One of the biggest new games for the PlayStation 3, Heavenly Sword tells the story of Nariko who is supposed to inherit the protection of a special sword kept in their clan. The sword is powerful, but it takes the life of the owner.
The clan believes that a male will be born to wield the sword, but Nariko is born, to the disappointment of her father. The story starts with Nariko fighting the final battle with the Heavenly Sword. She is defeating all the enemies when the sword overtakes her, and the game stars with her recalling the previous five days.
Nariko’s clan is being assaulted by King Bohan’s armies, who seek Heavenly Sword themselves. The game switches between melee style and ranged attacks after that. When your in ranged attacks, you can use a system called “afterthought” to guide the projectile. This uses the motion sensor of the Sixaxis controller. The afterthought is often necessary to hit a particular target. The game doesn’t let you zoom in on targets, so you shoot in the general direction, and the afterthought does the rest.
When in afterthought mode, you are looking at the world from the view of the projectile, so just guide it to where you want to hit. It isn’t perfect control — it seems more like nudging the projectile in the direction you want to go in. It is continuous control though, so if you push it too high, just push it back down. Once you get used to it, the game allows great precision for hitting the target.
The melee part of the game is a hack and slash where you just need to kill all the enemy’s coming at you. There are combos that can be used, and many enemies will come at you at once.
The graphics in the game are phenomenal. It feels like watching a movie. The sound effects are also top notch making the realism of the game great.
Overall the game is very flashy, it looks really good. I’d say it was only about average playability though. It looks great, but the shooting parts are annoying, and the fighting parts get boring. It’s also a very short game. Heavenly Sword is one of the best-looking and best-sounding PlayStation 3 games, but it’s still not IT.
Quick hits:
Publisher: Sony
Developer: Ninja Theory
Platform: PlayStation 3
Genre: Action/Adventure
Players: 1
Playability: [rating:3/5]
Learning Curve: [rating:4/5]
Sound: [rating:5/5]
Graphics: [rating:5/5]
Overall: [rating:3.5]
Launch Date: September 12, 2007
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