Heavenly Sword from Ninja Theory is a title which Sony has put a lot of time and invested a lot of funds into to make it a solid first party PS3 exclusive.  It was dubbed as the God of War the PS3 is yet to have by many critics and fans of the franchise who have been following the game through it development, and rightfully so.  Once you see the combat and such in motion you immediately think a God of War type style, but Heavenly Sword does a nice job of straying away from being a clone and making a niche all of its own.

 

Heavenly Sword is one of the most visually impressive next-gen games to date as the presentation of it is phenomenal.  As soon as you see the cut-scenes in motion and then experience the game play you are going to be immediately drawn in by the visuals. 

 

The way in which the controls work is that there are three different stances which you can switch by pressing the shoulder buttons.  By pressing L1 you enter a ranged stance.  This allows you to swing the sword as if it were two different weapons all at once.  The R1 activates a power stance where you perform heavier and more powerful attacks.  The downside to these attacks are that they are slower.  The third stance is the default stance and is known as the speed stance.  As you can expect this makes for less powerful attacks which can be done quickly.  Each type of control can be used in a variety of situations depending on the type of enemies you fight and adds a lot of depth and strategy to the game play.  It will take time to figure out which stance to use when, but once you do you will be one hell of a killing machine.

 

The great thing about the stances if that you will not be able to rely on just one.  You will have to use all 3 to succeed.  The ranged attacks work best against weaker enemies, yet stronger enemies will block just about every attack.  The same can be said about the heavier weapons as they may not be the smartest move against the weaker quicker enemies.

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