I´m now playing chapter 9. I loved Heavenly Sword. It was the first game I finished in what at the time was called "next gen" and the gap from past software seemed huge. The story was compelling. I loved the fact of the game being self-contained, "closed", not prone to sequels. The voice acting (even with the spanish translation, the ***best*** of the gen in this languaje so far), phenomenal. The lenght and gameplay may be in the short, buggy side, but compelling after all. And music, graphics, production values, were fantastic.
Time has not been so cruel with Heavenly Sword after all, and in fact I´ve replayed several times the game and it stands still.
With Enslaved I have a big problem, and it was the "old fashion" use of UE3. Streaming problems, framerate less than fine in PS3, postprocessing far from brilliant... That bloom and texture shining that hurt your eyes. But Ninja Theory needed a bit of respect and support and finally I bought the game.
The fact is that the study is correct in many areas, very strong in character design and development, creative in their settings, very smart in creating astonishing panoramas, colourful vistas. The music in Enslaved is fairly good, but a step behind Heavenly Sword imho. Production values seems to be a bit restricted. It´s fairly obvious that Ninja Theory are alone now, facing the problems of a very ambitious game alone.
The testing (in PS3 version) seems far from ended. The fact of 5.1 output not being available in PS3 it´s really disgusting. Even more, the audio fluctuates up and down in an unacceptable manner. Really, really buggy. Kills inmersion. That´s unfair with the work of NT and must not be allowed, because apart from that and the UE3 """usual""" affaires the game is well developed.
The controls are a bit buggy. It´s not exactly delay, but a mixture of fighting with standard animations and sticky points related with the scenery: points where jump is allowed for example are areas of the scenario that, if traversed, are prone to not desired movements.
All that said, Enslaved must seem far from perfect, but it´s really easy to be pleased with it. First, the game keeps mistery up. In HS the tension was related with Nariko´s future, here´s the global situation, the facts that made the world evolve to the disaster. Second, the mixture of gameplay styles is enough to make you interested. There´s platforming (too easy, again), combat (well developed until more than half of the game) and the ability of avoiding it.
My veredict is not complete, but I keep enjoying Ninja Theory, I think I´ve understood their vision in Enslaved, and my complains are just more in the technical, budget side of things. This game with a tech enforcement or simply put an in-house engine, and more founds used for testing and polishing things could have been much better.
The game concept is fine. I think that the personal relations (Monkey-Trip, their respective past...) needed to be underlined more. Gameplay is enough to be pleased with. Artistic design is simply superb (their biggest value). To summarize things, Enslaved is a really good game, that demonstrate that a modest company can survive to a semi-failed project like Heavenly Sword (which I still prefer) and still make, by their own, fairly good and enjoyable games with ambitious sights.
The problem is that I think that Enslaved is goint to be passed for may people, and that´s not fair.
If Capcom is allowing a DMC sequel made with Unreal Engine 3 and buggy, under 30 frames per second framerate... definitely things are changing, but not in my way. DMC is the paradigm of rock-solid 60 frames gameplay. The PAL translation of the original DMC was unnaceptable... and now 30 frames and almost sure trembling and crying... Oh my god.
Regards.
Wind Waker's art style. It's my first Zelda but I remember many fans complained at that time (Too kiddy !). inFamous 2 and R2 were similar examples.
