Heavely Sword Demo

Developer: Ninja Theory
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Released on: July 27th, 2007
System: Playstation 3
ESRB Rating: Rating Pending
Review based on: Demo download from the Playstation Network
Official Website

The Scoop: A little bit God of War, a little bit hack-and-slash brawler and a whole lotta red hair.

Hitting Start...

• A cut scene starts the game with our heroin and her sister who has a thousand yard stare and something to say that I don't pay attention to, I wanna go kill something because my time is limited. I hit whatever buttons I need to hit to advance...


• I can now run around for a bit and get used to the controls in a safe area; a shiny thing on the ground marks where I can move on to the next area and start playing. After a poking around the controls a bit (which seem nicely responsive) I hit the button to move on.


• Off we jump onto one of four huge ropes and rail-slide down it like it's Jet Set Radio future.


• Here's where the "cineractives" start, the camera cuts down to the bottom of the ropes and the bad guys yell out 'cut the ropes' so now we have to react to on screen prompts as we slide. Left, right, left.... and one last huge jump onto the top of a huge stone spire littered with bad guys.


• I played this bit as a hack and slash since I don't really know any of the controls yet (there's no tutorial) but my buddy is telling me about the flashes of colors the enemies make and about stances, combos and special attacks. I don't really care because button mashing seems to be kicking some ass.


• I failed to make one of the button pushes during the cineractive, so I have a mini-mini-boss on this platform to contend with too. All head-on attacks seem useless, but I execute a special attack on some guy where I slam my sword into his crotch and everyone goes flying! Woot!


• Since I'm flailing a bit I'm also taking on a bunch of damage, but I can't tell if there is a health system like Virtua Fighter or like Rainbow 6 or whatever, it doesn't matter though when you get the camera to zoom in on some special attack like the crotch annihilator.


• Everyone on the platform is dead and the next cineractive starts as you ride the huge crumbling spire (that was held up by the ropes) down to the ground. If you time the button click you land nicely like a cat or like a bag of rocks, I land like a bag of rocks.


• Now it's time to dispatch a few more bad guys, and then three more, obviously tougher baddies run thru the doorway at you and you think "All right, a tough fight!"


• And the demo is over, just like that...

"...and I want more, now!"

Am I impressed? Pleasantly.
How come? Even though the demo is utterly short, and I had only enough time to play thru it twice, I found myself thinking about the game several hours later, wanting to play more. I want to learn how to use the various move and stances and I really like the environments shown in the demo. The scale of the world shown to you at the beginning is huge for a game played on foot, so to speak. There's a lot of verticality and it looks like there's a ton of ground to cover.

The only concern I have right now is that it might be an ultra linear game where you just move from arena to arena and fight faceless enemies. The demo doesn't show you anything more than that unfortunately.