battlefield is strewn with mines that, when hit with a cannonball, kill everything around them. The enemies are so densely packed that it almost takes effort not to reach the 700-kill mark within the time frame allotted.

 

Later in the game, after Nariko is imprisoned by Bohan, you have to take Kai out for a whirl. Kai is Nariko's endearingly crazy friend who appears as an immobile sniper in some parts of the game, using her rapid-fire crossbow to pelt enemies. In a change of pace, after Nariko's imprisonment, Kai has to embark on a journey to free her, which entails infiltrating Bohan's castle and killing a large number of guards. Kai herself can't engage in sword combat, so she needs to use her agility to jump over barricades and avoid soldiers before plunking them with crossbow bolts.

 

One of the recurring themes of Kai's levels is the use of explosives. If you use the aftertouch feature with Kai's crossbow, you can navigate a bolt through a torch to set the projectile alight. If you then send the bolt into a pile of explosives, which are (somewhat improbably) scattered around Bohan's castle, you'll destroy anyone nearby. You'll be doing quite a bit of this over the course of Kai's levels, but luckily it's a lot of fun--provided, again, that you don't attempt to use the Sixaxis' motion detection for all of it.

 

Kai's goal here is to recover the Heavenly Sword from Bohan's armory. Although the wisest thing for Bohan to do would probably be to kill Nariko and her clansmen, he instead chooses to become a Bond villain by throwing the lot of them in a fighting arena, leaving the sword relatively unguarded. While Kai searches, Nariko is forced to actually fight against her clan. Bohan promises the 16 soldiers in the pit that, if they fight each other, the last man left standing will be set free. Although Nariko doesn't wield the Heavenly Sword at this point, the rest of her clan still believe that she's the most dangerous of the lot, and so they betray her, attempting to take her down before finishing the fight among themselves.

 

Despite the disappointment of being double-crossed, Nariko can still save the lives of her clansmen if she wishes to do so. You have the option during this fight of attacking and killing the other soldiers, which, even though you're armed with only a regular sword, isn't all that difficult to do. Alternately, if you counter their attacks, you can perform a special martial-arts move on them that will leave them paralyzed and immobile on the ground. Presumably this will let them fight on your side later in the game.

 

While this isn't a retail copy of the game, Heavenly Sword has improved a bit since we last saw it. The frame rate could definitely still use some tweaking in spots, but Kai's levels look like they'll supply a welcome break from Nariko's swordplay-heavy adventure. (Kai's crazy antics are also a wonderful source of comic relief.) Graphically, the game is still looking amazing, with some wonderfully expressive motion-capture animations and voice work.