Preview: Heavenly Sword

Thank the heavens--a premium action title is headed for the PlayStation 3.

It's certainly got enough hype, but how does it play? Not much has been shown or seen on Heavenly Sword other than the brief arena-based E3 demo last year and a brief spot on Heroes, my addictive television counterpart to crack.

But at Sony Gamer's Day this week, Heavenly Sword got the royal (or heavenly) treatment.

First, a demonstration was given at the early morning presentation on Tuesday by Ninja Theory. It was basically a chance to hype up the game as much as possible before we played it, but also served the purpose of showing just how much work is going into developing the game. Here are the highlights of the rundown:

  • Has a serious focus on acting, and they're not cutting any corners.
  • Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings movies, is directing the acting.
  • Unlike other games who splice lots of stuff together, body and voice data are done at once
  • The key is believable, real-time acting
  • The sound team is Play it by Ear, who worked on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Mission Impossible movies
  • Touts Heavenly Sword as having the most diverse fighting system in action games
  • Has movie-like intensity of action
  • Enemies learn your attacks and patterns of attacks
  • Fights range from one-on-one battles to up to armies of thousands (this could have been an exaggeration, though we have no evidence of it either way)
  • Use anything in the environment, including corpses, as weapons
  • There are three playable combat stances that can be activated with the shoulder buttons: power, speed, and range.
  • Certain combat moves and combos activate gruesome cinematics in between combat
  • The game focuses on epic destruction of enemies and environments

What I got to play on Sony's event floor a short piece of an outside level. If you saw the Heroes footage, it takes place just after that. I began by using the action button (X) to hop Narika on a rope, where I then had to quickly tap X to keep her running. She then slid on the large rope where I was prompted to press left on the analog stick to hop to a second rope before the first ended. It was pretty cool to watch her figuratively fly through this area, though all the commands were fairly simple. Finally, she vaults herself off the rope and a timely press of the square button lands her safely on a rock-like platform below.

On the platform, it was battle time. About 10-15 baddies were the fodder for Narika's sword, as I pummeled them with some easy-to-pull-off moves and combos. Holding the R1 button made her swing power stance sword slashes that basically launched enemies off the edge of the platform. The L1 button activated speed stance maneuvers, which were Kratos-ish whip/chain-like attacks. They're pretty fast and nicely destructive. I found it very useful to keep using the right stick evade moves in between combos to keep Narika fresh and clean (from attacks, I mean... get you mind out of the gutter).

After I took care of this group, the platform tumbled and it was a free fall to ground where it was another arena-like battle against a large group of doomed foes. This part was more like the E3 demo last year, but it had lots of destructible tables and other objects to wield as weapons once they were all smashed up into pieces. These enemies were about the same as the first group, and it took about three minutes to take care of them all. Overall, the playable demo was about 7-8 minutes long.

As far as summing up the experience, I'd say Heavenly Sword feels a lot like God of War 2 in terms of being able to pull off massive combos without really learning too many moves. The engine is simple enough to pull off diverse moves without too much training. Of course, you more comfortable you are with the stances, the better and more satisfying your moves become. Unlike God of War, though, this game seems to be shooting for a Teen rating and there was no blood in sight. I wasn't blown away by the demo, but it definitely showed a nice glimpse of what I hope is a little prelude to the intense action that the game will offer up this holiday season.

What I liked:

  • Easy-to-pull off combos
  • Lots of fast-paced action
  • Beautiful graphics and cinematics
  • Big focus on acting

What I didn't like:

  • Enemy A.I. was set a bit too easy
  • Nothing particularly mind-blowing yet
  • No blood

Looking for the scoop on other hot PS3 titles? Then check out our preview of LittleBigPlanet. Then stop by for a peek at the next Ratchet and Clank, along with the next installment in the SOCOM franchise, Naughty Dog's new Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and the PSN-exclusive PAIN.

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