Heavenly Sword & Ninja Gaiden 2
I beat both of them recently. Both are action adventure games, but one is more adventure than the other. (Keep in mind that I wrote a lot of negative stuff, but it doesn't mean in any way that these are "terrible" games. I'm just a lil too tired at the moment to cover everything in the games. I'm just writing what's coming off the top of my head.)
Ninja Gaiden 2 - The game is a lot more action than adventure and focuses heavily on a linear path with some minor exploration, and an intense combat system. I would say the game is divided into two different types of combat; boss battle and regular enemy battle. Regular enemy battle uses your entire assortment of weapons and focuses on you juggling your best combos, whereas boss battles uses either ranged or melee combat with a select few combos to overcome the situation. Usually the boss battles involve some sort of pattern or puzzle element that can be found in other games, but for the most part, still surrounds the combo mechanic from vs enemy combat.
Anyways, to beat the game, I had to continue over 180 times. However, I was playing on the harder of the two starting difficulties, and I had a moderate to high score comparatively. In any case, the game's seemingly primary focus is the vs regular enemy combat. Anything else feels kinda clumsy and sloppily put together as it totally breaks any sort of pacing or feel between events. Whenever you engage in vs enemy combat, it's always a struggle for survival and you're "inspired" to basically rip the enemy to shreds with the very generous variety of weapons in the game. When Ryu performs "chiburi" which is when a swordsman wipes his blade clean of the blood from his enemies (I think) is a very powerful and emotive giving the player immense sense of satisfaction. This is probably the best part of the game.
However, environments although intentionally linear and beautifully stylized lack any sort of engagement or realism. Sure they're modeled and textured to look and feel a certain way (i.e. a city looks like a city), but it's devoid of any sort of soul besides the "fantasy" element of it. I think one of the things which is almost indescribable but I'll do my best to, is the fact the game feels unstable in such the way that you can die without really being able to do much in certain instances. And in other times, you feel like you obliterated the enemy. Although, same situation, you get destroyed. It could be because that there are a billion things like explosions, ninjas and shit flying around that it's pretty hard to balance or expect what can happen out of that.
Overall, I really enjoyed the game despite the game's many flaws. I can understand a lot of the design decisions made for the game, and I commend them for making a game this difficulty in this day and age. Oh yeah, the bosses are very gay and very random. The ending was dumb too. Thanks Itagaki.
Heavenly Sword - This game might as well be called The Andy Serkis Sword, or Andy Serkis Wants The Heavenly Sword, because he plays one (or I'm pretty sure TWO) bad guy(s). He has so much screen time, it rivals how much the main character; Nariko, gets in the entire game. I would even say it's a 50/50 cut.
Anyways, the game is VERY dramatic. And I don't mean dramatic in the sense that it's epic, but more like it's very focused on dramatic PERFORMANCE. It's all about the characters' emotional projections towards the viewer or towards another character. I would say the characters are pretty convincing in how the characters are feeling or what they're thinking. Unfortunately, that's about how deep the characters get. They don't go beyond anything more than that such as explaining where the characters are from, how the characters relate to the world they exist in, how the characters develop and evolve. In fact, Nariko goes through a development/evolution, but you don't even really realize this evolution till the game tells you that she went through that evolution. Maybe it's the fact that it's such an obvious evolution for a main lead heroin or hero that you wouldn't even notice that sort of change anyway. This is a weakness of the game's presentation and sole purpose. It's kinda like, walking into a movie after the introductory part, and all the characters are already going through the enduring tasks and events, and then you see them come out of their struggles. That's what Heavenly Sword feels like. There's potential, but it's just not flourished enough unfortunately.
The combat is very interesting and has potential, but feels mechanical. You have combos, but I never really had any use for them since half of them didn't really work anyway. Enemies block, but you have no idea how to break the blocking so you can actually start a decent combo. Instead, you have to counter the enemy's attacks dependant on the different combat stances you're in. So at some parts you would stand around for seconds waiting for an enemy to attack so you can counter. Sometimes nothing happens so you just start mashing buttons so something WILL happen. I guess this would be okay, if the game was really all about Nariko's combat system. Unfortunately, it's NOT.
I would say the game's action can be divided into 3 different parts; shooting stuff, sword fighting, and throwing hats. Yes, you're throwing Asian styled hats around the environment to do puzzles and hit enemies in the face. It's not like it's optional stuff; it's entirely mandatory. So for example, you're sword fighting, then all of a sudden, the next level you're playing as the game's secondary character who acts like a total psychopath that thinks she's a cat that eats worms. You shoot stuff with your crossbow using the six axis motion controls. Then you jump back to Nariko sequences, and then throw hats around bouncing it off walls and random crap, hitting gongs and shit to open doors.
I can understand why they designed the game to be this way and it's probably cause they wanted to tell a story in an interesting way; understanding different facets of each of the characters. Unfortunately, it really breaks up the gameplay and specially when the game is so freaking short (I would say a good 4 to 5 hours. :S), you're never really given a chance to get used to anything and figure out anything. The game also never explains the benefits of combos. You can get them and it introduces the basic concepts, but honestly, you can just kinda fumble through the action and eventually beat the game. I suppose they want EVERYBODY to be able to beat the game, but then honestly there are some things which are just incredibly frustrating...like the last boss. Certain things don't allow for much room for mistake and I thought was pretty rigid in how many mistakes you can make before you fail the sequence, then you have to repeat it all over again. Maybe it's Ninja Theory's way of artificially extending the length of the game.
The game has incredible presentation, but it lacks the soul (game play sense) and consistency. Inevitably, it feels like a jumbly mess. What is in the game, can be compelling and it was enough motivation for me to find out more about the characters. Unfortunately, when I beat the game, I REALLY got the feeling of "oh man, that's it...?" not because I was yearning for more, but probably because Ninja Theory had to cut SO much from the game that what was published is all that was remotely polished or working. Disappointing since Nariko's character and performance is probably one of the most memorable female leads in a long time.
Ninja Gaiden 2 - The game is a lot more action than adventure and focuses heavily on a linear path with some minor exploration, and an intense combat system. I would say the game is divided into two different types of combat; boss battle and regular enemy battle. Regular enemy battle uses your entire assortment of weapons and focuses on you juggling your best combos, whereas boss battles uses either ranged or melee combat with a select few combos to overcome the situation. Usually the boss battles involve some sort of pattern or puzzle element that can be found in other games, but for the most part, still surrounds the combo mechanic from vs enemy combat.
Anyways, to beat the game, I had to continue over 180 times. However, I was playing on the harder of the two starting difficulties, and I had a moderate to high score comparatively. In any case, the game's seemingly primary focus is the vs regular enemy combat. Anything else feels kinda clumsy and sloppily put together as it totally breaks any sort of pacing or feel between events. Whenever you engage in vs enemy combat, it's always a struggle for survival and you're "inspired" to basically rip the enemy to shreds with the very generous variety of weapons in the game. When Ryu performs "chiburi" which is when a swordsman wipes his blade clean of the blood from his enemies (I think) is a very powerful and emotive giving the player immense sense of satisfaction. This is probably the best part of the game.
However, environments although intentionally linear and beautifully stylized lack any sort of engagement or realism. Sure they're modeled and textured to look and feel a certain way (i.e. a city looks like a city), but it's devoid of any sort of soul besides the "fantasy" element of it. I think one of the things which is almost indescribable but I'll do my best to, is the fact the game feels unstable in such the way that you can die without really being able to do much in certain instances. And in other times, you feel like you obliterated the enemy. Although, same situation, you get destroyed. It could be because that there are a billion things like explosions, ninjas and shit flying around that it's pretty hard to balance or expect what can happen out of that.
Overall, I really enjoyed the game despite the game's many flaws. I can understand a lot of the design decisions made for the game, and I commend them for making a game this difficulty in this day and age. Oh yeah, the bosses are very gay and very random. The ending was dumb too. Thanks Itagaki.
Heavenly Sword - This game might as well be called The Andy Serkis Sword, or Andy Serkis Wants The Heavenly Sword, because he plays one (or I'm pretty sure TWO) bad guy(s). He has so much screen time, it rivals how much the main character; Nariko, gets in the entire game. I would even say it's a 50/50 cut.
Anyways, the game is VERY dramatic. And I don't mean dramatic in the sense that it's epic, but more like it's very focused on dramatic PERFORMANCE. It's all about the characters' emotional projections towards the viewer or towards another character. I would say the characters are pretty convincing in how the characters are feeling or what they're thinking. Unfortunately, that's about how deep the characters get. They don't go beyond anything more than that such as explaining where the characters are from, how the characters relate to the world they exist in, how the characters develop and evolve. In fact, Nariko goes through a development/evolution, but you don't even really realize this evolution till the game tells you that she went through that evolution. Maybe it's the fact that it's such an obvious evolution for a main lead heroin or hero that you wouldn't even notice that sort of change anyway. This is a weakness of the game's presentation and sole purpose. It's kinda like, walking into a movie after the introductory part, and all the characters are already going through the enduring tasks and events, and then you see them come out of their struggles. That's what Heavenly Sword feels like. There's potential, but it's just not flourished enough unfortunately.
The combat is very interesting and has potential, but feels mechanical. You have combos, but I never really had any use for them since half of them didn't really work anyway. Enemies block, but you have no idea how to break the blocking so you can actually start a decent combo. Instead, you have to counter the enemy's attacks dependant on the different combat stances you're in. So at some parts you would stand around for seconds waiting for an enemy to attack so you can counter. Sometimes nothing happens so you just start mashing buttons so something WILL happen. I guess this would be okay, if the game was really all about Nariko's combat system. Unfortunately, it's NOT.
I would say the game's action can be divided into 3 different parts; shooting stuff, sword fighting, and throwing hats. Yes, you're throwing Asian styled hats around the environment to do puzzles and hit enemies in the face. It's not like it's optional stuff; it's entirely mandatory. So for example, you're sword fighting, then all of a sudden, the next level you're playing as the game's secondary character who acts like a total psychopath that thinks she's a cat that eats worms. You shoot stuff with your crossbow using the six axis motion controls. Then you jump back to Nariko sequences, and then throw hats around bouncing it off walls and random crap, hitting gongs and shit to open doors.
I can understand why they designed the game to be this way and it's probably cause they wanted to tell a story in an interesting way; understanding different facets of each of the characters. Unfortunately, it really breaks up the gameplay and specially when the game is so freaking short (I would say a good 4 to 5 hours. :S), you're never really given a chance to get used to anything and figure out anything. The game also never explains the benefits of combos. You can get them and it introduces the basic concepts, but honestly, you can just kinda fumble through the action and eventually beat the game. I suppose they want EVERYBODY to be able to beat the game, but then honestly there are some things which are just incredibly frustrating...like the last boss. Certain things don't allow for much room for mistake and I thought was pretty rigid in how many mistakes you can make before you fail the sequence, then you have to repeat it all over again. Maybe it's Ninja Theory's way of artificially extending the length of the game.
The game has incredible presentation, but it lacks the soul (game play sense) and consistency. Inevitably, it feels like a jumbly mess. What is in the game, can be compelling and it was enough motivation for me to find out more about the characters. Unfortunately, when I beat the game, I REALLY got the feeling of "oh man, that's it...?" not because I was yearning for more, but probably because Ninja Theory had to cut SO much from the game that what was published is all that was remotely polished or working. Disappointing since Nariko's character and performance is probably one of the most memorable female leads in a long time.