I own a PS4, and I've been eagerly waiting for a Character Action game to be announced for the platform (Yeah, yeah, Legend of Korra, I know and I'm excited, but I was thinking more AAA). Low and behold, one is announced at Gamescom. Hellblade. Okay, aside from being a terrible name, it could be fine. Then I see it's coming from the Ninja Theory boys down in England. Oh well.

Then they show up at the Giant Bomb panel, and everyone cheers when they talk about the games they've put out. That floored me. How could people cheer when they say the words "Heavenly Sword"?????? That's when I realized that I might be the minority here. Well, I want to take a look at their past games and share my thoughts on them, so at least people can understand me when I say that Ninja Theory should stop making Character Action games.

Heavenly Sword

Okay, let's start with their Playstation 3 debut, Heavenly Sword. This game's story and world revolves around this thing called the Heavenly Sword. A heavenly guy beat some Demon Warlord and left the sword in the mortal world, resulting in humanity warring over it's power. Yeah, I bet you forgot that, I had to look this up because of how forgettable it is.

The game's protagonist is a red-head named Nariko. Her design isn't the worst thing ever, but there is nothing really interesting about it aside from the hair. Just like the plot, she is pretty forgettable.

Forgettable is a common word with this game. Level design didn't do anything to grab you. Something that I'll admit Ninja Theory has learned how to do. Unfortunately, this game wasn't too good at it.

The gameplay here is pretty basic. You use the Heavenly Sword (I haven't mentioned that this is a dumb ass name for a sword yet, but it is) in 3 different stances. Speed, range, and power. This doesn't really add too much variety, and honestly, the combat is JUST God of War. It's uninspired. It isn't awful by any means, and it works, but it doesn't do anything to stand out. It also uses QTE's too much.

Oh, and you could steer projectiles with the sixaxis controller. It's just as dumb as it sounds.

Heavenly Sword wasn't even bad. It was forgettable, and that is arguably worse. Also, didn't run at 60fps. BOO!!!

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

"Hold on, let me scan this blog before we read more of it"

Okay, this game is a weird one. Some people really seem to like it, and I remember people calling it the best game in 2010, but was it really that good? NO, at least in my opinion. This game is a re-imagining of Journey to the West, a novel written by Wu Cheng'en. The big difference being that Enslaved is set in a post-apocalyptic future. I have to admit that the premise is kick ass. Was the execution done well? Eh... I'm gonna get the rough shit out of the way first. The combat in this game is SO BAD!!!!!! Holy shit!!! You have stupid enemies that will block, attack, or sit there and eat your attacks. Your attacks consist of an overpowered stungun, a crappy laser, and your staff. Staff combos are non existent, because just mashing heavy attack and countering when enemies glow red will beat this game. Not to mention the "bosses". One being a dog that you can shoot with your stungun, hit with heavy attacks, and repeat. There is really nothing here, and it sucks.

Kiiiiiiindaaaaa...

People really like the story of this game. Specifically the relationship between Monkey and Trip. I found it thin. Their relationship grows a little too fast for my taste, probably because of how short the game is. Not to mention that Trip isn't likable for the majority of the game. Monkey is the one that compromises and helps Trip on her revenge mission without hesitation, even though he is the "Criminal slave being forced to protect against his will" while Trip is selfish and doesn't even ask monkey to help seek revenge. She just demands it. Boo. I hate you, Trip.

Character designs aren't great either, and Trip is JUST Nariko...

The artistic design is fucking gorgeous in this game!!! The simple climbing in the game presents you with beautiful vistas that made me stop and just look for a while. The mixture of color was nice to look at. Ninja Theory killed it in terms of aesthetic design.

Enslaved is a good game to look at... Not to play...

Didn't run at 60fps. BOO! Even the PC version had a FPS lock. DOUBLE BOO!!!!

DmC: Devil May Cry (What a dumb name!!!!!)

Okay! Here we go! This is the controversial one! Time to defend my distaste for this game!

Before you attack, I just wanna say that Old Dante was shit, and Reboot Dante isn't any better. They're both dumb and I didn't care about the change. That is the least of my issues with DmC.

I'll change it up and start with the positive. Level design and platforming are great in this game. It was fun to traverse these impossibly cool areas as they crumbled and formed around me. Thumbs up!

Okay, the positive stuff went by fairly quickly... onto the mechanics of DmC... They are too simple. Devil Trigger is dumbed down! Stances are gone! Lock-On is GONE! Almost all advanced tactics are gone! (No DRI's, No Enemy Hopper Jump Cancels, No Royal Guard!!!!!!!). SSS ranks are handed out like free candy! Colored enemies are maybe the WORST thing in the game. Why would you intentionally prevent the player from being creative with his combos in a Devil May Cry game? UGH!

Enemy design is TERRIBLE!!!! Only one of them are fun to fight, being that teleporting samurai guy, and the rest are just boring or bad.

Bosses are bad. Yeah, I said it. That stupid News Station boss that everyone talks about LOOKS cool, but it is literally jumping through squares, pressing a button, and doing as much damage as possible in the bosses recovery time. That is bad design. Even the fight with Vergil is much worse than the fights with Vergil throughout DMC3.

DmC is cool to look at and jump around in, but it is too braindead easy for me to feel satisfied playing it. It felt balanced with reviewers in mind, requiring little to no effort to do "Cool shit".

Ran at 60fps on PC, not console. Half-Boo.

In Conclusion?

This really looks like a lot of bitching, but I'm not excited for Hellblade because Ninja theory has a bad track record. I just want Sony to hire Platinum to make something for PS4, because I'm not looking forward to my inevitable purchase of the Xbox One for Scalebound, the only game I'm interested in on that system. I already did it with the WiiU, and now I'm going to do it again. I'd like a good AAA Character Action game on the system I already bought, and I don't have any high hopes for GenericBlade...

/rant i guess?

I didn't do Kung Fu Chaos because no one knows that that is...