Heavenly Sword: Part Deux

Jaeyden said:
The only complaint I can muster is the occasional frame drop or v-sync tearing, but these are easily overlooked with this game. The frame issues seem to only plague a few different missions. When I first saw it, I thought "uh oh" and I quit the mission I was on. I played through a different one and then went back to where I was and the stuttering was gone.
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With having such a connection to the devs as we do on this forum, I'd be interested to know why such drops were randomly occuring.
Is it streaming/loading textures?
Nature of the randomized AI?
Nature of the randomized camera for zoom pans on action sequences?

Any thoughts DeanoC or nAo?
 
SolidSlug said:
Dominant thought: Boy, those created-for-SIXAXIS gameplay elements really suck.

Trying to destroy the catapults: 10 attempts without success with motion control. 1 successful attempt using the left analog stick.
I guess SIXAXIS is meant to make the game more challenging, but it only makes it more frustrating in my case. I turned off motion control for good now.
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Same experiences, but different outcome here.

If I remember it correctly, destroying the catapults is the first SIXAXIS mission. The second one is Kai's castle defense.

The catapult mission is a little tricky at first. 10 attempts without success is what I got too. The castle defense one is even tougher (My final result was 20 men sneaked past me successfully, only 5 lucky kills). The cool thing is Heavenly Sword understands that and gives us ample time to learn and play (@ default difficulty). In the second case, the failure is non-fatal since Nariko was there to tie things down.

I tried using analog sticks. I think they can curve the projectile more (not quite sure now). I also used them once/twice together with SIXAXIS at the last minute to try to change the projectile's trajectory even more. Those men were hiding behind boxes and I weren't positioned well, so I needed sharper curves :)

By the time you hit Chapter 3, you should be pretty good ... assuming you continue to play with motion control. ;-)
 
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If you cant control with the sixaxis.. you suck. Sorry. :( The catapults are so easy to aim for, going 0 for 10 is unfathomable to me. I think I missed 2 times for all thee of them. With 4 targets on each. Just like Lair, you cant go in all herky jerky. Slow and smooth s the key.
 
Well... Twing Twang is somewhat more difficult than it looks. I saw a Kai trailer where she shot down 45 men, and it looked long and boring. When I played through the same level, it was quite fun because of the trickiness.

But yeah, an average person should be able to do it after a few games. I actually hope to see it in MGS (Nikita missile !)
 
patsu said:
But yeah, an average person should be able to do it after a few games. I actually hope to see it in MGS (Nikita missile !)
Click to expand...

Now there's an idea!
I'm sure that Kojima will use the sixaxis in many instances. He is one of those devs that will use everything they can get their hands on!

Anyway, finished chapter 4 last night. Amazing game. The hammer holding enemies were kicking my ass the first time I encountered them.... But then I realised that I had unlocked a few more combos. All hell broke loose!!!
Some of the more advanced combos are animated so beautifully that you have to learn them! Amazing to look at and the damage they inflict is more than most of the enemies can take!
 
oh nice, i received the game, but it wont play on my japanese PS3! aargh ... (possibly cause i'm on a CRT tv) dang
 
hey69 said:
oh nice, i received the game, but it wont play on my japanese PS3! aargh ... (possibly cause i'm on a CRT tv) dang
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Won't play? ah?

There is absolutely no reason I know of why it won't play on any PS3.

What does it do/say?

And it certainly works on CRT tvs, tested extensively.
 
TheChefO said:
With having such a connection to the devs as we do on this forum, I'd be interested to know why such drops were randomly occuring.
Is it streaming/loading textures?
Nature of the randomized AI?
Nature of the randomized camera for zoom pans on action sequences?

Any thoughts DeanoC or nAo?
Click to expand...

Hard to see why your getting random framerate problems?

Possible thoughts off the top of my head would be something related to the streaming, maybe a dirty disk/lens causing re-reads or HD file fragmentation which might cause the drive cache to be better/worse on different runs...

Its probably related to sometimes lipsync going. Its should be nigh on perfect but I've had read reports on forums its not sometimes. The only thing I can think is that differences between our usage of the PS3 (development of one game, lots of formatting of the HD) versus real-world usage...
 
DeanoC said:
Hard to see why your getting random framerate problems?

Possible thoughts off the top of my head would be something related to the streaming, maybe a dirty disk/lens causing re-reads or HD file fragmentation which might cause the drive cache to be better/worse on different runs...

Its probably related to sometimes lipsync going. Its should be nigh on perfect but I've had read reports on forums its not sometimes. The only thing I can think is that differences between our usage of the PS3 (development of one game, lots of formatting of the HD) versus real-world usage...

Welcome to the world of PCs...
Click to expand...

In my case the framerates definitely aren't random. They occur very specifically when I'm climbing the tower with Kai at the beginning of the 3rd level. I can see a *lot* of stuff on screen at *very* large draw distances, and everything quite fast at that point also, so I'm not surprised.

So in this case I would ask to make sure that the perceived framerate drops are really random, or related to complex scenes ... (which is what I am thinking).

If it is not, then yes, a dirty disc, maybe.
 
very good game overall.

Pros:

out door lighting
kais animations
cut scenes
facial expressions and dialogue
sixaxis scenes where one controls arrows

Cons

indoor lighting (colors become washed out)
shadows (boxy pixelated shadows)
vsync on vertical camera sweeps or quick horizontal movements when outside
AA
Narikos hair (sorry!)

I was very frustrated with motion sensing on the catapukt scene but after progressing through tthe game I COULD NOT IMAGINE a game using arrow projectiles not using this method. I find bohars dialoguee and facial animations to be the best i have ever seen. This game forces you to think to solve fighting puzzles in fairly innovative but frustratingly fun ways. While playing the level where Kai was in the storeroom hopping over obstacles, I wished this were an action adventure game if not a full fledged rpg.

I am in the middel of fighting roach and having a great time doing so.
 
For those who have played Heavenly Sword but not Warhawk, it may be interesting to know that there is a special missile type that you can control in the exact same way as you can control projectiles in Heavenly Sword. It's very cool and great for taking out annoying SAM installations. ;)
 
I started playing the game as of yesterday, now near the end of chapter 2. It's always hard to know what to think or what you will think about a game that's had as much attention as this one pre-release, especially when you know some of the folk working on it. ;)

If the game's short it's short - I can understand some reviewers penalizing on that. I agree that framerates aren't always the highest either; though the drops are few and far between, I notice them when they occur. But truly a great game; the scope, the feel, the look... and although I wasn't a huge fan of the combat in the demo, I'm a fan of it now. For me, it's a 9+ experience. The title drips with quality, and since I don't follow these gaming threads all that closely regularly, Dean if you're around, can you say whether your studio is going to stick with MoCap techniques moving forward?
 
I was kind of surprised to see that Ninja Gaiden Sigma is getting higher review scores all around.

I played the NGS demo only once. NGS looks nice but the action is much closer up.

I would imagine that would make framerates easier to maintain, especially if it doesn't have to draw as many enemies at once?
 
hey69 said:
yeah thats it. japanese and usa ps3's dont have 576i support. so the pal ps3 tries to play in an unsupported format and i got an error message
Click to expand...
Well you learn something new every day!
 
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