[merylsilverburg]

I finished playing "Heavenly Sword" yesterday, thankfully it was relatively short. It's really does remind me of "God of War" and although there are some nice differences and all, it still is an average game to me. What I enjoyed were the different combat styles and the amount of moves to perform (although the controls seem to be slightly fussy including the Sixaxis aim). The voice acting was excellent and the visuals were a beauty - the ending battle with those hundreds of soldiers dying in real time was astounding and a blast to play.

However, I couldn't stand the extreme close-ups during cutscenes. We're not blind, we CAN see the nice and realistic facial expressions of each characters, thank you, no need to zoom in so close like we're trying to examine their pores. It started to piss me off somewhere in between playing. It made me wonder if I'm playing a game or experiencing a tech demo on how achievable facial expressions can be on the PS3. In the same line of this, the gestures and over-the-top personalities of the enemies like Bohan, Whiptail, and Fox were annoying. Again, yes, we CAN see how fluid the body gestures and movements are, there's no need to have each of them twitch, squirm, or twist in every stupid cutscene. What makes it worse is the fact the developers were trying to disguise this through their lame attempt at dialogue and humor. Having Fox appear and disappear before Bohan resulting in Bohan saying "There's something about that man that I don't entirely trust", having some unnecessary bantering between Fox and Whiptail only so Whiptail can hiss and stick out her tongue...good grief.

I also tried out "Folklore" which I really like although I wish the font were in a different style so I wouldn't get headaches. Haven't played much but the story and combat (absorbing Folk IDs to use them instead of killing them) so far is intriuging.