Special thanks to Tim Dowland for the following preview of Heavenly Sword:
Publish by: Ninja Theory
Developed by: Ninja Theory
Genre: First-Action
Number of Players: 1?
Release Date: US: TBA 2006


Heavenly Sword, the latest release from the company Ninja Theory, looks to be a stunning adventure sure to captivate gamers for hours on end. It takes place in the east during an ancient mythical era of lords and vassals. You play as Nariko, a lubricous pissed off beauty who is locked in a furious battle for revenge against a scheming megalomaniacal ruler by the name of King Botan and his hoards of crazed sword touting thugs. They are responsible for the destruction of Nariko’s village along with the ruthless murder of her father and the sacred guardians of the ancient Heavenly Sword. You see, the Heavenly Sword used to belong to an ancient deity who eventually bestowed the burden of protecting it from the wrong hands onto a small group of “Chosen Ones.” King Botan on the other hand ended up having this group slaughtered along with Nariko’s father. Now alone, Nariko will have to take matters into her own hands.

Take control of Nariko as you hack and slash through an arrangement of action packed battles. The environments that have been seen so far are quite astonishing to say the least. It kind of makes you want to take a trip back to the original Tekken for PS1 just to compare. The henchmen and bosses have been brilliantly and creatively designed, each with their own unique combos and wicked attacks. It’s been heard that you won’t be seeing any five story tall freakish demon bosses in this one though. Ninja theory was going for a little more realism this time around. The degree of detail in the levels, characters and animations are quite amazing. It kind of makes you wonder about how good it’s going to get in the future with the games already looking this great and companies just getting started with the new engines.

The game features a dynamic fighting system, somewhat reminiscent to the game God of War, that will allow you to maneuver into different fighting stances and slash and smash attacks. They’ve also added a power meter that you build up to unleash some insanely cool combos at lightning fast speed.
Nariko has three different battle styles or stances that she can use; they’ve mostly been set up individually for close, mid-range, and far attacks. Combine one of those techniques with different combos of light medium and heavy attacks and you’ll be able to come up with some seriously explosive combos.

Her main weapon is known as the Heavenly Blade; remember… the gigantic magickal sword? It can more then crush the hell out of anyone who comes in contact with the wrong end of it, but there’s a catch… it’s going to suck the life force out of anyone who who puts their hands on it. So your going to have to kill endlessly and mercilessly in order to survive. She can also swing two smaller twin blades; perfectly crafted for the not so every day, pissed off and gorgeous hack and slash hobbyist type of heroin that Nariko is. Along with those weapons you also get a set of twenty foot chains that whip out from behind which you will use to whap and fling your enemies in every direction imaginable.

Plus! The environments have also been littered with various melee weapons like swords and bazookas and such that can be picked up to help Nariko blow through huge groups of foes. In Heavenly Blade you can even throw props like tables, chairs, shields and swords at your opponents! One really amazing thing is that after you throw the object you can hold the throw button down and the game will move in slow motion, and from there you can actually guide the flying object to the enemy that you want to kill. How cool is that? Not to mention the fact that you can even throw the enemies through walls and at each other the exact same way! There’s nothing like a nice brutal game of life sized bowling to get things moving in the morning, ay?

In the demo that’s been seen in all the videos so far, you’re basically in a giant arena where groups of about twelve to fifteen take turns jumping in and trying to slaughter you, as you mercilessly slash away with your blades, hands, feet, nails and fists. The enemies start out easy and the arena looks nice with all the props neatly placed just waiting to be smashed and torn to oblivion. By the end of the level the whole place looks like a tornado went through with debris and dead bodies everywhere. The soundtrack in the demo features some pretty good pulse driving music. There haven’t been too many levels shown so far but from what is seen and heard so far you can probably bet that they’re all going to be pretty amazing.
Overall Heavenly Blade looks like it is definitely hit worthy. It hasn’t even hit shelves yet and it’s winning awards like crazy.

Next-Gen's Top 20 Playable Games of E3 - Number 1!!!
GamePro's Top 20 games - Number 1!!!
Gamespot's People's Choice Awards
IGN E3 Award for Technological Excellence - Winner IGN E3 Best Artistic Design - Winner Meristation E3 Best PS3 Game - Winner GameDaily E3 Nod Award GameZone - BEST OF SHOW (Overall) - Game Critics Awards - Best Fighting Game - IGN E3 Best Action Game - Runner up IGN E3 Best Graphics - Runner up IGN E3 Game of the Show - Runner up GameSpy Best of E3 2006 - Top 10 Console Game

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