Heavenly Sword Demo Out

Thursday saw the release of the Heavenly Sword demo on the PlayStation network. Kotaku has impressions from the play experience and GamesRadar offers up some helpful tips to make the most of the short playtime. From Kotaku's rundown: 'Seven minutes, and it ends just like that. No big boss fight to try out, no giant plot revelation, no finding an ancient artifact. Just, "here comes more enemies, see you in two months!" You know that feeling you get when you're about to sneeze and then can't? Exactly the feeling I got here. As for aesthetics, the graphics were solid but the framerate was erratic at times. Sound was excellent no matter which language option I chose in order to stretch out my playtime a little by pretending I was a different guy from another country. By far the best aspect of the whole demo for me, the music was completely top notch. Very atmospheric and brilliantly arranged. ' Back at Kotaku, Brian Crecente received a longer version of the demo than the one publicly available, and is now playing through it live over the internet.

Comments

Amazing Game

[Anonymous Coward]

The graphics are jaw dropping and the combat system is very deep and satisfying. I've played it at least ten times through since last night when I downloaded it learning more and more about the counter system and the different stances.

This was a good thread to learn about the demo:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=17430 7

The next few months are going to be absolutely insane for the PS3 with Lair, then Warhawk, Ratchet and Clank, Little Big Planet, Heavenly Sword just for the major first party titles.

Heavenly Sword Irks me

[PixelScuba]

This game, beyond most, incredibly irks me. I put up with a lot of marginalizing and foolishness from video games and plots... but Heavenly Sword seems, to me, the pinnacle of what I hate about female protagonists in games. Here we have the finest example of hyper-sexualizing women in games. A woman, barely 100 pounds, swinging weapons of ungodly size and weight and crushing countless minions. Does she cover herself in protective armor to shield herself from the damaging blows of foes? Of course not, she's a woman... she wears a couple bands of fabric covering her nipples and her crotch. She's petite, nimble, sexy and a total badass too... not to mention she has the flamboyant red hair of many female video game leads.

I know this is an ongoing trend... Oni, Lara Croft, Alyx Vance, Chick from Sin Episodes, Chick from No One lives forever, Every DoA Chick and a dozen other games with female characters (Even Samus has fallen into this pit). They're all petite and totally badass. They're blatantly one dimensional... even Alyx from Half Life is pretty shallow and a generic hot chick. Heavenly Sword just gets to me, it seems like the worst of the bunch... "Let's take God of War and make it star a red haired bombshell who will kill you and fuck you before you hit the floor." How can we demand more realistic female characters in video games (male too... but that's for a different rant)? Are we doomed to play games with shallow female leads because that's what we "want"?

For the record, while writing this rant, I was contemplating genuine female leads. Many were from LucasArts adventure games (The Dig, Fate of Atlantis) and other adventure games as well. I also thought of the original Alone in the Dark... I was around 10/11 when it was released and I started thinking about what a unique character Emily Hartwood was... just the niece of a suicidal lunatic trying to find out what happened, she's obviously feminine but not sexualized .

Re:It's short...red light.

[Aladrin]

On top of the short demo, I didn't like it. I usually love hack n slash games, and God of War was a good game.

But this... The whole 'hit the button during the action scene' thing felt sloppy. In GoW, when you hit the button properly, you saw the effect immediately. This leaves you to wonder if it worked or not for a while, first. A failure to hit the button looked like success at first to me as well.

And then the fight... I could hardly tell what was going on. The camera was so far back that I couldn't tell if I was in the middle of a move or not, or what was happening. Pulling off a combo in the middle of that was nearly impossible while you can't see and enemies are constantly rushing you from the back. (I never DID find a way to stop that, as even if I turned and attacked them, I seemed to always miss, and if I moved, someone else did it again to me.)

All in all, this is -not- going to be a game I'll buy. Thanks for the demo, fools.