Heavenly Sword [PS3]

There are a handful of sections in the game where you'll play as Kai, Nariko's very disturbed and very strange sidekick. She can't outright attack anyone by hand and can only use her crossbow for attacks, which gives her sections a unique feel. Some of these parts are fun, like one where you're running around the top of an arena and can kill guards with a series of exploding barrels. But there are a few sniper sections that simply go on for far too long as using Aftertouch to properly steer her arrows slows the game to a crawl. The concept is cool, but when you need to snipe soldier after soldier after soldier with little to no challenge, it just gets old fast.

Heavenly Sword does contain a number of unlockables, including new combos, behind-the-scenes videos, character art and more. You can earn up to three markers in any stage by way of how many "points" you get in battle, and you can go back to any sub-chapter to play that section again to try and earn anything you missed. While the combos are obviously useful and you'll want to work towards getting them, most of the other content is freely available for download either online or on the PlayStation Store, which negates your reason to go back and earn the missing markers. Most all of the bonus content is great, but since you can easily download most of it without bother there's not much of a reason to try and unlock any of it in the game.

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