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The PS3’s latest must-have. A game that critics called “Goddess of War” months before release has a lot to live up to. God of War is one of the PS2’s finest games and Ninja Theory should be very proud of the comparison. But with the comparison also comes increased expectations. More than any other released game, Heavenly Sword is tasked with showing people that the PS3 is a worthwhile investment. Thankfully, the game does this just fine. The production values in Heavenly Sword are well, heavenly, and the combat is very entertaining to boot.
Heavenly Sword tells the story of Nariko, a young lady tasked with fulfilling the prophecy of the Heavenly Sword. The Sword gives enormous power to the person that holds it but also takes their life. Nariko’s group has long protected the Sword, but is no longer able to do so under increasing opposition from the dictator King Bohan. He, of course, wants the Sword for his own use and it is up to Nariko, previously considered merely an outcast but now their only hope, to make sure that the Sword remains in the right hands. The game’s story is wonderfully told and brings the characters to life in a convincing and lifelike manner.
Heavenly Sword is a combat game through and through. Nariko has power, ranged, and quick attacks at her disposal, which are mapped to various face and shoulder buttons on the PS3 controller. The combo system is fairly intuitive and lets you string combos together by connecting moves from different stances or simply extending your attack from within the same stance. Pulling off these combos allows you to not only earn additional combos, but also unlockable artwork and movies, etc. Building up your combo meter also lets Nariko execute a particularly cool “finishing move” that occurs through a cutscene.
In addition to the actual attacking, the game has a fairly complex counter system. When enemies attack you, they’ll flash a color signifying if it’s a quick, power or unblockable attack. If it’s quick attack, Nariko will simply block it by herself. But if it’s a power attack, you need to manually block it and if it’s an unblockable attack you have to roll out of the way. This lets you set up a counter attack, which is sometimes the only way to actually attack an enemy.
But fighting isn’t the only thing you’ll do. There are some simple puzzles thrown into the mix, as well as some God of War-like button-pressing “cineractives.” The game also introduces a second playable character, Kai, who uses crossbows to shoot enemies. The game allows you to control the arrows after they’ve been shot by tilting the Sixaxis controller up, down, left or right. The motion controls work wonderfully in the game.
Heavenly Sword is one of the best looking games currently available for the PlayStation 3. Nariko and Kai have amazingly detailed character models that are fully brought to life by beautiful animation that allows the various combos to flow in and out of each other. The game’s levels are just at beautiful and have a sense of scale that is unparalleled—or perhaps just by Sony’s other flagship combat franchise. The enemies in the game all look amazing and the game manages to throw an absurd amount of them at the screen at the same time. It isn’t all perfect, though. There are some minor framerate issues here and there but nothing that really affects the visual fidelity.
The game’s audio presentation is just as strong. The soundtrack is comprised of a mix of ethnic music coupled with orchestrated and often epic-sounding tracks. It fits the game’s scope very well and makes dramatizes it superbly. The voice acting is astounding; easily one of the best performances found in any videogame to date. The game uses the extra gigabytes on the Blu-ray disc to include Spanish, French, German and Italian voice acting, in addition to the standard English performances. There are some lip-synching issues in some of the cutscenes, but again, these are a minor blip in the radar.
Heavenly Sword is one of the best PS3 games to date. The presentation values and tight combat allow gamers to show the game and tell everyone “Hey, this is what I spent $499 or $599 for.” The game’s biggest downside is that it clocks in at a mere seven hours or so. But when those seven hours are this good, who cares? The PS3’s latest must-have has arrived. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Sep 16, 2007
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