I'm kind of tired (been up for 27 hours so far @.@), but I'll try to throw in some impressions and stuff from this fun event. Bear in mind on points 3&4 I'm not much of a technical buff, and things like framerates don't stick out to me.
1. Joe was playing with a skin on War; it reminded me more of the original artwork, lots of gray ridges, not sure if that's what it was. I noted that the skins do not carry into the cutscenes, which is disappointing. Also no idea if it was unlockable or tied to a certain retailer or DLC.
2. Saw the Gamestop exclusive weapon - nothing too exciting.
3. Both versions seemed to have slight framerate hiccups, but they seemed infrequent and pretty smoothed out to me.
4. The PS3 version was almost certainly worse looking. I don't know what it was; even the cutscenes seemed very... grainy? And I swear even the animations looked clumsier, but maybe that was just me. I still found it to look excellent, personally.
5. In regards to the last points: I watched Joe play the 360 version, I played the first level on the PS3, then I played the next two levels on the 360.
6. This game is going to be
fucking awesome.
Impressions:
The game has proven more of a challenge than I'd expected it. I was dying quite frequently in the second and third demos (the third one, I was told, was quite early on in the game). I'm very happy with the challenge, although some of it seemed to derive from excessively high HP on enemies. There are difficulty levels though, I think, if you don't enjoy that.
The dungeon in the third demo was fantastic. The design itself wasn't particularly noteworthy; there was a lot of running down a corridor for something, turning around, and going back. But there were
loads of puzzles, and even boss and mini-boss fights prove to be a puzzle. It was
large, too. I ended up spending probably 2 hours in that dungeon :lol
The art is fantastic. Despite the over-the-top epic scale of
everything it has very vibrant, rich colors. The environments vary from sparse and empty to pretty good looking, so far as I've seen. It never seems like it detracts from anything even in the emptier spots, though.
There is a shitload to do. Loads to collect, loads of weapons or methods of attack, loads of upgrades. They said it averages at about 25-30 hours and while I'm sure the rule of exaggeration always applies... I'm almost willing to believe them, based on the great dungeon I explored and the incredible amount of content.
The voices are fantastic. But you should already know that.
Principal complaints I had (besides the ocassional odd bug):
+ Lots of things are meant to be interacted with in the environment, but don't stick out at all, which led me and others to sometimes wandering lost until noticing it. Perhaps the eye will be accustomed to these things as the gameplay continues, but I wasn't so sure.
+ Controls are slightly "off". I and the guy next to me seemed to die a lot by falling lava, because we ended up walking into it instead of jumping. It can be accustomed to, but shouldn't have to be.
+ Too easily swarmed. In the second demo especially, enemies were crawling up the cliffside behind you whilst you were meant to be wielding a gun which makes turning around very impractical.
On the whole... I fucking
loved it. Definitely lives up to my expectation of a God of Zelda game. My time with the game has confirmed the day one purchase. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find out if it has NG+.
John said:
I was talking about the part where the NPC tells you to bring him 400 souls.
That's in the very first level; it basically serves to make sure you do a few other specific things so you learn how to dash, guard, etc. while showing you that you can exchange souls for upgrades from that demon/angel/thing/guy. I saw no sign of fetch quests in the other two demos.