Tendo City

Quote:You may think you know hack and slash games, but re-think that when you consider PS3. Sony's press conference displayed one such show-stopper that blew the doors off the house, burning any doubts one may have of the next-gen graphical power. Heavenly Sword is an upcoming PS3 title that knocked the wind out of us.


The shot begins with a close-up of a woman's eye. The camera pulls back to show she has a shock of red hair with spiky bangs. She's surrounded by an entire army of baddies, armed to the teeth with spears, swords and other dangerous accessories. They've encircled her, growling and ready to rip her to shreds. The strange woman looks doomed, until her enemies unleash an attack and she has to makes short work of them all. In a acrobatic array of Jet Li-esque martial arts, our heroine leaps, evades, and kicks the hell out of each and every one of her enemies. A few of them get knocked into their comrades, taking the lot of them down like bowling pins, others end-up slammed against the wall, left to slump in a pile of broken bones. One group of unfortunate fellows ended-up skewered along a spear, shish kebob style.


Just when we thought are heroine was all about the melee combat, she shows up on screen with a device that looks like portable cannon. In the distance we see thousands of soldiers on the horizon, all of them headed in her direction. She loads her gun and fires it into the madness, taking out waves of enemies who can't run away in time. The smoke clears, and the battleground is littered with corpses. The survivors are enraged and charge at their prey, only to receive the other half of her wrath. She leaps at her crazed attackers and continues to hand-out ass whoopins' left and right. She's taking out six and ten soldiers at a time with a flurry of kicks and punches. The violence is fast, unforgiving, and overwhelmingly intense.


What's most amazing is that we were told that what we saw was all in game graphics. When you consider the detail give to every enemy including the main character, the concept it hard to believe. Nevertheless, the tech demos proved that the PS3 is a very powerful machine capable performing exquisite action on screen with all the detailed displayed in this clip. The action sequences alone flowed very much like the action in something like God of War.


The development team here originally worked on Kung-Fu Chaos, which was an exclusive Xbox title. They've since regrouped to form Ninja Theory, which is now responsible for Heavenly Sword on the PS3.