Preview: Asura’s Wrath

     Every time I’ve seen this game; it’s been as a hands-off demo.  So I was thrilled to actually get more than a two minute look at the game.  I loved it.  But it’s not going to be for any means.  Asura’s Wrath is the greatest interactive movie I’ve EVER seen.  At least the fifteen minutes of the demo I was able to play.  Asura’s Wrath revolves around a Japanese version of old Asian mythology.  It is interesting to try and pick out Archetypes and concepts that the developers might have drawn on when creating the game.  So I guess that adds a small interesting aspect to the choice of subject material rather than just creating things completely from scratch.  

    All the aspects of something like Heavy Rain are present.  But none of the things that Heavy Rain did poorly.  Movement control is perfect as you only given it in a very limited scope every once in a while.  The controls are simple, yet playing with them in different ways creates different effects.  My main problem with Heavy Rain was that it kept changing the quick time controls for things without any notice and expected you to be able to pull off the move quickly.  Asura doesn’t do this, it uses mostly the same button and movements for the same things.  It will even give you a couple seconds to pull them off.  Overall, the system is very forgiving.  While you can’t really effect the outcome of the fight as you would in a standard game.  The ending is the same.  What I mean by this is that in every game there is a story that you cannot deviate from.  Unless that is the aim of the game.  Asura’s Wrath just goes a little more linear path than anything out there.

    Although many people will REALLY hate Asura’s Wrath and many people will probably criticize the game for having no replay value.  But as a one off experience I can’t imagine anything cooler.  While I haven’t played the full game, so far this looks like a definite rental.  At the very least give the demo a shot on XBOX Live.  Asura’s Wrath isn’t the standard faire that we are all used to and that’s what makes it so cool.