Heavenly Sword (Playstation 3, 2007)

Last week, Sony released a demo to one of the most anticipated games for the year.Playstation 3 – Heavenly Sword.

The game stars a female character by the name of Nariko, A ninja fighter with a lot of killer moves. Though the game is nothing like God of War, If you liked god of war, your going to love Heavenly Sword.

The demo starts with a cut scene that does really give much away about the story line. The cut scene is not real time it’s a video (that sucks). When the cut scene concludes, you control Nariko standing and overlooking the terrain from a high cliff. The graphics are amazing. The environment has waterfalls cascading down a cliff, A rainbow that fades out or becomes more solid looking as you change the camera angle, and the wind movement. After checking out the breath taking scenery, you much walk over to a glowing orb look alike thingy.

The first action in the demo takes place descending down a rope that is connected a pillar off in the distance. The scene is done in real time and follows the God of war type button presses to forward the action. Once you made it down to the pillar, you engage in combat.

Heavenly Sword uses a unique battle system that differentiates it with God of war quite well. There is a lot more countering strategy than God of way and you can pick up almost anything and throw it at your enemies using the Sixaxis motion control.

After defeating all of the enemies, you cut the final rope connected to the pillar and descend down to the next playable area of the game. More enemies attack and the demo gives you a few more minutes of showing off its fight system. You will notice during the fight sequence, a lot of times you will get these close ups, showing the moves you used to kill your enemy.(very nice)

The demo ends with axe enemies breaking through a door nearby. Although the demo is less then ten minutes long, It does have a load of replay value. You can go back through and see all of the different combos or just look around at the environment. The graphics are simply amazing.

In closing, a five minute demo is just to short to make me go and spend sixty bucks on a game. Though the demo does not talk much about the storyline, I believe that is what is going to be the main selling point. I personally would just rent the game.

ADDED 9/15/2007

OK, I just got the game from my local rental store and I have to say, I'm very impressed with this game. The graphics and game play is just amazing to say the least and the story line is what brings the best in this game.

Make Sure and watch the 5 heavenly sword movies to get a in depth look into the story. just look at (google search heavenly sword small movies)

You need to rent this game so you can see the playstation 3 doing what it does best...create amazing graphics.