Hands on with the Heavenly Sword demo.

Our eyes light up! Our palms perspirate a bit! We even pee our pants a little! It's only a bloody demo of Heavenly Sword on the PlayStation Store! One hasty download later and we're ready to go. First impressions are promising as we bypass the lovely title menu, checking out the options and memorizing a few combos before we delve headlong into the action. After a slick expositional cut scene with heroine Nariko sharing a moment with her sister we find ourselves thrown straight into a breathtaking quick time sequence with Nariko sliding down ropes, leaping left and right as they're severed by the bad guys below. Successfully navigating this treacherous rope slide we drop from above ready to bring the pain to the gits who tried to end us. Swipe! Slash! Scratch one bad guy as we land on his head with the business end of our blade. So far so good.

But then we get into the real meat of the action and well, it's exactly what we feared. It's like bloody Genji or Dynasty Warriors: in short it's a button masher, nothing like the complex slasher we were hoping for. Early hype suggested a game mechanic similar to God Of War, Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry but it shares little in common with these great titles. What makes Heavenly Sword so frustrating is the glaring lack of a block or jump button, it's a huge omission, magnified by the fact that an older game- Ninja Gaiden has both block and jump buttons and feels so much more fluid, thanks to it's intuitive control scheme. Blocking in Heavenly Sword involves standing still, which just feels wrong during a frenetic sword battle. Jumping is replaced by a clumsily implemented evade move mapped to the right analog stick, which is not only ineffective but it's also easy to forget that it's there.

On a more positive tip, Heavenly Sword's combat looks outstanding when you're in full flow, even if you are just blindly pawing at the buttons like a chimp at a typewriter. There's an almost hypnotic quality to the action that almost dupes you into forgetting Heavenly Sword's flaws. Swordplay incorporates three stances to expand the combos on offer. You have your standard battle stance-just bash buttons wildly for best results-then there's ranged attacks which work like Kratos' chains in God Of War, unleashed by holding L1 as you attack. Finally, there's the power stance-hold R1-which gives you slow...wait for it, yes, powerful attacks to swipe enemies into the air unlocking potential for juggling moves. Mixing the three stances is a snap and makes the list of moves at your disposal nearly inexhaustible. A quick tap of O when your special meter's ready allows you to perform a fancy kill move on an unfortunate opponent, but this feels like initiating a cut scene rather than brilliantly executing a well-timed finisher. It has none of the instant satisfaction of say, tearing off limbs in God Of War, or transforming into a demon a la Devil May Cry. However, being able to throw virtually any object with a quick tap of X is a nice touch, particularly as you can throw dead bodies, barrels, discarded weapons, rocks...anything.

Heavenly Sword is achingly beautiful to behold, smooth and visually accomplished but ultimately a bit of a disappointment. We just hope that Ninja Theory delay the imminent release to spruce up the controls a bit, otherwise they may just squander the chance to give PS3 its first genuine killer app. What PS3 doesn't need is another Genji, what it needs is an iconic, console defining title and we had high hopes for the flame-haired Nariko to fly the flag on Sony's machine. We'll be sitting tight, praying we don't have to fly the white flag when Heavenly Sword reaches PlayStation 3 on September 14th.