You know what I absolutely love…high wire martial arts kung-fu flicks! Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hero and House of Flying Daggers are just a few of the ones I really enjoy. Along comes Heavenly Sword to give kind of that same format, what with its focus on combat and being surrounded by numerous enemies at one time.

The lead character (a woman mind you for extra points) is shown in this Gladiator style arena (sans thumbs) and enemy after enemy continues to come at you. Now, the controls for this PS3 game weren’t smooth at all at the beginning, but I only blame myself – they put those cards with the directions on them for a reason, but thankfully a nearby by spokesman came over and walked me through my telling in my ear things to try and things to do.

Our female hero has three different fighting styles depending on what type of weapon you have out. If you have your default weapon drawn then it is a two bladed affair, but by pressing in one of the left shoulder buttons it suddenly becomes this amazing chainsword number that whirls about you like some tornado of metal death. I found myself using this weapon the most as it was simply the coolest looking of the three. Yes, I’m shallow, I believe we have gone over this haven’t we? The third weapon is activated by clicking one of the right shoulder buttons, and by doing that you get this one giant sword that probably does a lot of damage, but it is fairly slow to wield.

First, let us get the negative out of the way first: bad camera angles. And this isn’t me going “Oh, this sucked! Blah blah they need to do this! Blah blah blah!” No, rather it was the person helping me at the game who said at least twice to my recollection, “Oh, bad camera angle.” Thank you for speaking what I was thinking…that could’ve been awkward. The issue wasn’t too bad and only really showed itself like twice during my time with the game, but they included issues like the camera going through the wall so you couldn’t see your character or the action at all.

Now that that technicality is out of the way I will just say that the combat was very fun and fluid and the animation that captured it all was very, very nice. There were even such minor things as her hair which flowed behind her as if it was naturally fluttering in the wind.

If I’m looking to classify the game based on what I saw it is like Dynasty Warriors (the battle against multiple people at once) meets God of War. The God of War elements come from the boss battle, which makes you complete a Shenmue-esque QTE (Quick Time Event) so you can beat him. So, this dude is packed with power and will roll around the environment and whoop you easily. Well, get on the attack until he is low enough to trigger a cutscene. Once in the cutscene you will watch this animated battle of death unfold before you, and whenever you see a direction or button flash across the screen, that is your indication to do so as well. If you can manage to do the QTE just right you beat the boss and live to kill another day.

Though my time with the PS3 has been sadly limited, so far Heavenly Sword is my second favorite. My issue at first was my negative opinion of the Dynasty Warrior ways, cause I absolutely hate the “one man against the world” gameplay of that game, but once you see it isn’t too much like that after all you really start to find yourself truly enjoying it.

Remember the complaints from last year’s E3 where people said, “That footage isn’t real…that is mockup and what they hope it looks like!” I hate to tell you haters, but this game looks almost exactly like the PS3 footage from last year.