Asura's Wrath was the last game I played at the first public day of TGS and it was purely by chance. With less than an hour remaining, I knew that any popular games I might want to play probably already had their queues cut off so everybody already in the line could get a chance to play before the show ended for the day. As a result of that, I meandered over to the Microsoft booth, which, while relatively populated, was certainly not as dense as most of the ones for Japanese developers and publishers. I originally intended to go play Halo there, mostly out of irony, but also to see how the redux of a fondly remembered shooter was going. Despite there only being two people in the booth playing what looked to be the Reach-derived multiplayer component, it was actually shut off from newcomers. That led to me wandering around the booth in search of something I was even remotely interested in when, lo and behold, Capcom's angry game rounded the corner.<br><br>
There were two separate demos for the game being run, one of which was for the planet-sized boss shown in previous trailers and another of a fight with an Asura look-alike. Because of the length of each of the demos, people were allotted to play only one or the other. Although only two people were in front of us, my friend and I actually turned out to be among the last of the people who got to play the game for the day.<br><br>
I wound up playing the demo with the look-alike boss, which disappointed me, since it seemed to have less gameplay variety than the other one, as that contained on-rails shooting segments that I wasn't aware were in the game. Regardless, I enjoyed my time with it. While there are quick-time events a plenty in the game, they don't make up the entirety of the gameplay and they're also liberally timed. That being said, they were entertaining to watch, since it confirmed that Capcom is hell-bent on out-angering trend-setters such as God of War, a goal that, after playing it myself, I wouldn't be surprised to see come true.<br><br>
Aside from the quick time scenes, there was also a good amount of brawling to do in the fight. The mechanics behind it were nothing particularly complex, but they were competent and appropriately button-mashey, which complemented the ridiculously angry tone of Asura's Wrath well. If you've seen footage of this fight, you can probably see for yourself how complex the game will get during those segments. For me, at least, I did feel that the game made the combat feel visceral and intense, but at the end of the day, they're probably meant to garnish the more cinematic aspects that the game seems to be primarily focusing on.<br><br>
I came away from the demo satisfied and more interested in the final product than I was previously. I worry about the overall length of the game, even if, judging by the other demo, there will be some variety, so if I buy it, it almost certainly won't be at launch. One special thing to note is that the demo seemed to have significant artifacts in the pre-rendered cutscenes, which was immediately noticeable as soon as I began. I can't postulate for certain why that is, although I suspect it was either due to the system overheating from a long day or, more likely, compression onto a DVD format. While the real-time visuals looked fine and had no major issues, the artifacting was enough to ensure that if I do buy the game, it'll probably be the PS3 version by default.
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