It’s a race against time - the more you wield the Heavenly Sword on your quest for revenge, the more of your life drains away. Your clan has turned their backs on you. Your father, who chose you to wield the swords most treasured artifact, is in grave danger. What do you do?

It’s unfortunate that assistive technology had to take over (in the form of a rapid-fire controller) and this end up being a review of the first few hours of Heavenly Sword but it was fated to turn out this way.

This is a button-masher, and a progressive button-masher at that. It felt a little like the game wanted me to tap more buttons faster as the game progressed in terms of both combo moves and environmental interaction, and a lot of both.

Some sequences play out rhythmically. Climbing a wall might entail that players rapidly tap one button to run across a flat surface and then be asked to tap the up button on the D-pad to get a little added elevation and then hit yet another button for another interaction, and so on.

The controls are simple to use, though, the main focus of the action are your L1, R1, triangle, square, right stick, and left stick. Other buttons have functions associated with them but they play less significant roles in the game.

It’s unfortunate that Heavenly Sword does not support button remapping or even choices between controller configurations, players are stuck with what they are given.

The situation with difficulty is in much the same boat.

That’s not to say Heavenly Sword is without options because it has some interesting options not including volume settings, subtitles, text language, and dialogue language, which are all present but not what I am considering interesting.

The ability to turn combat on and off is present in Heavenly Sword, though in the time I’ve spent waiting for the game to reload, I haven’t figured out how to use it.

Another interesting option is the ability to turn “Aftertouch” on and off.
“Aftertouch” uses the SIXAXIS part of the Dualshock 3 controller. It is used as a means of controlling projectiles after losing them. If you were so inclined to hurl an opponent’s fallen comrade at them you would first pick him up, and then throw him, by holding the button down you gain control of “Aftertouch” and by rolling the SIXAXIS to the right, left, up or down, you’re put in full control of the unaware projectile.

It is tough to steer this way, which made me glad to be able to turn it off, as turning it off will null the SIXAXIS and turn control over to the right stick which is far easier to use to steer, especially when projectiles seem to gain velocity as they travel.

Combat isn’t as simple as just mashing some buttons, there is a bit of thought to put into it. Your attacks can be lumped into three categories: Heavy Attacks, Speed Attacks, and Ranged Attacks. Orange auras being representative of Heavy Attacks and blue auras being representative of Speed Attacks.

Defense is automatic, though you’ll have to choose the defense by way of an opponent’s aura. Only Heavy Defense can block Heavy Attacks. Similarly adversaries with blue auras will need to be defended against by releasing all buttons.
Some attacks can’t be blocked, and will call for players to dodge them. This is done by using the right stick.

All and all, Heavenly sword is a good looking game - the environments, the people, the menus, and load times all support this. What they don’t support the look of, sadly, are the subtitles.

This is a very well supported game for the hearing impaired. Subtitles appear in cut-scenes and throughout the game. It’s just a shame that they don’t look good; they seem very light in color, this is due to the black outline around the letters being so thin making the white used for the font itself look heavier than it should look. Combine this with a fairly lightly and brightly colored environment for the most part, and players are left with sub-par subtitles.

Captioning could be better. Directions are sometimes given orally and due to a lack of captioning, inaudibly or should that be invisibly.

Directions are something that Heavenly Sword could have done a better job of doing. Little boxes with words show up in the center of the screen to give directions at certain points, and unless they require you to press a certain button before the message goes away, the message will go away on its own too quickly. I’m a slow reader, so I’d often miss what the message might have told me.

Heavenly Sword has a lot going for it in terms of it being a cool game, but it may not have enough to keep some AbleGamers going.

At a glance

Mobility

Players are stuck with the default controller configuration - no options whatsoever for remapping. One-handed playability isn’t really an option with this one. Most used controls are triangle, square, L1, R1, right stick and left stick - O, X, L2 and R2 still have functions, but are used significantly less. Lots and lots of button mashing, both during and outside of combat. Not one handed gamer friendly.

Recommended score of 3/10

Visual

It is a good looking game which is mostly visually accessible. Menus are clean, easily read and navigated. Depending on whether or not you play the game with the camera being fixed or not will sometimes impact what you are able and unable to see on-screen. Mostly a bright game, though the occasional dark corner will be encountered. Subtitles are hit and miss depending on the background; light backgrounds tend to make the subtitles disappear, while darker backgrounds make them pop.

Recommended Score of 8/10

Hearing

One of two options on the main menu the first time you visit the main menu is asking whether or not you want subtitles turned on or off. The body of the lettering used for the subtitling is a bold white outlined by a very thin black line making them stand out fairly well on a darker background but at times may as well be transparent on a lighter background. Vocal subtitles run throughout the game, be it cut-scene or midst combat. There is no ambient noise captioning, but all the action either happens on-screen or the screen spits and you are shown what’s going on elsewhere.

Recommended score of 8/10