It’s an HDR technique the developers came up with to allow the RSX to utilize HDR + AA simultaneously (costs shading power, but with such results who cares) and while signs of aliasing were noticeable in the E3 '06 build they were so minor and did little to detract from the impressive HDR lighting and art design that it wasn’t worth complaining about and only the most unreasonable of reviewers would deduct for such if it is still present in the final game.

The texture and shader work in the game is very smartly done. The particle effects are just perfect. The physics in the game are also really impressive. The look of Nariko’s hair (which is controlled by an SPE) as it flows looks cool to say the least. Then there of course is the impressive group enemy AI which keeps the fights looking very lively and choreographed like an action movie. Last, but not least you have the most impressive aspect of Heavenly Sword… the incredible combat animations.

The developers recently stated that there are around 1,000 of these different animations for the main character and if that wasn’t enough the bosses are said to have moves just as spectacular as the main character’s arsenal. A nice way of summing up what Heavenly Sword is like is to say it’s the closest we’ve come to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon being achieved in a videogame.

They say they are targeting the final version of the game to run at 30fps whereas the animations will run at 60fps. The biggest shock however is that there is zero collision detection in this game when she’s backing up near a wall or while she’s attacking enemies. So how do they make it appear that she’s actually hitting people? They use closed timed animations so what you are seeing isn’t the result of the enemy being hit, but a result of the developers timing it so well that the enemies body will react accordingly to the type of hit as if he was actually touched. Not too shabby a way of getting away without having to do collision detection on the CPU hence freeing it up for other things.