New Heavenly Sword Info (screens included)

Another "6 hours long" mentioning... Sigh...

 

IGN US
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/815/815721p1.html

7/10, if you just want the score.

Again, lovely graphics, sound acting...gameplay falls short. They mention its all over very quickly but give no specifics on how many hours you can be looking at.

 

Nope you're not. Laugh all you want, but I still have not figured out the controls entirely yet. I still play the demos in between Resistance and MotoStorm "fixes". Every time I fire up the demo, I still find myself getting distracted by the scenery and small objects.

Then again, I also play the hack-n-slash Diablo for months on.

These days, my playtime is highly fragmented. I don't think I will be able to finish the game (or any game) in 1 sitting.


On a related note...

Needless to say, I will be pimping this game to all my visitors. If they are supremely impressed by MotorStorm now, Heavenly Sword and Lair are going to shock them silly. I am sure some of the more disturbed friends will also try to look for the elusive up skirt shot too.

We may be picky about the scores, but these casual friends I have won't mind one bit. I mean the 3/10 Super-rub-a-dub (IGN score) was the second most favored game over here. Ninja Gaiden got the cold shoulder, Resistance was too fast for them (Noobs !), The Darkness pissed them off (Me too), and GTHD lost out to MotorStorm by a wide margin.

Either they are crazy... or just different.

 

I think they are colloquially referred to as the casual market.

 

I certainly do care. Why? because asking me to spend $60 for 6hours of gaming rubs me the wrong way.

There is no stipulation that a good game has to be short. None whatsoever. A good game can be long and a short game can also suck. Game lenght is also just one factor to a good gaming experience. Immersion (the sum of graphics, presentation, sounds, music, gameplay and controls) being another. You can however offset a short campaign with more features such as co-op and multiplayer.

If it was co-op (online and offine) then you immediately add replayability to the equation and if a single play through was short you get the added time from playing co-op with friends. If you have a few friends, you might even do a few run throughs. This certainly makes up for a shortened campaign.

Then you get into online multiplayer. Ofcourse if there is no multiplayer that is fine. I much rather time and assests be spent on developing the campaign than having MP as a "me too" feature. A lot of games use multiplayer as a checkbox rather than it being a worthy assest. The one who pull mutliplayer off well, generally have good longevity and seperate themselves from the pack. RB6:Vegas, Graw, Gears, Resistance come to mind.

At the end of the day a developers job is to convince the buyer that their $60 is well spent on the experience being delivered. That experience will vary from person to person but there are certainly whole aspects that are appealing and undesireable to the masses.

 

most gamers dont play through a game more then once after they beaten it. and if its only 6-9 hours of game play im better off paying 4 bucks for a two day rental since its a pretty linear game. i figure if i can beat the game in 1-4 sitdowns its a rent.

 

Exactly. I am somewhere in-between but may play with a higher difficult setting to boot. Personally, I am more concerned about long checkpoints. So far the responses range from:

Zapak TV
"My friend reached the last boss in 6 hours. 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."

IGN UK
"(No mention of play time)
Gameplay: As solid as its component parts are, poor design decisions and awful structure mean they never make for a cohesive, satisfying whole.
Lasting Appeal: Despite the wealth of combos and extras to unlock, you'll be constnatly battling with tedium on subsequent play-throughs."

DeanoC
"It took me 9.5 hours on normal only getting about half the glyphs and I can (almost) literally do the army portions of the game with my eyes shut (and have been working on it for 3.5 years so might have picked up a few hints to the rest of the game as well )

So if your my level of expertise (i'd admit to not be being the best gamer) I'd be surprised if you can do it under 10 hours."

Nextgen Ireland
"It will take around 15 hours to complete but it took us 5 days straight of 12 hour sessions to finally unlock all the secrets this title has to offer."


Seeing how I'm placed in upper half of Resistance games usually (Rarely first, sometimes Top 3-5). I reckon it'd be a 10-11 hour games for me. That's why I'm not concerned, especially when I still can't fully grasp the combat system after several demo playthroughs. But we shall see...

 

Patsu,

IGN UK had this to same about play time:

"For instance, it's a serious misstep when the strongest aspect of your game - sword play - is sidelined for almost 50 percent of its runtime. The very first level employs a massively hobbled version of the combat system which simply has none of the visceral thrill or satisfaction of the fully-fledged engine. Throw in the decision to completely remove sword fighting again in chapter three (of six, one of which is simply a boss fight), replaced by some over-egged archery, then cripple it later still with some pretty but soulless silliness, and it adds up to maybe three to four hours of decent combat in a game which takes a rather embarrassing, and distinctly un-epic, six or seven hours to beat."

 

Ah ! Thanks for correcting me. I searched for the digits 6 and 7 but couldn't find the right lines. So in the end, I had to get the Zapak TV review to stand in and balance it with IGN's summary.

Looking at the reviews, the response is rather polarized.

EDIT: The Zapak TV guy mentioned all the little details about the fighting system in his video review (e.g., using SIXAXIS to control thrown objects), suggesting that he has explored those elements extensively. As a result, he may get more fun out of the fights compared to those who rely on repetitive hack and slash to get by.

 

IGN score seems generous compared to what i played in the demh well there's always gamespot....

 

6 hours for a pure single player game is to little. Seems like this game could have been better.

 

umm, first of all, the demo was 5 minutes. second, the demo was of an older build.

 

Seems very little for a full price game. And if the game is fun the hours will fly away when playing. But then a good movie don't have to last more than 2 hours but alteast it cost less...

 

And if swordplay was 90% of the runtime, the game would be too repetitive. Heavenly sword doesn't seem to have the GoW puzzle/platform elements so I'm not bothered if they added some other kind of variation.

Btw does anybody know if this game has DTS sound?

 

Are IGN saying HS is worse than Harry Potter Game, Cars Game, Pac-Man, Perfect Dark Zero, Kameo, Flatout, Marvel:Ultimate Alliance, World Snooker, King Kong and Zuma?

The final score is absurd considering their criticisms. It doesn't get everything perfect, but perfect is a 10/10 - I'd put it at 8-9 from their comments. HS is a casualty of the console it's on - Sony's need for something revolutionary puts far too much pressure on its games, and makes expectations absurd. If Kameo can get 8.4 on the 360, then I expect HS would have got an 8.6 on the 360 as well. PS3's own fault I suppose.

 

Not Expectations

Many very good PS3 games will get many bad scores. You will see. Now the war is not about hardware or software but about media control. Just like presidential elections. Paramount/Dreamworks got $150M to drop Blu-Ray. It was not about hardware. Landscape has changed. Stake is too high for players to not play the new game. When you look at the market from business stand-point it is easy to see.

 

Why not,it's certainly possible. One of our problems as gamers is we see the way a game looks, and listen to the hype and make automatic assumptions about how good it must be before even fully experiencing it. For good or bad we all do it.
There's no logical reason why HS must be better than those games you mentioned.

 

The whole review is really just picking things they think are bad= crap
Also I fail to see how bioshock has a half point better graphics acording to ign, thats complete nonsense, imo any casual person wathcing both would say HS is way more impresive.

 

The demo alone is better than those games...