A Bucket of OK
I've heard that some people who regularly write reviews, in a professional capacity, don't take notes on the theory that if something is not memorable, it probably is not significant enough to tell a potential consumer about it. From this school of thought I am going to review Heavenly Sword, a Ninja Theory game I played two years ago and sort of remember. This bit of content is for the reader who says to himself, "I've got a Playstation 3, some time on my hands, and want to experience something new: Is Heavenly Sword a better usage of the PS3 than using the internet browser to watch porn?" You can make that call after reading my review.
Heavenly Sword is a character based action game that draws heavily from God of War. Some people call it – read: called it when it was relevant – Goddess of War, but that cheapens both games as they really are not the same product. Heavenly Sword features a gal with a destiny who must battle an evil army to help save the land. The bad guy army features the guy who played Gollum as the evil warlord and does a very good job being an evil jerk. The motion capture work allows the characters to be fully believable whilst in cut scene. For our purposes here we'll call the main character “Redhead”. Again, no notes, and this should be an indication as to how memorable of a character she is.
Like the majority of the characters in the game, Redhead animates very fluidly. It is a joy to watch her swing her sword and smack up enemies. From a technical standpoint, there are no show stopping bugs and I remember the framerate being smooth. Your memory and mileage may vary. Combat revolves around two different styles of sword play, long and short distance. The faster long style has the sword flying out to hit masses of enemies and the closer style focuses on one enemy at a time and takes longer to pull off. Certain enemies are vulnerable to certain attacks and from what I can recall, everything is color coded based on the kind of attack that needs to be used. There are combos that can be pulled off which result in certain attacks being used again and again. Just like in a certain Grecian trilogy, you'll be seeing the same animations a lot.
One thing that is different from God of War is that Redhead can pick up shields and throw them. When tossed, the camera switches to behind the disc and its flight is controlled directly so that it can bob and weave through obstacles. This was innovative in Xena: The Warrior Princess back on the original Playstation, here - two generations later - it breaks up the action and introduces a lot of contrived "hit the switch behind a pillar" puzzles. This never felt integral to the game and lead to several moments of thinking, "Oh, there's a pile of shields there. I'll bet after there's a switch that needs hitting." To be fair, sometimes you use them to pop archers that are out of reach. But at short range, there is never a good reason to not just stick to the regular-ass [heavenly] sword.
Like Redhead, the artistic theme of the game is asianish. Not totally all up in Chinese aesthetics, just Europeaned up a little bit. It comes off as a believable and fresh fantasy world that is not just another cookie-cutter Dungeons & Dragons, Elves & Dwarves, Greyhawk Prime spinoff. While it is good looking, there is never any sense that there is a rich fiction behind the veil, and I do not really feel a need to return to this world. (In 2011, it seems clear that the developer agrees with me.)
Redhead is a strong female protagonist but there is nothing overly sexual about her. All of the flowing white cloth looks good when its flying around her in battles, but she definitely does not feel overly female. Redhead could have just as easily been a dude getting his shoalin monk on with his pajama pants. I suppose that might be a fairly misogynist perspective, thinking that women can only be whores or mothers, but the question then becomes why did Ninja Theory make Redhead a girl? Certainly I do not remember the story demanding it. Perhaps it is because her combat style is more about flow and less about muscled beefyness ripping things off of monsters, or maybe pretty asianish ladies on box covers of unknown intellectual properties sell more than angry white dudes. In any event, I don’t think that making female protagonists just as generic as any given male action game lead is particularly empowering for anyone.
The level design is largely, run to this room, kill the guys, repeat a lot, then kill the boss. Occasionally there are puzzles and platforming, but it is all pretty forgettable. In a few instances there are parts of the game where you have to woman a cannon and shoot hordes of the invading evil army. While basic, you shoot the guys with a turret, these sections are satisfying as you get to see masses of soldiers die and fly apart. Redhead at some point teams up with a scantily-clad, impish, full on, proper capital letter Asian girl. This character is nothing like Redhead and helps to break up the action by providing sections of the game that are all about her shooting at enemies and directing the darts to said enemies faces. This mechanic is the same as the shield toss one, but as the projectiles are flying much longer distances, there is more importance in control. This is where the game takes a downturn.
Before the newest of playstations came out, a big deal was made about the motion-sensing controls. In early 2011, I think I can safely say that this gimmick really was unnecessary. In Heavenly Sword, the motion controls are used like a flight stick to help steer bullets/darts and cannon-balls in flight. The problem is that this requires a great deal of finesse to get it to work properly. If the control is tilted too far, the arrow veers in the wrong direction and you have to take another shot as you will invariably over compensate by tilting in the other direction. Typically these shooting scenarios with the petite gal are sniper escort missions, so if the player fails to hit the mark too many times, its game over. I made it through about two-thirds of these missions before I discovered the option to ditch the motion controls in favor of the analog stick. This made these segments easy to the point where it would have been hard to fail. If the challenge is coming out of the controls, that says something about how fun it is.
Ultimately, Heavenly Sword is a pretty game that doesn't last for very long and is not very memorable. An average play through on the hardest initially available difficulty setting should run about 8 hours, 6 on normal. Some of the bosses are memorable, but they are never very fun to actually fight. The rest is fairly vanilla in terms of gameplay and makes the title more of a show piece title from two years ago than a platform defining classic that will last the ages. There are various levels of difficulty, but no particular reason play the game again. Would I recommend you play it today? Well, if you're looking for something new and you get it relatively cheap where you can get it, sure. If you're looking for a great game, keep looking. This one is a fine time and more importantly will keep your hands from being the devil's playhouse. Unless you're really into all things asianish.
