Interview With Rustry Hearts Producer Mark Hill

Otaku Gambit was lucky enough to land an interview with Perfect World Entertainment’s Mark Hill so he could answer a few questions about the upcoming title “Rusty Hearts.”

The Interview started off with an introduction to Rusty Hearts by Mark. For those of you who do not know, Rusty Hearts is an Anime-inspired, Dungeon-crawling Beat ‘Em Up, and you should definitely check it out. Also, you can sign up for the beta here…

Transcripting this took several hours, as recording with a Sony IC Recorder ICD-PX312 over a Samsung Rant’s speakerphone doesn’t provide the best quality of sound, so we opted for transcript only.

Info contained therein is some story points, PvP, customization, development difficulties, and other neat snippets. Enjoy.

Mark Hill
Rusty Hearts is an Anime-style, Cel-shaded, Beat ‘Em Up/Hack ‘N Slash Dungeon Crawler’s what we call it. Kind of an Action RPG. The story revolves around these three characters and this ongoing battle between vampires, humans, and half-vampires, plus there’s a lot of sub-plots in there, too, which we’ll get into later. The core gameplay revolves around Dungeon Exploration and Dungeon Crawling. It’s all about getting in with your party of up to four people, fighting your way through dungeons, leveling up, grabbing loot, all that type of fun stuff.

It’s going to be a really social experience where you can get in with your friends very quickly, play through some dungeons, and then move on. The game has two different areas: one is the dungeons where all the action takes place, and the other is the outer hub-world, which is where the story takes place, you get your quests, and talk to the NPCs. It is broken down between action and a story that is really cool.

Devil May Cry and Castlevania are probably the main two main ones that the developers cite as inspiration. As far as the team-based beat ’em up-like level-up style is very Castle Crashers or old-school-style brawlers like TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), you know, the old ones like that where it’s meant to be people working together fighting through dungeons and fighting enemies. Devil May Cry for the gameplay, the over the top, hugely stylistic, dark, gothic theme to it, same thing with Castlevania, getting to explore different areas for the castle as you gain abilities, gaining access to even more of the caslte, which keeps the game fresh.

Luby / David
Sounds awesome! We’re already looking forward to the beta!

Mark Hill
We are looking forward to it, going to be alot of fun, but different than anything we have, in the fact that it is super-fast and is much more console-based than our other games, since you can actually play it with any of your Logitech or 360 controllers, but you can also play it with the keyboard very easily. We are really looking forward to it because it is so unique and so different from our other games. We really think it is going to bring a lot of new players, and the old players will appreciate the uniquness.

As you guys know, we were at Anime Expo, HUGE anime influence on the game, the cel shading looks really anime-like. We are very proud of it. We have gotten great feedback on it; it’s really cool to not only see the gaming community get behind it but the anime fans as well.

Luby Hoover
I really like the stylized art you have, right up my alley.

Mark Hill
Yeah, it is cool, especially in the dungeons if you have a party of four people using their skills and powers. It’s really cool, with this over-the-top style; it’s just great with the cel-shaded graphics, which I am a huge fan of. It keeps everything really bright, crisp, and clean.

David Hoover
Well, this is an interview, and we do have to ask a few questions for the readers.

Mark Hill
Sure.

Luby Hoover
At this point, how long has Rusty Hearts been in development?

Mark Hill
Rusty Hearts began development in Spring of 2008, actually, so it has been about three years now.

David Hoover
Lot of hard work coming to light now!

Mark Hill
*Laughs* Yeah, exactly!

So, there are a lot of aspects of the game. It’s not just the fighting; there is the whole story and lore that goes along with it, plus the PvP, the characters themselves, and all the different types of enemies, different look and style of the dungeon, there is a lot content. A lot of time and effort has been spent on it, which you will be able to see when you are able to play the game.

Luby Hoover
I didn’t know about the PVP. Can you elaborate on that?

Mark Hill
Yeah, definitely, so there’re really cool PVP modes. First of all, there is the Solo and Team Survival, which is like kind of a King of the Ring, brawl-style thing with the last man standing, which can be either team-based, 2 teams of up to 4 people, so 8 people fighting total, and the first team to knock out all the other team’s players wins, or you can just have an all-out brawl with up to 8 people where it’s just like I said, Last Man Standing.

There’s also Team Deathmatch, which, you know, lets you kill people, and they die and respawn, and you get points as you go through it. The one who gets the most points wins.

Then, we’ve got what we call Leader Mode where there’re two teams and one guy is designated as the leader on each team, and whoever kills the other team’s leader first wins.

Then, there’s a Tag Team Mode where 2 teams of people will fight only 1 at a time and as soon as 1 guy gets knocked out, the next teammate comes in to continue the fight. And it just continues on like that until the Last Man Standing and that team wins.

So, it has a fully featured PVP side of it. All your stats are tracked, your wins/losses/damage, everything like that is tracked.

There are two ways to do it. At the start, there’ll be what we call Room for Normal PvP, where you will go in and you will either start your own room or join another room. And anyone will be able to join, friends or you can join randomly or random people can join. You can have up to 8 people in a room and choose different modes.

There’s unique PvP Arenas for all the fights that you get to choose. And there’s also going to be a lighter-style PvP, which has all of your stats and it’ll rank you and automatically set you up with other players of a similar skill level as you. Then, if you win or lose you go up and down the ladder from there.

David Hoover
As we’ve already established, the game doesn’t look like much else out there on the market; was this a goal you had upon starting development or something that came later?

Mark Hill
No, absolutely from the very begining. We wanted something fresh, something that people haven’t seen before, ya know? So the look of the game, the cel-shaded animation specifically. It serves 2 purposes. 1: it looks great. It’s really bright, it’s really clean, and it just looks really good and unique. But also, it doesn’t have huge system requirements. So, it being a free-to-play game, you know we want to lower the barrier of entry to the game. We want as many people to be able to play it as possible, so cel-shaded graphics are great because they don’t require huge system resources. It runs pretty well almost on any computer.

So, just on the very outset of development, 1 of the main goals was to make a unique game that anyone could get into very quick and easy.

Luby Hoover
You can alter the character’s appearance in the game; can you give an estimate as to how deep this is or how many outfits there are in this game?

Mark Hill
Yeah, so as you know, the game will launch with the pre-made characters. There will be items that are gender or character-locked, It is not a traditional MMORPG where you build the character from the ground up. Because of the strong narative of the game, the characters all have their own stories and backstories and playstyles. But at the same time, we wanted to player to feel like the character was their own and not just a cookie-cutter character that everyone else in the world is playing. So, there are two ways you can outfit to customize your character. It’s what I call, “One is Forms, the other is Function.”

Function-wise, there is Gear. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of pieces of Gear, and it ranges from weapons to armor, boots, gloves… Now, the Gear does not change the look of our character; it only changes their stats. So, if you want a characte that is much more heavy on magic, like boosting their spells’ damage, you could equip Gear just for that, Defense or Offence as well, so you can really Gear up your character acording to your playstyle, and you are always picking up new Gear, and whatever you don’t want, you can trade with players, or sell to NPCs for in-game gold.

As far as Forms, the combinations are more or less endless, but there are probably a couple hundred items, and there are different sets; for example, there is a Cowboy set that has a hat, pants, shirt, and boots, so you can basically match those with other sets. Each character has their own unique outfits. For example, Angela, being the girl, has her own set of outfits that only she can wear, and then Frantz, the main character, has his own costumes, And you can get those through quests or the in-game cash shop, and with those, you can mix and match the pieces or wear the full set.

There ae a few costumes that are full sets, not just pieces, such as the bear you might have seen in the videos. That is an example of a full-body suit.

David Hoover
I have seen the animal suits in there; I liked them, great touch!

Mark Hill
Yeah, that is how the players will be able to make their characters unique!

David Hoover
What has been the most challenging part of development for Rusty Hearts?

Mark Hill
The most challenging part of development has probably been localization; we are bringing the game to North America, so there is a lot to be done with translation, and because the game has been developed in Korea, there are some elements in it that are specific to Korea. There are some quests that really don’t resonate with the North American crowd, or items that we are really unsure of, so it has been a bit of a process to make sure that English-speaking players can completely understand the game, and are able to connect to it on a Western level. It has been fun; there has been some things that we left in, those kind of quirky moments. One thing about the game is that it does not take itself too seriously. Even though it’s about this battle and it has these melancholy characters and storyline and a dark look to it, it’s really kind of tongue-in-cheek with some really quirky and fun dialog, which we have played around a lot with, the items, the things that happen to characters, the quests are really funny and it has a lot of humor in it.

So, even though the whole localization process has been difficult, it has also been a lot of fun and a great learning experience for future titles we do!

Luby Hoover
The game features and brags its online co-op. Will there be team-based attacks or combos?

Mark Hill
At launch, there won’t be any specific combos, which I assume is what you’re are talking about when one person is one character and the other is different, and you can use an attack together, right?

Luby Hoover
Yeah. Something like that.

Mark Hill
There is not a lot of that right now, nothing where they can actually link up, but the characters do have their own distinct playstyles, so if you get into a team of people and you have a diverse group of all the characters, they all work togeather.

For example, Angela, she is the only one with healing spells, and Tude, who is really fast and can get in close and do a lot of damage; however, he takes a lot of damage, too, but is also a little weaker. If they are to be played together, then she can easily stand back because she has a lot of long-range attacks while constantly healing her team, all while the other characters are drawing the enemies away from her.

So, there are a lot of team-based aspects to it, which is cool, but there are no actual link-up attacks.

David Hoover
This is something I have personally been curious about; can you tell us why you decided on the title of “Rusty Hearts?”

Mark Hill
Alright, so that’s been a pretty popular issue. There’s a line in the game, in the very beginning of the game that the main character, Frantz, says…I can’t really reveal a lot in the story right now, but it has to do with the story and Frantz, he’s a half Vampire, right? And he bit one person who was his fiancé. He did it to save her life, but at the same time he did that, he turned her into a Vampire. So there’s a dialogue they have going throughtout the game and one of the things he says at the very beginning is that he can still taste her blood and that it tastes metallic and it’s covering his heart in rust. So, it leads to Frantz’s storyline and it’s just specific lines in the game.

Luby Hoover
With the exceptions of Torchlight and Blacklight: Retribution, Perfect World is mainly known for their MMO-style games. What exactly drove you to do another style of game like Rusty Hearts being so drastically different?

Mark Hill
Well, one of the main criticisms of Perfect World games is what you said: that they focus on fantasy-style MMORPGs, right? So, we really wanted to lead the way in bringing North American players games that they enjoy. North America has a history of this Team-based, Brawler-style gameplay, so Rusty Hearts was seen as a game that North American and English-speaking Western countries would really enjoy, and it really does diversify the library, so it’s just kinda the next step forward for us.

Christine Yeo
Yeah, our big business motto at Perfect World is we truly, truly believe in bringing free-to-play games and not just games that say free-to-play, but we really believe in enhancing the player’s experience and all of our games you can get through the context without spending money. And our business motto is more of microtransaction and customization items.

You see alot of games kind of like Rusty Hearts; you mentioned Torchlight and Blacklight: Retribution, games like that that are usually high quality, but people usually associate them with, “Oh, well, I probably have to pay some money” or “I have to subscribe” in order to play these high quality games, and we’re kind of trying to sort of raise the bar on free-to-play and say “hey, you know, you can have high quality free-to-play games.” And so by having these different games for actually diversifying our portfolio and backing up our whole motto of wanting to bring high-quality free-to-play games to players and really give them a good experience.

David Hoover
Now, this is one thing we’ve already covered, that you can plug your controller straight into your computer and play Rusty Hearts with that; has Perfect World ever considered trying to bring these games to consoles?

Luby Hoover
Like as a PSN download or something like that?

Cristine Yeo
There’s actually emails and discussions, but nothing’s for sure. Right now, we’re just trying to focusing on trying to get Rusty Hearts out the door in Closed Beta with what we have right now. And you know, we’re always looking for new opportunity, so that’s something that has sort of been thought about, but there’s nothing really concrete. No-one’s saying “hey, we’re definitely going to bring this to console” or anything like that yet.

Luby Hoover
The Closed Beta starts later this month as we’ve already covered; can you give us an estimate about when to look forward to the title’s official release?

Mark Hill
Hmm…

Cristine Yeo
We’re thinking…September. We don’t have a specific date. We’re still trying to work out the details and, of course, you know player feedback is very important and that’s one of the reasons why we’ve been working hard to make sure that we’re ready with Closed Beta, so we’re shooting for September but depending on how Closed Beta goes, you know, we may have to adjust exactly when that will be.

Also, they wanted us to remind you that you need a Beta Key to get into the Closed Beta which you can get right here

Since this is an online game, the more the merrier, so sign up for the Beta of this promising title!

We here at Otaku Gambit would like to thank Perfect World Entertainment’s Mark Hill and Cristine Yeo for taking the time to answer the questions of a small site like us. It’s nice to feel important for a day. XD

Time Attack: Nintendo E3 2011

This is our very own, zero budget one take podcast, from here on known as: Time Attack!

Enjoy the show as we talk about Nintendo at this years E3, covering topics such as, the 3DS, Metroid, A new Smash Brothers game rumored to be called ‘Strife’. We also cover the new console code named ‘Cafe’ with the rumored name of ‘Feel’!

Join us in the strange show with two brothers, a table, and the hot water heater at one point…

Part One

Part Two

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Review

Platform:

Playstation 3, XBox 360

I spent the entire day contemplating how to leave the word “Castlevania” out of this review’s title to disassociate this game in every way possible from one of my most beloved franchises. Alas, that would be unprofessional so I have to. As you no doubt have guessed, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (Henceforth known as LoS in an attempt to say Castlevania as little as possible) is a game I did not care for.

As you may or may not be aware, LoS is an attempted reboot of the Castlevania Franchise and stars Gabriel “Belmont.” A brutish figure of a man whose head looks just a tad too small for his massive shoulders and chicken bone shins… But enough complaining about western design, let’s talk about the game itself.

Story

This is pretty much the only Castle in the game.

Okay, right off the bat (no pun intended since this game doesn’t have much to do with Vampires as it should anyway) you’ll notice that the story is about some bloke killing monsters while Captain Picard does the narration. Well there aren’t a great many cut scenes and most of Picard’s voice talents go to the load screens, which can be skipped halfway through his speech (which I advise you do anyway since he does seem to praddle on in this). Gabriel is a character we learn a few things about. He’s kinda dense, a little narrow minded, and he seems to be somewhat of a sadist.

I say dense because, well, his quest is kinda stupid. He goes battling against the fabled “Lords of Shadow” who are very powerful beasts…Or so I was told on the loading screens. They weren’t all that bad in the game itself. Narrow Minded because his obsession for his quest blocks out absolutely everything else, including the painfully obvious. A Sadist because, well…he kinda enjoys hurting the beasts he fights. We see this in a later boss fight when he cracks a smile just before causing the boss to ram a meat cleaver into its own skull.

Throughout the course of the game I couldn’t quite figure out why westerners feel the need to toss God into their stories directly. I couldn’t remember any talk of Angels and Satan in any previous Castvlevania titles I had played. Is my memory bad or was there never really anything like that? I’m not an atheist or anything but still don’t see how it helped the story any and it actually made this game feel even further from Castlevania as a whole.
Anyway your wife is dead and you’re murdering all of them (the Lords of Shadow) for parts of a mask which your told can bring your wife back.

=====Spoilers=====
You go through all this trouble and end up getting the mask, after duking it our with a Naked Satan (who has a black cloud he has sentenced to smothering his genitals for all eternity, I mean I knew the guy was a douche but that’s pretty harsh) who has the mask on. In the end, your quest was pretty meaningless since you didn’t get your wife back at the end.
=====End Spoilers=====

Meh is all I can say about the story. It just wasn’t that good. Most of the game feels like you’re stumbling about in a drunken haze with some idea of where you should be but you instead end up pissing in the sink and sleeping in your yard without your clothes in the morning.

Gameplay

This is the inside of the castle. You leave it pretty quickly and never come back.

I remember frantically downloading the demo and even enjoying its God of War feel at the time. I was upset that they had went for God of War as GoW isn’t the greatest of action titles. The combat in this game (LoS) is clunky at best. You alternate betwixt Square and Triangle for Linear and Area based attacks to his enemies who will remain unphased and attack through your own. Okay, so not all of them do this but most will.

Like GoW, you have a “Screw You” button which results in a grab attack which will insta kill most anything standing in your way. Like GoW you face off against towering enemies with a touch of Shadow of the Colossus (Henceforth SotC) even to the point of fighting 3 Colossi, by which I mean you must crawl over the large and un-inspired boss battles to stab them like the Wild Man of Borneo. Also must mention the knock off desert flying centipede without the epicness it had in SotC. Like GoW you have QTE segments in both combat and cut scenes. Like GoW, this game is a huge scale with an attempt at Cinematic Gameplay scenes. Like GoW, LoS has a similar combat system with new equipment upgrading your fighting techniques… supposedly.

Unlike SotC the game has no Grip Meter so you can kinda just hold on forever even while the Colossi are thrashing about. This was actually a good thing as it meant less time was spent on them than would have been should the game have implemented such a feature. The QTE system requires no specific buttons but instead a “hold your hand and push any button in 3. 2. 1. NOW!” system which isn’t necessarily bad but takes any chances of you missing out of the picture. The timing should probably be more strict since you don’t have to worry about hitting the wrong button.

Now, allow me to clear this up. I do not hate GoW. It’s not my cup of tea but the game does function well enough. What I hate is every action game trying to copy GoW instead of trying to do their own thing like Devil May Cry (DMC) and Ninja Gaiden (NG) have done. That said, I respect all 3 of them for what they are. Original.

My biggest complaint in LoS is that I cannot jump over any (save for quake attacks which I think 3 enemies have and they’re all rare anyway) attacks in this game without the second jump which you get 3 chapters from the end of the game. You have to jump at an angle in order to avoid even a low swipe attack. In other words, being above a trip will still get you hit by said trip. You MUST be to the side of it, even if you’re 10 feet above it. I was convinced this was shotty programming until a member of a Troll Forum informed me this was so I wouldn’t spam Guillotine. “Oh…” I thought. “Well, I’m glad the devs are taking it upon themselves to make sure I don’t use their own move list.” To which the boy replied; “No. It’s to keep you from breaking the game with the move.” to which I then responded; “Now see, I think it’d be less frustrating if they just balance the move instead of making a trip hit 10 feet into the air…Huh. Shows what I know.”

So yeah…The combat is clunky and you can’t jump over low attacks. You only have 2 options, Roll, or Block. Now I know this sounds petty but I’m a jumper. When I see an attack coming my way, I jump. Especially if it’s a ground based move. This would give me the tactical advantage of “Helm Breaker” as any good action game would.

The game revolves around blocking and rolling like GoW but you really just attack until the enemy twitches then tap the block button which will give you a perfect block and chance to attack the enemy. You end up doing this alot in combat and since there’s a pretty good number of frames in the perfect block, it’s not hard to do.

The game also features and “new and inventive” Light/Dark Magic system which is basically L1 to recover HP with each hit and R1 to deal extra damage. Both magic types open up a few new moves and is recovered by getting a combo meter up to its max and keeping it there then deciding which meter you’ll replenish by using L3 or R3 to absorb to the respective magic type. In truth you won’t end up using it much except in boss battles, at least 2 of which force you to use them both. Overall, every other game in its Genre (I’m giving serious thought to giving GoW its own Sub-Species Action Genre) has done and better.

The Platforming works fine but really adds nothing to the overall game and seems more like a way to show off the scale of the title. I dunno why cinematic have trumped gameplay as the main part of an action game but gameplay is suffering so this needs to stop.

The game has puzzles spread throughout it and you can buy the solutions but you really won’t need them. The puzzle’s won’t take more than a couple of minutes to figure out.
I didn’t complete the game. I shall admit it. I got to the beginning of Chapter 9 (methinks) then just watched the rest of the game on Youtube. Gosh I love Youtube. I had to force myself to play the game and when you have to force yourself to play a game, it isn’t a very good game. I remember reading about having to play hide and seek with the game’s “adorable” little bastard, the Chupacabra. This enemy takes all of your equipment and makes you find them a few times while taunting you in a rather annoying voice. I knew another was coming up soon and I stopped to read a Dead Knight’s scroll. He said something about not being able to go further and I agreed and ejected the disk.

Graphics

The human shoulder span is NOT 5 heads in length.

Not much to say here. the game is pretty. Gabriel looks like a Chevy Avalanche with a Greek Olive on the roof…but his hair moves nicely and the games textures are very pretty. Doesn’t save it but still.
The environments are incredibly beautiful and expansive and the game features a great draw distance as well. If only they had put that much work in the gameplay. I could deal with the tight corridors of, ya know, a Castle if the game functions well enough.

Pros
+The game and environments look great.
+The Black Knight and Claudia
+I can trade it in for my Pre-Order of Dead Space 2
+I bought it from a friend for $30 so I didn’t support Konami any in their decision to Westernize Castlevania
+Noone made me beat it

Cons
-Clunky Controls
-Jumping is pretty useless in Combat
-Bland Storytelling
-I can’t kill the Chupacabra
-I can’t get a full refund
-Every1 else did support this game

Honorable Mentions
Zobek, since he doesn’t seem to get much screen time throughout the game.
That poor, Black Cloud had to cover up manhood for the entirety of its life. R.I.P
Gabriel was supposed to be a Barbarian like Conan
Vampire Chess. So great, it slipped my mind while writing this review…

Score:
5/10