[PS3] Heavenly Sword

The Trailer:



Gameplay:





Information:


Heavenly Sword is a story of revenge and self-discovery. The clan that guards the fabled Heavenly Sword has long held a prophecy. It has been foretold that the clan leader would bear a son that would lead them to their rightful place in heaven. You can imagine how disappointed they were when the beautiful Nariko was born. You can also imagine how little faith is given her when she is entrusted with the powerful Heavenly Sword and asked to take on an invading King commanding an incredible army lead by hideous beasts. Nariko must discover her true path and take control of the sword to defeat Bohan and his maniacal forces, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.

This story begins at the end. Brandishing the Heavenly Sword at the peak of its power, Nariko squares off against Bohan’s forces, violently rending flesh from bone. Unfortunately for Nariko, the sword is also killing her with every strike. Collapsing as the power of the sword creeps up her arms and across her body, Nariko succumbs to the weapon and dies. It is here that the true story of Heavenly Sword begins…

Graphics - 90/100

If you’d like to show off your Playstation 3 to your friends, Heavenly Sword is the title for you. Graphically, there are moments in Heavenly Sword that transcend anything we’ve seen on any platform to date. Andy Sirkis (You may know him as Golum or King Kong) takes the role of dramatic director for the project, giving him full rein to work his magic, and the results are stunning. Ninja Theory has utilized a relatively new full-body motion capture technique that simultaneously capture every nuance of movement, as well as voice, creating a complete performance in one process. The graphic artists take this final product and drop their beautiful normal-mapped work on top of it, creating a true character. Revolutionary is a word that is thrown around far too often, but the techniques used in Heavenly Sword truly fit that word.

Every character in the game is animated using motion capture, although not quite to the level of the aforementioned cutscenes. Nariko flashes around using her swords on chains God of War style, split into two pieces but in hand, or combined into one large sword. Clearly Ninja Theory has captured martial artists doing what they do best to create the look and feel of the animation. Kai dances around like a child at play, leapfrogging boxes and generally being completely insane. Non-playable characters, other than your father and the villains in the game, are essentially carbon copy clones. There are a few different types, but overall they are pretty much fodder. The tradeoff is clear when you see several thousand of them charging towards you, pushing massive siege engines towards your position.

There are a few areas where the game isn’t so beautiful. The version I was playing was near final, but some framerate issues persisted during heavy combat. Similarly, there are a few Havok engine issues that haven’t been corrected since the last build. Occasionally you’ll bump into a weapon on the ground and it’ll shoot across the screen like a bullet. Nariko’s flowing red hair has similar erratic behavior. Neither is gameplay impacting, but it might make you chuckle a bit when you see a dead body continue to jitter long after you’ve cut them down.

Sound/Music - 85/100

As I mentioned above, the new motion capture techniques used in Heavenly Sword allowed Ninja Theory to get voice work and graphic capture in the same take. To that end they have brought in some great voice talent to compliment Andy Serkis as King Bohan. Steven Berkoff of Children of Dune, A Clockwork Orange, Octopussy, and Killzone fame provides the extremely odd voice for General Flying Fox – certainly my favorite performance of the bunch. Richard Ridings, no stranger to videogame voice work himself (He played Thorn in Kameo), gives voice to the simpleton son of King Bohan, Roach. Race Davies gives voice to Whiptail, herself a relative newcomer to acting. Kai and Nariko are voiced by Lydia Baksh and Anna Tory, respectively. Everyone turns in a great performance, but there is a small hitch.

As you play through the game there are quite a few character interaction moments. For instance, as you encounter Whiptail she’ll taunt you from a high perch, unleashing an ambush on you before jumping down to address you personally. The consistency in sound information between just these two scenarios is strikingly vast. The first encounter with her sounds like she was recorded inside of a tin can, her voice hollow and tinny. Interactions with General Flying Fox are also inconsistent, with one performance making him sound like a crazed lunatic with verbal ticks to spare, and another sounding almost like a completely different actor. The main characters, Kai and Nariko, also sound like they are from London, not Japan. It does break a bit of the immersion of the vaguely Asian influence so obviously used in this title.

Sadly, another area that suffers from inconsistency is the music. Ninja Theory used the London Under Sound Symphony Orchestra headed by Nitin Sawhney to create the musical score to the title. The results were certainly worth the price of admission. It matches the action and style of the game perfectly. The only problem is that it doesn’t pay attention when you turn it down. During certain cutscenes I was thankful that I turned on the subtitles as the music completely overpowered the voice. All of these small inconsistencies are just disappointing given how detail-oriented the graphic work turned out.

Controls - 85/100

Controlling Nariko and the Heavenly Sword isn’t about button mashing as I had initially thought while playing the Playstation Store demo. In fact, button mashing is likely to get you killed rather quickly. Instead, the combat is commanded by Nariko’s selected stance. Like true martial arts and sword fighting, your stance creates leverage and balance for your strikes, creating the foundation for all of your movements. Nariko has three stances that she’ll use throughout the game – the speed stance (fast attacks utilizing the sword in its double-edge configuration, blocking moderate attacks automatically. Your ‘neutral’ stance), the power stance (slow attacks utilizing the sword in a stacked configuration that makes your blows slower but far more lethal. This mode blocks powerful strikes only), and your ranged stance (a wide reaching twin chained attack system that dispatches weak enemies but does minimal damage). In addition to the three Earth-rooted stances, Nariko can also take to the sky to unleash devastating aerial combinations. Sometimes even this isn’t enough, and that is where the Superstyles come into play, unleashing powerful area of affect attacks that devastate large groups of enemies at the press of a button.

Having a good stance is never enough to effectively launch an attack or mount a defense. You must be able to read your opponent. To that end, Heavenly Sword gives you visual cues as to your enemy’s attack. Before their attack connects you’ll see a flash of color that corresponds to the styles mentioned above. If there is a blue flash, your speed combination will automatically attempt to block the attack, provided you are on solid ground and facing reasonably close to the correct direction. Similarly, if you see an orange flash you can expect an enemy power attack is headed your direction – only the power stance can block this. The color you really have to watch out for however is the red flash – these seem to be completely unblockable.

All of this sounds pretty complicated on paper, but in fact it is pretty far from it. You’ll use the left analog to move Nariko and the right analog will handle rolling out of the way of incoming attacks. What this means is that the camera is controlled by the game, in a similar fashion to the aforementioned God of War series. You can affect it to a degree by holding in the L2 and R2 buttons to move the camera slightly to the left or right, respectively. Holding in the R1 button puts Nariko into her power stance. Combining the Heavenly Sword into a rather large broadsword, Nariko uses primarily overhand chopping motions and broad sweeping motions to dispatch her enemies. Holding the L1 couldn’t be any more the opposite of the power stance as this selects the range stance. The range stance is likely what reminded me so much of God of War as Nariko disconnects the swords from each other and swings them around in a whip-chain fashion to take down weaker enemies or deflect incoming ranged attacks. Holding in the triangle button launches enemies into the air, allowing you to unleash aerial combinations – one of the first ways you’ll use the SIXAXIS control functions.

When launching enemies into the sky with the triangle button, you can certainly attack them with various attacks from the ground to ‘juggle’ them, but the more effective use of your power is to launch an enemy and then shake your controller. By shaking the SIXAXIS at the right time, the game will give you a zoomed in ‘mini-cutscene’ where you can unleash a great deal of mid-air combinations that are simply devastating to your foes. This adds a bit of a wake-up call to your combinations as snapping your controller is rather foreign to most gamers, unless we are talking about snapping it in half.

The other way you’ll utilize the motion sensing capabilities of the PS3 controller is the use of “Aftertouch”. When attacking an enemy you may come across a piece of debris, a loose sword or shield, or other numerous objects that are simply waiting to be thrown. You can scoop them up by tapping the X button and then throw them with the same, but if you hold down the X button instead you’ll initiate an Aftertouch. The Aftertouch allows you to use the tilt functions of the controller to guide your projectile towards its intended target. This is essential for properly aiming a ranged weapon, but you’ll also be using this quite a bit for the puzzle elements of the game.

You’ll note that I never mentioned a block button or a jump button in the descriptions above - Nariko has neither. Being in the correct stance is how you block; unleashing the right aerial combinations is how you jump. The system takes only a short while to get used to, but once you get the hang of it you’ll be unleashing havoc on your enemies in no time.

Overall, the controls are very responsive, if a bit frantic. You’ll likely start off jamming the buttons and shaking the controller violently like an angry monkey, but after a while you’ll begin to get a grip on the combination system, allowing you to chain combinations and launch aerial attacks with ease.

Gameplay - 140/200

Not too many people are aware that Heavenly Sword has been in production for a long time. In fact, in September of 2003 the game was actually slated for the Xbox 360. The developer began creating the game utilizing features and techniques that were beyond the capabilities of the platforms at the time – the original Xbox and PS2. With this much time devoted to the combat mechanic, you’ll be surprised to see that 1/3 of it is actually unneeded.

Throughout the game you’ll use the neutral stance extensively, as well the heavy attack moves. Only when you are in those stances can you block the same style of incoming attacks. The speed stance allows you to block incoming arrows, but throughout the game it is almost unused. Since the enemies require an obscene amount of damage to take down, using the supremely underpowered speed attack is rather pointless. At first I thought it was necessary to rack up the combinations necessary to get the maximum reward for each area, but even that is easily achieved in the neutral stance. In short, the ranged attack is really only used to launch the aerial attack moves. It almost seems like this attack set was cut down to prevent the obvious comparisons to God of War.

The combat in Heavenly Sword, even with the ranged system being somewhat lacking, is actually pretty amazing to watch. Enemies generally engage you in an intelligent manner, pushing you into a corner and attempting to flank at every opportunity. The AI does a good job of keeping you suppressed. Unfortunately, most of the battles feel almost exactly the same. The ridiculous scenario on top of the pillar that we saw in the demo (there are guards up here why?) is a good example of how most battles will unfold. Since the enemies are all pretty much the same, they begin to feel like fodder in between boss battles. Compounding the issue with combat is the fact that in some parts of the game you’ll actually be without the Heavenly Sword. Since this takes away two out of three stances, the combat becomes even more tedious. Couple this with a somewhat low difficulty level and you’ll find the non-boss fights forgettable.

Before we get into the boss battles in the game, let’s talk about Kai. Kai is clearly out of her mind, talking to things that aren’t there, thinking that murder en-mass is ‘playtime’ and generally acting as cute as possible. In a few scenarios you’ll actually take control of Kai to play “Twing-Twang”. Twing-Twang lets Kai fire her massive crossbow using the aftertouch system to guide the arrows into your enemies. It breaks up the combat action with Nariko nicely and lets you enjoy the off-kilter humor of Kai.

Saving the best for last, you’ll face off against a total of four bosses through the course of the game. Unlike the fodder you cut through to get to the bosses, these battles are rewarding and often challenging. Just like God of War (you knew the comparison was coming), you’ll hammer on the bosses until you are prompted to tap a particular button on the controller. At this point you’ll initiate the finishing sequence involving a few more button and direction presses. Defeating these bosses feels like an accomplishment and are easily the best portions of the game – if only there were more of them.

Value / Replay Value - 60/100
Heavenly Sword can be completed in one life and in roughly 6-7 hours. For some people, this is exactly the experience you want and the amount of time you have to spend. For others, the game length might be an issue. Playing through the game the first time I unlocked almost everything in the game, which is obviously a factor in the replay value. In addition, we’ve hosted most of the unlockable content on our front page as many of them are ‘Making of’ videos and the like. If you like a particular cutscene you can go back and watch it again once you’ve unlocked it, so this’ll make it even easier for you to show this title off to your friends. You should be able to get all of the videos, combinations, and other unlockables in the first run through, so the replay value is somewhat lacking.

Concluding Thoughts
Heavenly Sword is a mixed bag. The boss battles and incredible cutscenes are compelling enough to keep you going, but the tedious fodder battles and inconsistencies stop the game from living up to its maximum potential. As I have said, the game is an excellent showcase for showing off the graphical power of your Playstation 3. Hopefully it won’t take Ninja Theory four more years to fix these minor inconsistencies and bring us Heavenly Sword 2.


Final Score:

460/600 - 77%