PAX East 2013 has officially begun, and yesterday fans around the world were treated to the very first English trailer for KINGDOM HEARTS -HD 1.5 ReMIX- slated for release Fall 2013 for North America and Europe. Besides the trailer that is playing on the showfloor, it appears there is an early build of the localized version of KINGDOM HEARTS -HD 1.5 ReMIX- at PAX East showing off a bit of Atlantica in KINGDOM HEARTS FINAL MIX!
Operation Rainfall, a website made to campaign and promote the localization of underappreciated games, was able to view this early build of the game and has provided their impressions of KINGDOM HEARTS -HD 1.5 ReMIX- on their site. Below is a snippet of their impressions. Note that they were not able to play the game themselves and were only able to watch a localization represntative play it.
Led by the one of the game’s localization staff we were able to view a demo of Atlantica. It’s an early build so nothing is final yet, but the obvious improvement includes a game entirely in HD. Everything is crisp and looks great on an HDTV. New camera controls are featured to make it easier to look around, and I think people are going to have fun playing a game that came out eleven years ago with a makeover. It was hard to tell if the audio has been touched up or not, but the English voices sound just as good as they did years ago.
New England Gamer was also given the chance to check out the early build of the game at PAX East, praising the amazing graphics of KINGDOM HEARTS FINAL MIX in HD.
We were shown a section from The Little Mermaid area of the game. The first thing you notice instantly is how great the game looks. There’s a ton of HD remakes being released on the PS3, but due to its animated style and dedication, the game really shines through and looks brand new. It’s definitely one of the better HD remakes I’ve seen.
The popular game news site Destructoid has also weighed in on the early build of KINGDOM HEARTS -HD 1.5 ReMIX- at PAX East, noting that the build was not very stable which explains the hand-off preview of the HD Remaster.
Camera controls have been modernized, eschewing trigger inputs of old in favor of a more modern thumbstick setup. It's a subtle enhancement, but removing the clunky camera and trading it for something more fluid is definitely a welcome improvement. Similarly, context sensitive controls have replaced some of the scrolling menus, making this remastered package seem slightly less dated than the originals. These aren't substantial changes, but it's nice to see Square giving attention to detail when they could have easily re-released these games without making the effort.
We will provide more impressions as they come in.
Thanks to TepidShark for providing the tip!
