Ninja Theory's Heavenly Sword is arguably the prettiest and most appealing overall package of the year, and they had plenty of help from the powerful Havok physics SDK and animation engines. The game is doing relatively well in terms of sales, but according to PSU.com, Havok has decided to step forward and toss more praise in the game's direction.
“Heavenly Sword is a fantastic game on a number of fronts. An emotionally rendering storyline, a beautiful heroine, a wide range of villains, epic scale destruction, in a beautiful environment, with the realism of Hollywood visuals offers the player an incredible gaming experience, especially on PlayStation 3,” said Havok CEO, David O’Meara.
“This game is a great example of how a talented development team can use cutting edge physics and animation technology to bring games to a whole new level and leverage the power of Havok’s PlayStation 3 optimizations. We are very proud to be involved in the latest evolution of this next generation console game.”
All kinds of things seem to be possible in this new generation, and Ninja Theory co-founder and CTO Mike Ball added to O'Meara's comments. He said that Havok allowed the team to "enhance gameplay" and let them "create characters that responded to a complex physical world, with a rich set of physical interactions." Much has been made of the PS3's cell processor – and the debate still rages as to the hardware's true potential – but Ball is obviously impressed with both Havok and the Cell. He said they were "extremely happy" with the way the engine let them "fully utilize the spectrum of available processing power" on the PS3's Cell.
Without any doubt, Heavenly Sword proves what developers can do if they put their minds to unraveling the PS3's complex architecture. And there's still a long way to go; we fully expect to see better and better productions on the PS3 as time goes on.
Related Game(s): Heavenly Sword