Havok toasts Heavenly Sword

New PS3 game Heavenly Sword hit retail last week, and middleware company Havok has been praising developer Ninja Theory’s use of its Complete tools suite.

The PlayStation 3 exclusive was developed using Havok’s physics SDK and animation system, which supports the game’s scenes of large-scale destruction.

“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,” commented David O’Meara, CEO of Havok.

“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.”

Mike Ball, co-founder and CTO at Ninja Theory, added: “Havok Complete allowed us to enhance game-play in Heavenly Sword by enabling us to create characters that responded to a complex physical world, with a rich set of physical interactions. The characters respond in a convincing way to physical forces they experience, such as getting back up in a realistic manner when they have fallen down or negotiating obstacles they encounter.

“Additionally we were extremely happy with the ability of Havok Complete to fully utilize the spectrum of available processing power on the PlayStation 3’s Cell processor. As developers, it truly enabled us to create the level of destruction you would expect from a next-generation martial arts epic, especially in scenes with high character count.”