Twing twang
So the other day I got my grubby mits on a retail version of the game Heavenly Swords. Finally I can find out what the hell twing twang is! If you have not seen the demo of the game, or the brilliant review that Yahtzee made, do so now and then come back here so that you have a context. Done? Good. Now I did play for like half an hour, on a really small computer monitor (ok, it was 23'', but it looks small compared to a real TV) with some crappy computer speakers hooked up. Despite this, I do feel that the game was ... decent. Now, the game is of course something of a novelty since it's a ps3 game that actually is in the stores. I also happen to have the privilege to share an office with one of the graphics programmers on the game, Marco Salvi. I can only say, good job Marco Ninja-san! The game really looks amazing, there are some bugs in there that stand out, but on the whole it looks really great. Now as for the gameplay, ironically I did like the twing twang games better than the main event, the combat. The combat just left me exhausted after pressing all the buttons possible and still don't understanding how I survived. I suspect that the game is slightly too easy since it didn't really gave me - who suck at video games - any trouble to kick everybody's ass. No, wait what am I saying? It's great! Finally an easy game. But it kind of reduced the combat to just button mashing and waiting until all the guys were dead. And what's up with the fixation on the crotch finishing move? Every time I see Nariko killing somebody it makes me wince. At this point I'm probably immune from any sort of pixel violence, but still seeing a pixel guy taking a sword to the crotch kind of feels ... uncomfortable.
On the whole, I just might be convinced to go and buy the game to play it on a real tv with real sound just to see something better than the first generation ps3 games...