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Heavenly Sword not as sharp as advertised

It’s officially crunch time for Sony’s Playstation 3 console. Sales have been abysmal, and gamers are flocking to Microsoft and Nintendo for their new consoles. While Sony continues to justify the somewhat absurd price of their console, they entice gamers in search of a quality console with three “killer apps” that will drive system sales. The first of the three, Lair, was a bona fide dud. The second, Warhawk, got decent reviews, but alienated gamers by being multiplayer only. This brings us to Heavenly Sword, which by all means was supposed to be the first truly big game on the ultra powerful system.

As far as looks go, Heavenly Sword is like the Halle Berry of video games. Every visual in the game is absolutely stunning. The cutscenes are incredible, with characters fully conveying emotions during conversation. As good as everything looks, though no gamer worth his salt buys a game for looks alone. That’s where Heavenly Sword fails.

The combat system is handled by switching between three fight stances: speed, ranged, and power. It’s easy for a player to toggle between stances during combat. The problem is that you can take out the vast majority of the enemies in the game by using only the power stance. This can reduce the gameplay to simlpe button mashing.

As far as enemies are concerned, there is very little in the way of enemy variety. You fight the same four or five enemy types throughout the whole game. To say I was disappointed was an understatement.

The biggest travesty of this entire affair are the thrown together shooter sections that are scattered throughout the game. These sections control utilizes the motion sensitive six-axis technology. No one has figured out how to properly use this technology, and it is highly evident here. As crisp as the controls are during combat, they are about as unresponsive here. The Six-Axis handles like a turd swimming in molasses.

All in all, Heavenly Sword is by no means worth the $60 it costs. It showed a lot of promise, but it ended up being amazingly average. It would make a high quality budget title, but Sony really needs to stop assuming that gamers will pay crazy prices for utter trash. If the Playstation 3 has any chances for survival, Sony needs to start to listen to those who once made them an industry leader in the first place.

If you like mediocrity in your video games, then feel free to plunk down some hard earned cash on Heavenly Sword, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Its only a few more months until Metal Gear Solid 4 comes out, maybe this crap will tide you over.