Itagaki is niet onder de indruk van Heavenly Sword

Morthill
Tomonobu Itagaki, bedenker van de Dead or Alive-serie, deed in Electronic Gaming Monthly de uitspraak dat hij niet echt onder de indruk is van PS3-titel Heavenly Sword, een game die door velen als potentieel "game of the year" wordt gezien.

I've never played a good game where the developers put a big icon of the button you're supposed to press onscreen... I look at Heavenly Sword and it seems really half-assed, because it's asking you to do all these button-timing sequences but you are not getting much payoff from it.

Kyle Shubel, producer van de game, had ook een antwoord klaar:

My response to Mr. Itagaki would be that the intent of the Hero sequences is to empower the player to experience events that would be nearly impossible to play in a natural platforming state... for example, making the player run down ropes, leaping from rope to rope as they're being cut from underneath you, all while dodging other objects — that would be a frustrating experience to 99 percent of our users if we were to force them to do that manually.