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Even when you're nominally involved in the action through QTEs, failing them often makes no difference to what actually happens in the scene all it does is lower your overall performance rating at the end of the episode. There's no getting away from the fact that Asura's Wrath is mostly cutscene. You're lucky if any given episode features more than three or four minutes of actual gameplay. About 70% of the time in Asura's Wrath, you're watching rather than playing. But – and this is a very big reservation – it often forgets to be interactive. Its story – bonkers and entirely nonsensical as it is, towards the end – is what keeps you playing you always want to know what's going to happen next. Asura's Wrath is, in my opinion, one of the greatest achievements in Japanese animation in a very long time. The static illustrations that feature between episodes are gorgeously detailed too – as you might expect from a studio (CyberConnect 2) whose staff are suffused with passion for manga and anime. It's awesome scene after awesome scene: a fleet of spaceships exploding in the sky, a space weapon shaped like a giant Buddha made of light, a face-off between six-armed Asura and stylish, mask-wearing rival Yasha in a smoking crater. It's beautifully directed the animation is often up there with the best in Japanese film. The style, which is a synthesis of bizarre science-fiction and Japanese mythological imagery viewed through a pen-and-ink, comic-book filter, is unique and striking. You'll see some astonishing things: the Earth exploding into a gigantic laser-shooting maw, a sword so long it can cleave the Moon in two, and Asura regularly punching people so hard that they literally go into orbit.Īsura's Wrath's presentation is faultless. As he comes back to life and sees what a mess of the world his former comrades have made, his rage gets stronger and stronger, leading to some incredible scenes of over-the-top, fantastical violence. He loses his wife and daughter to a power-plot dreamed up by the other deities, and finds himself resurrected centuries later through the sheer force of his anger. The game's story spans 12,000 years and follows the story of Asura – a demi-god betrayed by his fellow gods and thrown out of heaven. It delivers a story that's up there with the best gaming has to offer in terms of visual spectacle, but in doing so, it stays very close to the conventions of film, and rather shies away from actually being a game. It is an attempt at a new kind of interactive entertainment, one much closer to living, breathing anime than traditional action game. This is, self-evidently, an excellent thing – and a rare one, if you've been playing games for a long time. I also enjoy incredibly massive battles and am willing to overlook some goofiness if it means larger-than-life destruction.Asura's Wrath is not like any game you will ever have played before. I enjoy button-mashing cinema fights, to some extent.
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Oh, but then again, he's some kind of deity. Each level is insane.But at just around six hours of game play, maybe you should rent it.Stray observations from my favorite level: At one point, Asura grows extra arms. Even if you don't, you might find yourself moving from level to level simply out of wild curiosity. If you enjoy that type of thing, then you're going to love it. You may find that you don't care or you may find yourself literally moving from level to level because you want to know where the insane story is going to go next.And that's really what this game has going for it: it is, quite literally, a massive playable anime, warts and all. It's almost impossible to fully explain the story, because it's an anime-style story and so it rarely makes complete sense. Let's talk story.So Asura is a centuries-old deity who's forced out of power by other deities. I enjoy playing through cinematics, but they lose their urgency and tension if you don't fail once in awhile.But I digress. The game itself just sort of moves on its own, and forgives you for your errors. And I'm pretty sure I'm not bragging here. Here is Asura's Wrath, a perfectly commendable game with colorful graphics, sleek style, and some decent voice acting (a rarity in games of this style).Still, I can't get over the fact that a lot of Asura's Wrath is cutscene, and it irks me just a bit because it's really, really hard to lose. It's reached a point where I can't even enjoy other games for more than a few hours. Oh sweet Jesus, I can't wait for Mass Effect 3 to come out.