Review: Heavenly Sword (PS3)

Heavenly Sword is an older PlayStation 3 game, released in 2007, which still manages to offer hours of fun despite its age. The game was made especially for the PlayStation 3, and it showed gamers what the system is capable of. With character models that display a whole range of emotions in every part of their face, stellar motion capture performances, and breath-taking backgrounds and visuals, this game stands up to the test of time.

Heavenly Sword is an action game where you play as Nariko, a heroine of a small tribe trying to protect a legendary sword that holds a power like none other. This sword has the ability to change forms, which is what the combat system is based on. Instead of merely mashing on the main buttons to pull together amazing combo attacks, you have three different sword forms with matching stances that can be used. Holding L1 puts you in the ranged stance, where the sword separates into two parts that are swung around on chains (this drew a number of comparisons to God of War, but there's a reason it's used in both games: it's awesome). Holding R1 will trigger the power stance where you are slower, but your sword attacks are much stronger. You default to the speed stance, where your attacks are conversely weaker, but much faster. Nariko will automatically block attacks when you aren't attacking, and an interesting concept here is that you need to match the incoming attack type with the correct stance in order to properly block it.

In addition to Nariko, you are also thrown into the shoes of a young, playful girl named Kia from time to time. Her play style is completely different from Nariko, in that her weapon of choice is a bow gun. As such, her levels usually focus more on stealth, dodging, and marksmanship as opposed to just slaughtering everything in her path. The most awesome thing about these levels, however, is the 'aftertouch' feature. After you shoot an arrow, you can hold a button to suddenly zoom in on the arrow as it's flying. In this mode, you can physically change the trajectory of the arrow by either using the joysticks or the PS3's vastly under-used motion sensing technology. Incidentally, Nariko can also use this feature whenever she shoots a cannon. It's a lot of fun, and very satisfying to follow the arrow all the way to its intended, unfortunate target. All in all, Kia's levels definitely make a nice change of pace, but they aren't thrown in too often to where they're annoying.

Heavenly Sword, in addition to just being a fun game, also contains a number of unlockables, including new combos, behind-the-scenes videos, character art, and more. There is also a higher difficulty level that you can access after completing the game the first time. This adds to the replay value of the game, and even though it is short, it's truly fun, and I admit that I love this game and enjoyed playing it. If you haven't already done so, do yourself a favor and pick up this modern classic today.

Submitted By: Gerald Shaw (Employee)