Lair and Heavenly Sword impressions

kotaku:lair said:

Lair keeps surprising and disappointing me. And I know I'm not the only one. When I came back from playing the game this last time around, I told Mike McWhertor that it felt like a mixed bag to me and Mike said he was giving up on the game, at least for now.

I know how he feels. I really want to like Lair, but it just can't seem to deliver a consistent performance for me. The controls take a lot of getting used to, the targeting is confusing, the objective arrow doesn't seem to help me and there's so much going on in the game at any one time that I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do.

That means one of two things, I think: Either, the game is just poorly designed and in its current form has major issues or it's a deep gaming experience that you can't just drop into and expect to understand how to play. I'm holding out hope its the latter rather than the former, but honestly, I just can't tell at this point, putting Lair in the same mixed bag category as Heavenly Sword for me. The only difference is that I suspect Heavenly will come through in the end and I fear Lair may not at this point. Brian Crecente

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kotaku:Heavenly Sword said:

I have a confession to make: I never got a chance to play Heavenly Sword at E3 last year. It was on my list, definitely on my list. I really liked the way it looked and watching other people play it, it seemed fun, but the lines were mammoth for that particular game, so I gave up.

So this week was first chance to get my hands on the game, which was running two new segments from E3. The playable bits included a new cinematic intro that featured the main character and her side-kick, a cute pixie of a girl dressed in a leather cat outfit. The demo started out with a scene very reminiscent of God of War, with the player having to press the right button sequence to pull off some special moves, in this case running along ropes the width of a car and then landing among some enemies.

The fight was very button-mashing heavy, at least for me, it seemed to lack the finesse I was hoping this game was going to have. I felt less like I was engaged in a back-and-forth duel with swords and more like I was just sort of flailing wildly. After taking out the bad guys, the game had me do another short button matching sequence and then dropped me in amid some more bad guys.

Again, I didn't feel like mixing things up in the battle, between my three stances, was really necessary. I tried pulling off style moves and aerial attacks, but only seemed to succeed when I wasn't trying to do them.

I suspect I will end up liking this game, but I'm less sure than I was before I had a chance to play through a chunk. For now, the gameplay seems too generic to make the game fun. But I don't think it's easy to assess a game like this with just a few minutes of play. Brian Crecente

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