Continuing my unpopular series of attention whoring rants, here's my take on Heavenly Sword, a month late!

Unfortunately, the story on how this game was acquired isn't even an anectdote that is clever or amusing in any way, so I'll just skip that step.

Now then, the game. Well, let me preface this eventually large post of text with a bit of fun: I put in the Disc at 11:53pm, with the game never being run on the ps3 before. At 5:06am, the credits were running.  I did not skip a single cutscene. I had to install the game. I failed a few missions. I had to restart the game because I forgot to turn Subtitles on. The only way this game would be 7 hours is if I had done the 15 levels where I didn't get all 3 heavenly symbols on it, and then the game would be 100% complete, normal mode, in probably under 7 hours. Requisite length bashing begins and ends!

 Now, with the length like that, there's got to be something fun in the game, and I won't deny, that the first 2 hours went by amazingly quickly. "What? It's 2 am? Wow, awesome.". Sadly... by 2:30 am, time began moving SLOWLY. This makes me sad, because I had such high hopes for the game! By 4 am I was considering just not finishing it

That 10 gigs of uncompressed audio? Well, that was kinda wasted on me, seeing as I was playing with 2 volume. (See time started and completed) Sure, I could hear things, and pretty clearly, but at that volume, as long as there's no static, I couldn't tell 10 gigs of well digitized sound from an old tape player. This however, is certainly not the game designers fault. However, what was their fault, was what was once a nice joyous reaction "Hey, the only options are Start game and Subtitltes on/off", meaning me figuring that the subtitles would be completely comprensive quickly turned to the annoyance of "Well, they put 10 fucking gigs of audio, but barely subtitle the story doing cutscenes." In game, if someone speaks, and you don't have volume, you're straining your fucking ears to get the story because they aren't writing a god damn thing down. Which makes me question why they proudly declare their subtitles on the main screen no less, if for 50% in the speech in the game, they don't exist. Like McDonalds proclaiming 100% beef patties that contain 50% worm.

The visuals? Fantastic. But that's getting kind old saying that for PS3 games. Sure, I hate how the hair is horribly done, but that, and some severe frame dropping on the last boss (They went for epic. 500 enemy sprites plus a heavily animated last boss + you = frame drop. Oddly, the portion of the last boss without the 500 bonus sprites runs smooth as silk) existed, but charecters and cutscenes are well rendered, and if you're a fan of panty shots, or guys getting hit in the crotch, then by god, this game shows both in spades, and shows both really well.

Storyline is... well, you know, it's not brazenly stupid. Actually, it's moderately enjoyable! You aren't expecting much, you're not getting much, but you are getting more than you expect, and that's quite good! The villians ham it up like their sole ambition in life is to become stuck in a tube and labled  "SPAM", but there's nothing painful about the story. Voice acting is also extremely well done, and you know what? That's good. Though I'm hearing it at 2 volume again, maybe if you hear it at normal, it sounds awful, but for the 2 volume, the charecters, though porkish, stay true and realistic as you can expect for the story!

Gameplay: Anyone who tells people this isn't a button masher, Fox News would be proud of them. This is a button masher. You mash buttons. A lot of the time. It's also easy. You get the 3 tokens by hitting combos, aka hits in a row. While fighting 30-40 enemies, I found myself racking up about 200 hits in a row before I'd get bored, try to counter, and screw up because I never figured out that counter-attacking doens't occur when in my mind it would (Arms raised and defenses open), but instead when you just blocked the attack. Sometimes you get a cannon, and get to blow shit up.  They have limit shots, and the ground cannon sucks to aim. Since the ground cannon was always optional, I always skipped it and just cut up the opponents. Late game there's a challenge to kill 500 enemies, and you get a hand cannon. After firing nearly fruitlessly, I dropped the cannon and proceeded to kill the remaining 300 enemies by hand. Please note completion time.

You know what? This is taking too long. I'm now just going to say every thing that bothered me about the game:

Unskippable help text of 10 words taking 30 seconds to disappear from the screen. I don't read at 20 words a minute assholes. Let me skip it. Late in the game, it disappears very quickly. I was happy.

Hat Puzzles: Do you know how fun it is to throw a hat at a gong? Well, you'll find out how much you like doing it, then doing it with a bounce, then doing it with a bounce that's timed, then doing it timed with 0 time to screw up, then doing it against a boss. I assure you, the cleverness never wears thin. Just like the crotch of a fat man's jogging pants.

Kai: I may be in the minority here. Kai bored the shit out of me. Well, first, the game seemed to imply you can play the archery minigames (all... 9 of them or so) without zooming in. If you got that impression, slap yourself. I actually did for believing that for a moment. No, Kai is launch/sixxaxxis aim, repeat x60. 8 times. Each arrow you launch in slow motion takes about 20 seconds. You will miss, even once you get used to the controls. 20 seconds * 60 enemies * 8 repetitions =  160 minutes. Because of her UNGODLY slow playtime, Kai was used, according to my estimation, more than Nariko was. If Kai was fun and not at all reptitive and slow, that may be okay. She is not. She is fire, tilt, fire, tilt, fire, tilt, wacky, fire, tilt repeat till level, repeat *8.

Magical Arrow Damage: Imagine in Halo, if the sniper rifle could be aimed to any part of the body in slow motion. Imagine if that aimed ankle shot was a 1 hit kill. Amazingly, in this game, if you aim the arrow, it's an auto one hit kill. If you don't, well, it doesn't hurt the enemies all that much. Like if noscoping did half the damage. This perplexed me.

The Cannon: Mainly when you're in a cannon, it's to kill catapults. These catapults have a lovely construction that appears as 3 enomrous red targets to hit to destroy them. Amazingly, these are their magic weapoints. You can blow the shit out of any portion of the catapult that's made of wood with deadly exploding cannonballs, but it will stand, smile, smirk, wave, and call your mother a hamster until you hit each of it's magical weakpoints dead on. The explosion that your cannonballs do? Don't count. This was annoying.

Bosses: The game really can't have a straight bossfight. After the first one, each boss fight has at minimum 2 scenes, little brief interuptions of the game that rarely serve any purpose. The second boss not only has little cutscene interuptions, but you actually stop, play a Kai game, then return to her 2nd life bar. Sorry Boomer Kuwanger, but Zero's got Sting Chameleon in his cell and really wants to fight him. Can we wait a bit?

Enemies: Allow me to list every non boss type of enemy: Archer. Guy with sword A, Guy with Sword B. Female Ninja. Guy with Hammer A, Guy with Hammer B. Guy with Hat. Guy with claws for hands. 9 total, and 2 clones. 10 gigs of audio, 20 megs of enemy sprites

Law Manditory Button press Sequences: You know what they are. What you may not know is this: Imagine in ddr, instead of tapping your foot on the up button as the arrow came, you had to hold it until the game accepts it. Heavenly Sword does not want you to tap the button once quickly. It wants you to hold it down like it just stole from you. The game says up, you tap up, the game kills you. The game says up, you hold up, you live. Also a nice little quirk with the bosses: You counter throws with the circle button. But despite the instructions to "press the circle button", they clearly meant mash it because a quick press of circle when it appeared on my screen did nothing, whereas mashing it actually countered the throw.

The game was kinda like making out with a really hot girl and then she has an asthma attack, coughs up all over you, and loses control over her bladder at the same time. Somehow, that first awesome few moments is pretty much ruined. Kai parts bored the shit out of me. Button press sequences were button hold sequences. A clone ninja army. Mechanical enemies with magical weakpoints. Hat Puzzles that are frustrating to perform, yet take 2 seconds to figure out. Oh, and a last boss who doesn't hurt you or do anything like an enormous power move that you need to dodge or do another button sequence to take half damage. No, the challenge for the last boss: He is obscured so you can't see the colour of his attacks.

Under 5 hours of actually playing the game, and after unlocking hell mode, I give the game a 6 out of 10. For another big budget title, there were too many small little "WTF" things for me to be happy about. In the end, I want to have fun, and probably had I found the Kai parts not so boring, it would have moved to an 8, but they weren't fun, other parts weren't fun, that's it. It's fearful, this is my short version.

I didn't say people would like this one.

I liked a lot this one .Good acting ,superb sound ,amazing graphics ,a good storyline ....a bit short true but definitely the best beat-them-all yet in the current generation .

"10 gigs of audio, 20 megs of enemy sprites"

I laughed

I had a completely different experience to you, although I too hated the Kai levels, and that is stopping me from the starting the game all over again to do it in hell mode
I found it running perfectly, at all times in the game. The graphics are breathtaking and the cut scenes were even more impressive than the Lord of the Rings (I watched them both in the same week, on the same TV from my PS3). It was button mashing, but I generally found that I had more success by primarily using counters, and occasionally taking enemies on. Against Bohan, I found that I was forced into using block breaker combos constantly. The whole game had a good feel, and I felt it was challenging, but not impossible and I though that the last levels were some of the best I had ever played.
The story is excellent thanks to the brilliant cut scenes and the whole feel of the game. The only thing that was missing was Bohan declaring that he was Nariko's father.
I really enjoyed the whole experience and hope that they make another one soon, although the game was short, I enjoyed nearly all of it

"Unskippable help text of 10 words taking 30 seconds to disappear from the screen. I don't read at 20 words a minute assholes."

-Simply press the buttons it tells you too when the message pops up and the text dissapears immediately.

"Hat Puzzles: Do you know how fun it is to throw a hat at a gong?"

-They're shields my friend, not hats.

I Don't agree with you about playing with Kai, I loved the sixaxis implementation. I've never seen anything like it.

The game is extremely well put together. You criticize some of the unrealistic elements like the catapults (which I'd say were designed that way to prove at bit of a challenge to kill) and the one-shot kills on enemy soldiers with arrows, (again it's obvious why it was designed that way). 

Yet you overlook the astonishing physics, the fact that bodies don't dissapear, the destructable scenery, etc.

The graphics in this game are a absolute wonder to behold, the backrounds are just breathtaking. There are however some frame drops at certain points which you did mention.

The gameplay is smooth, without glitches and easy to pick up. You can jump between enemies, and use 3 types of stances with dozens of different combos.

I played the Dynasty Warriors Gundam demo after playing HS for a few hours and couldnt believe how poor the fighting system was compared to HS.

It's only faults in my opinion, are it's length (although I'm hungering for more so that might be a good thing) and the occasional frame drops, which aren't too bad at all.

I'd give it a 8.5/10

So? Roses smell better than shit too.

Am I the only person who did not see any frame rate drops. I must also say that this is basically the only game on PS3 with really good SIXAXIS integration (Folklore, Ratchet and Uncharted also have good stuff)

Heavenly Sword has been a BIG Disappointment

I mean even the sales show this