Beat 'em up games where martial artists engage each other in combat and a wide range of moves is available. Examples include Dead or Alive, Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Bloody Roar and Streetfighter.
Superficially, Heavenly Sword looks a lot like an evolution of the God of War (GoW) series of games, though there is apparently no connection between the Cambridge based developers Ninja Theory (previous Just Add Monsters), the Sony Cambridge site and the Sony Santa Monica site responsible for the GoW series; nevertheless, the resemblance is striking. It would seem that Heavenly Sword started out as a PC based development looking forward to a next gen console, which was originally going to be Xbox 360.
Apart from substituting the angst-ridden, suicidal-homicidal Nariko - with all her Freudian baggage - for the equally angst-ridden suicidal-homicidal Kratos, the rest remains the same: lots of bad guys are on the screen. You kill them and move on to the next one. Sometimes you have to do something to hit a switch, hit buttons as they flash up on the screen, fight a boss or fire a gun, but that's about it. Unlike GoW, despite a fair range of game-play options, somehow the game comes up feeling very limited and flat - possibly because the game is based on a combo system that serves surprisingly little purpose. While the game seems to be based around the combo system, it tends to feel a bit redundant, and instead comes down to timing on the counter button more than anything else.
From the slew of previews it's possible to work out what's happened with DOA4. Not only did this crucial title slip and miss the US launch, but it's still not ready - that doesn't mean they aren't prepared to ship it though...
Superficially, Heavenly Sword looks a lot like an evolution of the God of War (GoW) series of games, though there is apparently no connection between the Cambridge based developers Ninja Theory (previous Just Add Monsters), the Sony Cambridge site and the Sony Santa Monica site responsible for the GoW series; nevertheless, the resemblance is striking. It would seem that Heavenly Sword started out as a PC based development looking forward to a next gen console, which was originally going to be Xbox 360.
Apart from substituting the angst-ridden, suicidal-homicidal Nariko - with all her Freudian baggage - for the equally angst-ridden suicidal-homicidal Kratos, the rest remains the same: lots of bad guys are on the screen. You kill them and move on to the next one. Sometimes you have to do something to hit a switch, hit buttons as they flash up on the screen, fight a boss or fire a gun, but that's about it. Unlike GoW, despite a fair range of game-play options, somehow the game comes up feeling very limited and flat - possibly because the game is based on a combo system that serves surprisingly little purpose. While the game seems to be based around the combo system, it tends to feel a bit redundant, and instead comes down to timing on the counter button more than anything else.
