Once finished, there will usually be another brawler section, followed by another set of QTEs.Īt random junctures, there will be shoot ’em up sequences where Asura fires off magic energy balls with his fist. One is supposed to follow on-screen prompts to push buttons or move analog sticks, but even if one fails, Asura will often continue his work unhindered. What will follow is a long-winded set of animations in which the player’s actions have very little influence. The goal is to fill the burst meter without losing one’s health, so that Asura can unleash his rage and kick off the QTE sections. Instead, Asura has a “burst” meter that fills whenever he gives or takes damage. These fights are theoretically indefinite, as regular enemies will continue to spawn and bosses have no health bars. It starts with a simple beat ’em up section, in which Asura must take on either a group of monsters or a single, boss-like entity. Most episodes follow a very predictable pattern. Instead, it is a disjointed, segregated, spluttering fiasco, a game that never allows itself to build to a satisfying end because it can’t start anything without stopping first. However, it’s not so much the frequency of the QTE segments that disappoints me, it’s the fact that not one of Asura’s Wrath‘s elements play off each other to create a unified game. Much has been made of the fact that barely interactive QTEs comprise half the game, to the point where you might as well unplug the console and play Simon Says with real people. When it’s not shouting at you, Asura’s Wrath is being one of three things - a beat ’em up, a shooter, and a quick-time-event sequence. That isn’t to say the entire adventure is a hands-off experience.
#Rage asura wrath series
Pretentiously separated into episodes (with arrogant credit sequences thrown into each one), Asura’s Wrath seems to wish it was a television series as opposed to a videogame.
So much of the game is spent simply watching, with pieces of cutscenes even repeating themselves shortly after having already been played. For much of the experience, CyberConnect2’s tale of love and revenge is an anime, with cutscenes that could rival even Metal Gear Solid in terms of length and silliness. Now, had Asura’s Wrath been an anime, it would have been highly enjoyable. It’s both a love letter and a merciless pastiche of Japanese animation, through and through. It’s ludicrous, bombastic, and very loud. Smirking bishōnen and big-breasted women are surrounded by violently manly men who needlessly shout all the time with gritted teeth and pounding fists.
Fist of the North Star blends with Ninja Scroll and everything else you remember watching on VHS in the nineties, producing a tale that comes off almost as a parody of Japanese storytelling. The plot of Asura’s Wrath will be familiar to any anime fan, telling the tale of a vengeful warrior who must fight his way through an army of eccentric and overpowered foes. When he finally escapes, he’s just a little bit upset. That’s enough to make Asura mad, but things get worse when his fellow guardians betray him - kidnapping his daughter, murdering his wife, and sending him to hell for 12,000 years.
The personification of wrath, his temper makes him an able fighter as one of the eight guardians of the planet, tasked with defeating a cosmic horror that threatens the world.
Yet while its resemblance to an untasted cocktail is tantalizing, its refusal to commit to any one concept proves to be its undoing.Īsura’s Wrath (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 )Īsura is an angry, angry man. Nevertheless, there’s certainly something unique about a game that cannot decide whether it’s an interactive movie, a beat ’em up, a shooter or a pure anime. Elements of Dragon’s Lair, Heavy Rain, God of War and even Space Invaders make up this Frankenstein’s monster, with a sampling of every major anime to give the story that familiar flavor. Many people will tell you that Asura’s Wrath is unlike anything you’ve seen before, which is interesting because its components can all be compared to things we’ve seen for years.