Enslaved: Odyssey to the West demo was released on the PS3 last night. I played it... the facial animation was one of the best I have ever seen. Props to Ninja Theory!
meh, facials were nice if not as nice (a tad worse?) than in Heavenly Sword.
no real huge advancement there, but its not like its needed rly?
loved the last pose on the roll-forward animation, where he stays low to the ground kinda for like 3 frames before going back to his basic idle pose.
excellent body animations, super well implemented. totally more impressed over those than the facials. more the style really, lots of games have super animations, this one just has a sweet style and pasing to it. very nice animation design, if there is such a thing, hehe.
The animation was nice but it seemed to be a re-skin of Prince of Persia game play wise! The environments and atmospherics were a let down too, the textures were really murky and noisy as well. I wasn't as impressed as I though I would be as Andy Serkis, Alex Garland and Nitin Sawney were all involved. Ninja Theory seem to have a talent for credible worlds and fairly of-kilter settings but we will see if they can nail an original game-play mechanic this time around. Fingers crossed because I want it to be good.
the art was great, but i hated the camera, and the gameplay was average at best, sure it's just the opening level, but it really didn't convince me to part with my money.
I thought it was pretty good, I agree about the annoying camera. One thing that really annoyed me though was it doesn't let you plummet to your death. all the edges are blocked by invisible walls.
I checked out the demo and unfortunately didn't think much to it at all.
Firstly, the visuals are just horrible in my opinion. I saw the trailer and thought it looked awesome but in game it's just nasty I think.
I think it's the textures that cause the problem. I'm playing on a 32" HDTV, so not a huge set but I honestly thought someone had screwed with the picture settings. The entire game looks like the texture artist did this after finishing each texture:
I mean, the assets are ok, but the textures look horrific and just ruin the whole thing for me. I'm not sure if it's the engine or the post processing they used (if any) but it is a bit of a visual nightmare.
And to add to all this, gameplay was just a big pile of average.
Maybe I'm just jaded for recently playing the likes of Darksiders, God of War, Bayonetta etc. I think if you're gonna enter this genre, do it very very well. The bar is set so high now, three years ago this game might been ok but now I don't think it can even compete.
For example, the ledge swinging/jumping just felt so clunky and 'on rails' than the same kinda thing in Uncharted.
Wow I definitely slammed this. I was looking forward to it though and it's a real disappointment.
Pretty animations are all well and good but it doesn't change the fact that it's NOT A MONKEY MAGIC GAME.
I mean really, why muddy up the Journey to the West storyline with robots and other assorted malarky when you have a beloved cheesy-as-all-hell 70s version of the actual story that would be ideal for translation to a game. You have a group of four characters each with their own signature weapon, magic and style, travelling through a variety of interesting environments and fighting a bunch of weak enemies before fighting a bigger boss enemy in pretty much every episode. What were they thinking?
I really enjoyed this game overall. The artwork, story, and great character interaction was probably what kept me playing through. The gameplay is hit and miss for me, definitely a lot of issues like the ones mentioned. I did however like the fighting mechanics and found combat to be a ton of fun.
I really liked this game. I have mad respect for Ninja Theory and they are probably one of my favorite devs in this current generation. They really know how to create an interesting world with great characters and awesome animation.
I haven't played it yet. But what interests me from what I've watched is that it carries that old mario/crash bandicoot style gameplay. Just in a more heroic action sci-fi theme.
I also recommend Enslaved. I was unsure of the ending but the journey to that point was solid. I did find it got repetative a bit, there were some difficulty spikes. Overall though good game.
Replies
no real huge advancement there, but its not like its needed rly?
loved the last pose on the roll-forward animation, where he stays low to the ground kinda for like 3 frames before going back to his basic idle pose.
excellent body animations, super well implemented. totally more impressed over those than the facials. more the style really, lots of games have super animations, this one just has a sweet style and pasing to it. very nice animation design, if there is such a thing, hehe.
No, not a huge advancement. But they seem to make a good example for others to perhaps follow. They did an inspiring work.
Anyways this game looks good.
Firstly, the visuals are just horrible in my opinion. I saw the trailer and thought it looked awesome but in game it's just nasty I think.
I think it's the textures that cause the problem. I'm playing on a 32" HDTV, so not a huge set but I honestly thought someone had screwed with the picture settings. The entire game looks like the texture artist did this after finishing each texture:
Photoshop: Contrast - +50, Saturation - +100, Unsharp Mask x 25, Image Size : 128x128.
I mean, the assets are ok, but the textures look horrific and just ruin the whole thing for me. I'm not sure if it's the engine or the post processing they used (if any) but it is a bit of a visual nightmare.
And to add to all this, gameplay was just a big pile of average.
Maybe I'm just jaded for recently playing the likes of Darksiders, God of War, Bayonetta etc. I think if you're gonna enter this genre, do it very very well. The bar is set so high now, three years ago this game might been ok but now I don't think it can even compete.
For example, the ledge swinging/jumping just felt so clunky and 'on rails' than the same kinda thing in Uncharted.
Wow I definitely slammed this. I was looking forward to it though and it's a real disappointment.
tehee.. he said facials...
/runs away like a little schoolboy..
I mean really, why muddy up the Journey to the West storyline with robots and other assorted malarky when you have a beloved cheesy-as-all-hell 70s version of the actual story that would be ideal for translation to a game. You have a group of four characters each with their own signature weapon, magic and style, travelling through a variety of interesting environments and fighting a bunch of weak enemies before fighting a bigger boss enemy in pretty much every episode. What were they thinking?
I would like to play this eventually.
Where do you guys dig these threads out all the time? :P
And we still don't have a proper Monkey Magic game.