DoA’s Itagaki: Heavenly Sword is “half-assed”

Now that we all know what Dead or Alive creator Tomonobu Itagaki thinks of Tekken, here comes another news tidbit that tells us what he thinks of another noteworthy video game: Ninja Theory‘s Heavenly Sword. Itagaki-san offers a few choice words about the epic game:

I’ve never played a good game where the developers put a big icon of the button you’re supposed to press onscreen… I look at Heavenly Sword and it seems really half-assed, because it’s asking you to do all these button-timing sequences but you are not getting much payoff from it.

While it’s not as succinct as his “Tekken sucks” quote, it delivers quite the same blow. Ninja Theory’s Kyle Shubel, however, has a few words of his own to shove at Itagaki’s way:

My response to Mr. Itagaki would be that the intent of the Hero sequences is to empower the player to experience events that would be nearly impossible to play in a natural platforming state… for example, making the player run down ropes, leaping from rope to rope as they’re being cut from underneath you, all while dodging other objects — that would be a frustrating experience to 99 percent of our users if we were to force them to do that manually.

With most gaming developers and producers giving bland regards and salutations to each other, it certainly is refreshing to find them turning to Hollywood from time to time to liven up the gaming news. Maybe we’ll get to see some of them in future Jerry Springer shows.

Via Kotaku

Now that we all know what Dead or Alive creator Tomonobu Itagaki thinks of Tekken, here comes another news tidbit that tells us what he thinks of another noteworthy video game: Ninja Theory‘s Heavenly Sword. Itagaki-san offers a few choice words about the epic game:

I’ve never played a good game where the developers put a big icon of the button you’re supposed to press onscreen… I look at Heavenly Sword and it seems really half-assed, because it’s asking you to do all these button-timing sequences but you are not getting much payoff from it.

While it’s not as succinct as his “Tekken sucks” quote, it delivers quite the same blow. Ninja Theory’s Kyle Shubel, however, has a few words of his own to shove at Itagaki’s way:

My response to Mr. Itagaki would be that the intent of the Hero sequences is to empower the player to experience events that would be nearly impossible to play in a natural platforming state… for example, making the player run down ropes, leaping from rope to rope as they’re being cut from underneath you, all while dodging other objects — that would be a frustrating experience to 99 percent of our users if we were to force them to do that manually.

With most gaming developers and producers giving bland regards and salutations to each other, it certainly is refreshing to find them turning to Hollywood from time to time to liven up the gaming news. Maybe we’ll get to see some of them in future Jerry Springer shows.

Via Kotaku