Asura’s Wrath is a game unlike any other I have played. In this time of sequels upon sequels upon clones of sequels, that sure is saying something. But will this originality mean success or failure in a world where the familiar often wins out over the new?

Asura is angry. The gods killed his wife, kidnapped his daughter and assassinated the emperor. Asura is banished from Earth and then awakened from a 12 millennia hibernation. And now it is time for payback.

Admittedly I had no idea of the backstory when I started playing the Asura’s Wrath demo. I just knew he was angry and I had to open a can. And boy oh boy, does he pack a can!

The first thing that makes the game stand out is the sheer scale of things. The demo contains 2 levels, both playing out like an anime television series. The first level sees Asura fight a massively fat guy, who kind of looks like a samurai sumo wrestler. And when I say massive I mean this guys stands about 20 stories tall. And once he is defeated, he also gets angry at Asura and grows to the size of a planet. When he then proceeds to punch Asura from space his finger actually burns as it enters the atmosphere!

The variety and insanely bonkers nature of the game will excite any fans of classic anime. Think of the craziness of Akira and you are getting close. In the conversations between characters you also detect a hint of attempted depth, but it is quickly lost when a sword is driven right though Asura and plunges so deep it comes out the other side of the earth.

Gameplay consists mostly of quick time events, but rather than the simplistic QTE’s found in games like God of War or Uncharted, these ones are more akin to Heavy Rain, with the use of dual sticks, buttons, shoulder buttons, rolls, twists, turns and more. This creates a sense of watching a show rather than playing a game.

You also have action shooter and action fighting sequences. The fighting involves massive combos and lots of noise and explosions. It can be very disorienting, but you keep doing the same thing until you fill your ‘Burst’ bar. This allows a bit of a cut-scene which then progresses the story. The shooter parts are equally frenetic, and using a variety of buttons you shoot parts of an enemy until again your Burst bar is filled up.

Asura himself has some godly attributes. When his wrath gets too much for him (this guy has a LOT of anger issues) he grows six arms which allow him to block punches from guys the size of earth. He seem to lose those arms often too, as they either get destroyed, blown up or cut off.

The game’s style feels like an ancient Japanese painting, with big brush strokes over the characters and finely penned details. It feels like a living painting. In contrast to the ancient Japanese style, you also have a very science-fiction feel to it with spaceships and lasers coming in to play.

If you ever feel tired of beating the fluff in a game and just want to get to the boss fights, then Asura’s Wrath is what you need. The whole game will feature mostly boss battles of an insane scale. Action junkies and anime fans will find equal measure of fun in this title when it launches at the end of February. Colour me intrigued!

Purchase: