Heavenly Sword Demo

Seeing as how I'm obsessed with all things PS3, particularly when they involve sexy redheaded ninjas, I was all over the Heavenly Sword demo as soon as it hit the network. Let me just say that it is awesome. For one, they brought back the QTE. I'm not sure which game made this really popular, but the one I always remember is the Die Hard arcade game. You'd be running down a hall and have to press a button very quickly when it flashed on screen. If you hit it correctly, instead of getting hit in the face with a fire extinguisher, you'd slide down to your knees to avoid it and shoot the guy in the dick. Purely hypothetical situation, but you get the picture.

So they brought that system to Heavenly Sword. First level, you've got to run down a series of large ropes. You have to hammer on X for a while. If you don't do it fast enough/long enough, you slip off the ropes. Then, when the enemies start to cut the ropes, you have to jump onto adjacent ropes with another quick button press. Screw that up, and you plummet four-thousand feet to your death. It seems rather rudimentary, but it helps to break up the monotony of the button mashing combat.

I say button mashing combat solely because I haven't learned any of the combos, of which there are many, even in the demo. They reward you for doing combos with Superstyle moves. These allow you to, say, jump onto a guy's chest and break his neck with your knees. Another allows you to swing a guy around by his legs. Of course, performing these moves, along with well-timed counterattacks, gives you a sweet little cinematic to watch. Totally cool.

The game looks beautiful even on my shit TV and plays great. I wasn't totally excited about the game before, but now I can totally see myself buying it the day it comes out in September.

EDIT: SHENMUE! Shenmue had the QTE system. I can't believe I forgot about that one.