Ok so I’ll admit, I got infected with console envy after a visit to a friends and went and grabbed a ps3. It’s like buying a blueray player and getting an 8-way core CPU driven super machine for free! Well, whatever you got to tell yourself… it’s still $500!

anyway, heavenly sword is the first game I’ve played on the ps3, though I’ve seen a few others so far (motorstorm, ninja gaiden sigma, and a review coming for untold legends: dark kingdom), but this game is the reason I bought a ps3: unbelievable graphics, real cut scenes, and interactive cut scenes that take the concepts behind games like god of war and Prince of Persia to the next level.

the only real detractors to this game for me are the fact that they put so much work into making it look pretty, thus you end up with a much shorter game. For instance, I played through chapter one of five in about 35 minutes. They do a good job of encouraging you to go back and replay levels, however, with a three star system on each section, based upon how well you complete them. This unlocks new attack combos and game videos, including a making of series and a full comic book based on the game. So, if you like that sort of thing, (I’m kind of lukewarm about it myself), then it makes the game slightly more interesting, but not enough for me to really give it a better review.

To add more detail to the interactive cut scene phenom, let’s take a look at how heavenly sword takes a spin on this. First of all, most awesome interactive combat feature, not only for visual impresario, but in overall fun, is the interactive aiming engine. This is by far, in my opinion, the major selling point of the game. Granted, you only spend about 10-20% of the game doing this type of thing, the replay ability of the scenes with interactive aiming I find to be very high, and incredibly enjoyable.

There are several things you can interactive aim: cannonballs, arrows, knives, and thrown shields (basically Frisbees). The cannonballs you fire from a gun atop the castle walls and aim in several scenes at these mammoth catapult machines that are laying siege to your castle, and you have to hit four small areas on them to finish them off. These scenes remind me so much of the final battle in return of the king it just gives me tingles. (Granted different weaponry and whatnot… replace the elephants with the catapults, heh).

essentially for the guided missiles of any type, you press x to fire off a projectile, and hold it down while it flies through the air (with awesome blurred vision effects) while you aim it, either with the sixaxis controller (a watered down version of the Wii controller, which I promptly turned off and used the control stick) or the control stick.

there are several puzzles where you need to bounce a thrown shield off several hit points, where you’ll probably need a few tries to pull it off, but this is one of those things that I found very enjoyable, even having to repeat it several times. The arrow aiming is also extremely cool, with the ability to make burning arrows by sending them through flames, and sending them to exploding barrels. What’s a game w/o some epic explosions!

The overall combat I found to be very similar to god of war and Prince of Persia, with perhaps not quite as much variety as a game like god of war, with the special abilities that you can trip off. Heavenly sword does have special kill maneuvers, but you can’t just trip them off by hitting a button, you have to combo into them. So if that sort of thing perks your interest, you will really enjoy the combat in this game.

One detractor of this game is the regular combat goes VERY quickly in the game, and the bosses are very, very hard to beat. If you even make it to the end of the game, the raven king could quite possibly be your mental undoing! I still haven’t gotten to this level yet on my own, but have been able to play the scene a few times due to my compadre being at that stage in the game, but let me tell you, this is THE hardest boss I have ever seen, and I’ve played almost every console RPG on the ps2 and Xbox going back three years.

For this reason, I only give the game an 8.0, mostly because, like a dumb blonde, she is great to look at but you lose interest once you hang out with her too long. The game is fun to play,
But doesn’t offer enough replay-ability, and much too quick to play through (neglecting the intensity of the bosses). Well worth a rental though!