The Hours Have No Anchor

Things are getting confused again as we once again undergo rotating sleeping hours in an effort to get ready to actually get up in the morning in a week or so. The reason being the Wife is going to be doing a reading in a public library for her first children’s book. More on that when I’m feeling slightly more grounded.

Being A Geek

And devouring information coming out right now from the Tokyo Game Show, a gaming geek’s early Christmas gift if you’re into Japanese RPGs or anything else juicy that comes out of the land of the rising sun. Also, Persona 3 is that much closer to being finished. For the first time. I still have to play it again one more time after this…

Worky Sort Of Day

Started on a new article for IGN, sent out some writer-ly related e-mails clarifying details of other articles, and spectacularly failed to find any of the rare weapons I was looking for in the bowels of a Persona 3 dungeon.

Just another day in the life of a geek, folks…

The Sword Is Sheathed

I’ve pretty much played the hell out of this game, and have now unlocked everything I can possibly can. I’ve even submitted my review to GameAxis for it, and although I was wavering for days on it, torn between a 7.9 and a full 8, in the end, I gave it an 8. A just-barely-scraping-the-line 8, but an 8 nonetheless.

First of all, I’m pretty sure that, at least until next year, when the Heavy-Hitters come out, this is currently, hands-down, the single most beautiful looking game I have ever seen. This is one of the first games I’ve seen on either the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 that, when you think the term, “next generation graphics” THIS IS IT. The cinematics, done in real time, with the actual game engine, look like pre-rendered scenes shown on the PS2. They are flat out amazing.

Part of this has to do with the fact that the PS3 is simply more powerful, but more of it has to do with the fact that the developers, Ninja Theory, actually hired Andy “Gollum” Serkis to be the “dramatic director” for their cut-scenes, and the first thing he did was take the work over to WETA Digital (who, of course, MADE him Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies) and they tried out a much more ambitious form of motion capturing, similar to what’s being done for Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf movie. They got all the actors together, stuck them in motion capture suits, put dots all over their faces that the mo-cap cameras could pick up, and then had them perform their scenes together. The final result is the most realistic facial animation ever done in real time for a game, at least ’till next year. It also helps that they’ve got some real actors as well, so the performances hold up to the visual splendor. A critical part of my brain felt that Andy Serkis went a little crazy in encouraging the various actors to “move for movement’s sake” and so many of the scenes have the actors giving off twitchy, jerky, quirky body and facial ticks, simply because they can, to emphasize how precise this technology is now. While it can be noticeable, it’s also obvious that this technology DOES work great, as even the tiniest pouting of a lip to indicate sorrow is evident on the these amazingly designed characters.

The game, unfortunately, does not quite live up to its stellar presentation. It’s a good game. I enjoyed it. Most important of all, I had A LOT of fun with it. But when you’re taking your inspiration from one of the legendary games of our time (that is, the God of War series) you have a LOT to live up to; engaging story, killer graphics, flawless control and unparalleled gameplay. Heavenly Sword only gets half this equation right. Like I said, the game’s not bad. But it’s been under a microscope since it was first hinted at in 2005, and since then, Sony fans, desperate for a hit, have trumpeted time and time again that this game was So Impossibly Awesome that it would forgive sins, cure cancer and deflect stray asteroids from hitting the Earth. In other words, they made it out so this game was guaranteed to be the single greatest experience a human being could have, bar none, except, perhaps, for realizing the error of their ways, and trading in that Xbox 360 for a Playstation 3. And, of course, it isn’t.

The combat is fun, and for the most part, it works. It’s almost impossible not to simply button mash, and pull off some kind of balletic swordplay that is impressive in both carnage and gracefulness. But it wasn’t really designed for multiple opponents from all sides, something the game throws at players often. Curiously, the game has an “auto-block” function in that you can’t actually block blows yourself, the computer does it for you, ASSUMING you’re getting attacked from the front. This game, unlike most martial arts movies, throws multiple opponents at you, at the same time, attacking from all directions. So while you may be blocking those two goons in front of you just fine, the one coming from the rear is going to get you and there’s nothing you can do about it. The other problem is one of pacing. Too often the game takes you out of using that All Powerful sword and has you firing cannons, shooting arrows, or hurling shields through the air to ring a gong. This wouldn’t be so bad in itself, since I like a change of pace, but these sequences go on for too long in a game that can be finished in 6-8 hours, and so even though the game is called Heavenly Sword, you actually only use the titular weapon a little over 1/2 the time. I also didn’t like the fact that, compared to God of War, there are just TOO FEW enemies. In this game, you get “Guy with topknot,” “Guy with hat,” “Guy with helmet,” “Guy in gorilla armor,” and “ninja girl” as your enemies. That’s it. An indirect side effect of this is despite the fact that you have a frightening number of attacks at your disposal, the small number of enemies ensures you don’t really need to use most of them. Compare this with God of War where you were fighting everything from soldiers to Cerebus, to cyclops, medusas, skeletons, demons, and tons of others I can’t even remember, and you begin to realize the elegance of design that Sony Santa Monica incorporated for God of War; each different enemy had a different strength and weakness, forcing players to become efficient with their weapons and develop different skillsets. In Heavenly Sword, once you get comfortable with an attack that breaks an enemy’s guard, that’s all you need to finish the rest of the game, and all those amazing, fluid combat moves become unnecessary, and even slow you down if you’re trying to kill as many people as possible. But all that aside, there is no denying, I enjoyed the game. A LOT. It’s far from perfect, but there’s nothing actually badly done about the game, so much as many missed opportunities to make the game a worthy equal to God of War. If it had been longer, if it had had more enemies, if it had had more varied levels, if it had incorporated more puzzles aside from just throwing a shield around to hit gongs… All of this could have pushed the title from being fun game with amazing graphics to amazing game with amazing graphics.

As it is, I like it. But the God of War series is in no danger of getting dethroned for the next couple of years.

Sunday Is Game Day

Just more Heavenly Sword and Persona 3. Thoughts to follow tomorrow on Heavenly Sword.

Slow Saturday

Just the usual. A bit of Persona 3, a bit of Heavenly Sword, not much else…

Another Quiet Friday

In which Upstairs Neighbors thrashed around with Heavenly Sword. Old diners were perused for kicks, and Yet More Gaming occurred.

Busy Thursday

Laundry was washed, movies were watched, demos were downloaded off the Playstation store, and a massive, opinionated GameAxis blog post about the state of the current “console war” was made that will be sure to generate a fair amount of hate since it didn’t worship Sony. And as anyone will tell you, if you don’t believe in Sony, you and all your family deserve to die.

Heavenly Production Values

I got it, I’m playing it, and I can say that except for matters of aesthetic taste, this is undoubtedly the most beautiful looking action game I’ve played to date.

That doesn’t make it the best one, though. The God of War series still seems safe from being dethroned, at least in my book. But it’s a fun game so far.

More thoughts when I’ve finished it and written my review for GameAxis.

Another Boring Tuesday

Today was spent with a little bit of Persona 3, a lot of writing an IGN article, a little bit of watching Superman Returns–which STILL kicks ass to me–and some shopping around the neighborhood. Not much going on today, but tomorrow, if no trucks laden with precious gaming get overturned on their way to various game stores: