Heavenly Sword

Aug 29, 2007

We have been clamoring in anticipation of playing Heavenly Sword for months now, and as one of the most anticipated PS3 titles of the year, it's not hard to see why. Still, after the copious preview coverage we've done, we were a bit concerned that stunning heroine Nariko's blade-song may owe some serious royalties to the slice n' dice symphony of God of War's Kratos. Well, after playing through this rather short game, we're sad to say that Heavenly Sword does decidedly little to improve on Kratos' bloody adventures... and even makes a few things worse.

Not Quite Ready for Prime Time

As you've probably already noticed, you're reading an Out of the Box review instead of a straight-up review. This is due to the unfinished state of the Heavenly Sword review code we (and most other media outlets, like our fine friends at sister-site IGN) received from Sony. There were a number of issues and bugs attributed to the earliness of the review build, and so we couldn't in good conscience call this a full review as it is GameSpy's policy to not review a game until it is in its final, retail version... or close enough to it that it makes no difference. Please note that while we may call out instances of grievous problems, we've been told by Sony that a number of these issues will not exist in the game that you can buy in stores. We'll post a full review when we receive a retail version of Heavenly Sword, but most of the disappointment we encountered wasn't due to unoptimized code at all.

It wasn't hard to tell that our review copies of the game lacked polish because the framerate was simply atrocious nearly from beginning to end. Granted, this is likely due to the fact that developer Ninja Theory had yet to optimize the code, but some parts were so choppy that we are concerned that there may be unsolvable problems with the engine. Of course, if the combat is as good as we've been lead to believe, a few dropped frames shouldn't bother any but the most picky of players. Unfortunately, as the largest draw of Heavenly Sword, the combat lacks the potency to slay our skepticism.

Cramped Combat

Similar in some ways to epic battler Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Heavenly Sword can be made to produce some incredibly awesome cinematic fight sequences. The trouble comes from the fact that it takes a seasoned and skilled player to pull this feat off, so the average gamer will have to suffer through a repetitive hack and slash morass of perpetual button-mashing madness.

Nariko's three stances can be used to execute a staggering variety of combos, but shifting between them is not typically essential to accomplishing your goals and so all of the amazing combat sequences we've seen in videos across the Internet are somewhat rare unless you are focused on showing off.

One of the chief damagers of the combat experience is the counter-attack system which requires that you press the Triangle button just before deflecting an incoming attack. This is by far the most awesome-looking and efficient way to kill Nariko's foes, but you can't do it until one of these thugs tries to hit you. This leads to a lot of fights where you're surrounded by a bunch of chumps that bounce up and down on the balls of their feet while you just stare at them menacingly, both waiting for the other to make a move.

Seeing this once is cool and reminiscent of the scene from Kill Bill where The Bride takes on countless members of the Crazy 88s gang in a serious stare-down, but watching it happen almost every time you have to fight anyone quickly becomes boring and silly. The result is that you'll probably just opt to mash the buttons frantically and hope that some of your attacks connect so that you can move on.

There are a few opportunities to use the Sixaxis's motion control in melee combat, but you'll be hard-pressed to execute them effectively. Nariko can right herself in midair if she gets knocked off of her feet when you shake the controller upwards, but she remains airborne for so little time that you'll undoubtedly find it difficult to pull the move off with any frequency. She can also jump up to perform aerial attacks (again by shaking the Sixaxis upwards), but the reliance on motion control to initiate this move makes it more trouble than it's usually worth. Again, it may make the fighting look more exciting, but it doesn't provide enough of an edge of combat effectiveness to make it essential.

Exacerbating the sameness of battles are the shamefully small variety in enemies you face. Not counting bosses, there are seriously only about five different foes. Five. You'll fight a basic sash-clad thug, slightly tougher dudes wearing conical steel hats, big meaty monster men with helms and giant swords, hulking ninja beasts with claws and more standard ninjas. Maybe you'll run across a couple of levels that rely on bowmen, but there's not much to separate them from the simple thugs except that these guys have bows and arrows. There's simply not enough variety here to keep things interesting and fighting quickly devolves into rote repetition.

Sister Kai

While Nariko's combat seems unpleasantly repetitious, her strange sister Kai offers an intriguing perspective on fighting that spices up the game nicely. As a kinda-crazy bow-master, Kai must occasionally aid Nariko by providing her with cover or by simply mowing down fools with her bow cannon. What breathes new life into what could have been generic sniper gameplay is the addition of after-touch controls via the motion-sensing Sixaxis. While we decry the use of the Sixaxis in melee combat, we couldn't get enough of it while sniping with Kai (or, on the rare occasions that require a sweet rocket launcher, Nariko as well).

It works really well: you fire an arrow with the Square button and hold it down to enter a time-protracted chase camera. You can then tilt the Sixaxis to control the arrow as it flies. Here, the Sixaxis really shines and the precision with which you can direct your shots is nothing short of phenomenal. Of course, a key benefit of this feature is that you get to follow the arrow all the way to its mark which makes for some pretty tense moments as well as hilarious ones (if you manage the always laugh-inspiring crotch shot).

As fun as we found the after-touch mechanics, some of the shooting sequences drag on a little too long. Specifically, there is a part where you have to defend Nariko's dad (who, oddly enough, seems to care very little for Kai) as he crosses an embattled bridge by sniping thugs as they rush him. This portion just goes on way too long, and while there is some deliciously malevolent glee to be had in watching the bodies pile up on that bridge, it's hard to escape the monotony that threatens to engulf the activity.

Of course, Nariko also has access to the after-touch controls and she can use it on any projectile that she launches. This means that everything from a sword you pick up off the ground to the aforementioned rocket launcher. We found the sequences where Nariko had to hold off literally hundreds of enemies (including giant barges firing flaming cannon balls) from a lonely cannon emplacement among the best parts of the whole game. Something about following a fiery cannon ball as it smashes into some twenty poor jerks and sends them flying into the air puts smiles on our faces... call us crazy.

The gargantuan levels that feature these shooting segments also bear mentioning as their size is common in Heavenly Sword. While not quite as dolled-up with cinematic grandeur as God of War 2, the levels are nonetheless enormous. Of course, the huge levels are tempered by the quasi-fixed camera (you can pan a little from side to side by pressing the shoulder buttons) which only allows you to see some of it at a time. Still, the sweeping vistas are magnificent eye candy, so we count them in the win column.

Heavenly Storm

Much to our chagrin, Heavenly Sword emerges as a decidedly mediocre game. With little variety in enemies, cliched boss battles and frustratingly cruel interactive cutscenes (you've got to get those button presses exactly right in the tiniest fraction of a second), there's not much to differentiate this title from the iconic God of War series. While the interplay between Nariko and Kai provides some interesting gameplay shifts, there's not enough here to bear the hype that surrounds this title (hype which we freely admit to helping promote).

Though the choppy animation was a severe issue in the pre-release build that we played, it certainly wasn't our biggest problem with Heavenly Sword. When all is said and done, this game simply didn't grab us in the ways that we needed it to. This is not to say that it's a bad game, far from it, but it also doesn't stand up to the heroes of the genre from the bygone days of PS2.