No word of the demo here yet? Odd.

Well then I will start with my humble thoughts about the demo.

First things first: I know this is just a demo and the code is months old yadda yadda yadda...

From a technical standpoint the demo isn't much of a showcase title. Tearing, major slowdown, jagged lines, sound glitches, odd physic reactions, clipping problems. The framerate isn't very good at all even when the camera pans nearer to the action and doesn't show much of the vista. I have seen some strange hiccups in the transition between animations. The game seems to jump sometimes from one animation to another and just skip the transitionframes in order to catch up with the key presses. There is also some kind of delay to the response of the character when you press a button. It's not much but it does get annoying after some play throughs.

The art design on the other hand is very nice. The demo starts at a cliff overlooking a valley with a shaolin sort of temple in the middle. Complete with some very good looking waterfalls in the distance the demo level looks very good. The next thing you do is running down some thick ropes which connect the cliff to a pillar with some enemies on top. Those start to chop through those ropes and there is some times button pressing involved to land on the pillar. There the first fighting starts.

At first I have tried to fight of the enemies God of War style by just buttonmashing. This doesn't work very well at all. The way to play this game seems to wait for an enemy until he starta his attack and then counterattack. Some combos break through enemy defences so you can off with such a combo and then chain some more slashes on top of it to finish off the enemy - but just waiting and counterattacking works better and looks cooler (at least for those henchlings in the demo).
Pressing L1 or R1 switches to a faster long range or a slower power stance. It's a nice touch that its possible to chain different stances together in one combo but I'm not good enough to willingly chain together some of those multistance combos. I had some nice combos per random button mashing though ;)

after some time there are filling up some orbs in your health hud. those indicate that you can pull off some cinematic mega moves. since they're clearing most/all enemies onscreen I would suggest to stay away from them because after two waves of enemies the demo is over. after getting used to the combat system I was able to clear the entire demo from the moment you first play your character to the end screen in about 3 minutes.


My final demo verdict:

Having a more tactical combat system than other games of this genre (God of War, Ninja Gaiden, Prince Of Persia, etc.) together with the slick looking art design seems to be a interesting mix. But this is in no way the system seller everybody thought it would be. At least when you take the demo as a indicator.



So I hope this was of interest for someone here, and I would love to hear your thoughts on the demo.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the demo.

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m95/rothbart_photos/interweb_memes/Mr._Horse_as_a_GI.png

No Sir, I didn't like it.

I haven't played it.

I plan on picking up a PS3 in the next few weeks and Heavenly Sword is a strong part of the reason I'm getting one now instead of waiting. Hopefully it won't disappoint!

I played it a few times, and i kind of had a different experience everytime, many seem to call it Goddess of War, but after playing the demo, it is not a god of war clone per say, the fighting style is different. I am going to pick it up on the first day.

Yeah but i wish the level was atleast a bit longer

I liked it better after repeated plays... the demo's so short that you can easily complete it by playing it as a button masher but that's not the intended (or best) way... I suspect the final game will not be very easy simply playing it as a button masher.

I happened to see almost the entire 2nd level being played on a stream via Kotaku and it looked pretty cool actually. I'm not sure I'll be buying this but I'm stoked to see/play it.

Im not one to replay levels much lol and i hope that heavenly sword isnt just a game with lots of small levels but with lots of levels.
I prefer big levels and less levels =P

Far too short, makes me feel they've got something to hide.

meh was ok but not great till now im really not impressed with the ingame lightining not only of this game but of others also someimtes its seems to blurred and bright sometimes it seems to dark hope developers get the hand of the frikin procceor and gfx thing and began to use it well

Zero Punctuation sums my thoughts up nicely.

Check it

Basically, there isn't nearly enough, and what's there doesn't seem all that innovative if you've played God of War.

I loved the demo, and can't wait for my game to arrive, i've played the demo about 12 times now, and everytime i turn on the PS3, i play the demo first.

The combo system seems hard at first, and it seemed that i would be button mashing the whole time, but after a while with it, i was able to pull off all the combos that i wanted to. The air combo system was very innovative i thought, and i'm able to pull those off with ease. It's not all straight about counter attacking, as i'll throw some attacks in with the different styles, I for one cannot wait for this game to finally arrive at my doorsteps. After all it's what i bought the ps3 for... well that and other things as well

Zero Punctuation sums my thoughts up nicely.

Check it

Basically, there isn't nearly enough, and what's there doesn't seem all that innovative if you've played God of War.

I'll have to check out Zero Punctuation... I've seen that name brought up a lot recently (not just in reference to Heavenly Sword).

I think a lot of the early announced "big" games have an undue amount of hype thrown on... it's a shame HS isn't longer seeing as it was shown (I think) before the PS3 even launched... that means they were showing it at least a year before release... I wouldn't expect it to be such a quick game. That said, I think in the end, HS will be a let down as opposed to a failure. 8's and higher are good review scores. To me it seems that HS simply fell from a "purchase" to a "rental". But to be honest, with all the games hitting in the next few months for all the platforms, I was never confident I'd be buying HS anyway.

I have to admit this is one of the very, very few games for PS3 that had peaked my interest. I love the God of War games and this one looked like it might be able to add a little something extra to make it even better than God of War (if that is even possible:p). Then the demo came out met with mixed reviews and then the official reviews for the game came out and were met with "decent at best" reviews. So here I am again, not really having a reason to buy a PS3. Seriously Sony, you're pissing me off with all of your hype followed by letdowns and disappointment.


On a side note, has anyone seen the tv commercial for this game? Way too much hair. It's so distracting that I didn't even notice what was going on in the commercial.

the official reviews for the game came out and were met with "decent at best" reviews. So here I am again, not really having a reason to buy a PS3. Seriously Sony, you're pissing me off with all of your hype followed by letdowns and disappointment.


Wow, the scores on metacritic (http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ps3/heavenlysword) aren't bad, are you telling me a metacritic score of 80 and user score of 90 is "decent at best"?

I would personally rate a game at 70 closer to "decent at best".... for me 80-90 is "good", 90-100 is "great". I haven't played the full Heavenly Sword, but by most accounts it's a good (but not great) short game. Definitely worth playing, debatably worth buying.

And if you're a fan of the genre, there's still nothing out yet comparable on the 360 or Wii.

imjustsayin'

rothbart, have you watched the zero punctuation review yet? i laughed so hard... all of his reviews are great, but the one about tomb raider anniversary takes the cake, i think.

Okay, so I was looking at PS3 games at Target today, and I noticed that the demo was running. So I thought I could give it a try despite the rather "meh" reviews it recieved. And I must say, it impressed me very much. I love the God Of War style button combos, and the combat system is very satisfying. I noticed that the graphics aren't very on-par with the rest of the PS3's catalogue, but I think graphics are unimportant if the rest of the game plays well.

short but sweet demo