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Considering the premise of Asura’s Wrath, in which players take the reigns of the demigod Asura as he battles gods in angry revenge, it set itself a high bar to meet in terms of expectations. Dubbed by gamers as a potential “God of War-beater” in terms of epic battles, I was excited to see what Capcom and CyberConnect2′s game had to offer in its demo (out today on Xbox, tomorrow on PS3), seeing as over-the-top action games are among my favourites – especially those made alongside Capcom, who are responsible for Devil May Cry and God Hand which share a similar genre. So how did the demo measure up to the hype?

Presented as an episodic story similar to a Japanese anime, the demo gives players access to two “episodes”, numbers 5 and 11, both stages pitting you against one of the game’s bosses. Right off the bat I must say that the game does look fantastic, and while it doesn’t attempt to look visually like an animated cartoon, the actual camera work and storytelling are done in a way that the game does feel very much like an interactive anime in the vein of Dragonball Z or suchlike. The actual visuals look very attractive, very colourful and vibrant the whole way through.

First off, I played through Episode 5: Hollow Victory, which pits Asura against the gigantic god Wyzen. Having apparently taken Asura’s daughter, Asura commenced to tackle the mountain-sized deity in hand to hand combat. After a quick press of the left stick in time with an on-screen prompt to land from being thrown by Wyzen, Asura dashed toward the boss and the first stage of the boss began. At this point of gameplay, Asura was automatically running toward Wyzen, while I could move from side to side and jump to avoid energy blasts that were being thrown toward me. While doing so, a reticule on the screen allows you to target multiple points on the boss’s body and release a volley of energy blasts by pressing Y. While seemingly doing no direct damage, these blasts helped fill up the Burst Meter, which I’ll explain later.

Once close enough to Wyzen, Asura leapt up toward him and I had to tap A in time with prompts to leap between floating platforms or else be grabbed by him and thrown back. Once I got above Wyzen, Asura flew down toward him from the sky, in a similar fashion to the running section, where I could evade blasts and release lock-on volleys. This whole process serves to fill up the Burst meter, which seems to act as a way of pushing the boss to the next stage – usually by allowing Asura to pull off a big attack to change the tide of the fight.

In this way, the boss fight essentially acts as a mix of simple gameplay sections and QTE (Quicktime Events) that comprise a set series of events that take place in a set order. At all times, at least in the demo, Asura is able to jump with A, do a melee attack with B (although this is largely unused in the first episode) and fire rapid shots with X. The Y button functions as an action button that changes function depending on Asura’s current situation – a lock-on shot in the running sections, a counter-attack when certain attacks are coming toward you, or a heavy strike in melee combat. The Left Trigger can sometimes activate “Unlimited Mode” (which seemed to have a kind of meter that was hard to distinguish), which seemed to help fill the Burst gauge faster. The Right Trigger executes a Burst Attack, which as I stated before is a large attack (which is a scripted QTE style sequence) that pushes the battle forward. The general aim of the boss battles is to fill this meter by executing regular attacks, activate the Burst Attack and then progress to fill the Burst meter again in the next stage.

While I’m no adversary of the QTE system (I loved them in God of War, and some other games), Episode 5 felt so scripted that it really didn’t feel as though I had any control over the battle. The QTE’s felt easy to respond to (though I generally don’t struggle with them in other games anyway) with long windows to react, and even when purposely failing them I only found myself being thrown back slightly – or even in some cases, Asura seemed to act in the same way as if I had hit the button anyway, making me wonder what the purpose of pressing the button was at all. While the fight looked very impressive, the simplicity and ease of the scenario left me feeling uninterested and the fact that my actions seemed moot in many cases made my input feel almost redundant – I only needed to mash a button now and then to prevent myself from being crushed in a couple of QTE’s, but even then I only realised they could kill me because I purposely avoided acting to see what would happen. While the fight looked fantastic, the lack of effort it took really made me wonder when exactly I would be feeling any “Wrath”, because I was expecting a lot more frenzied button mashing than what was delivered. One section did involve a couple of regular enemies thrown at me while I proceeded to hold X to shoot down a flying battleship, but they died in a couple of hits and seemed to pose no real threat.

Hoping that Wyzen was just a QTE-heavy section of the game, I gave “Episode 11: The Final Lesson” a fair chance. Pitting me against Augus, Asura’s old fighting master, this episode was more what I had in mind. A more traditional fight with an enemy of equal size, this episode allowed me to run around the arena freely, whilst avoiding Augus’ attacks and attempting to beat him with my own. With a flurry of fists (Asura grows four extra arms when he fights), it wasn’t long before Augus tried to do a special punch on me – which I could then counter by tapping the Y button when prompted, allowing me to knock him down and leave him vulnerable to beatings or a grab attack (also performed with Y).

Much like the first boss, Augus had no health bar – rather, it was a matter of building up the Burst gauge to pull off a cinematic QTE attack to move the fight into its next stage. The first one was quite funny to watch, as Asura and Augus proceeded to hit each other with slugger punches, until I was then able to activate Burst Mode again. I was then greeted with a small cut-scene involving Augus un-sheathing his blade, and he began using blade beam attacks with his sword.

I don’t know whether this is the difficulty the game will be in the full game, but these attacks (and most others) made barely a dent in my health bar, so served more to keep me away from him than actually kill me. Still, I enjoyed this part as you had to alternate between jumping horizontal beams and dodging between multiple vertical ones, something that reminded me of a Devil May Cry boss mechanic I always liked. When I got close, he would attempt to attack me directly, and I could then avoid these attacks by jumping or dodging (performed with RB) and wail on him some more. After one more Burst Attack and an insane QTE scene involving a sword getting stabbed right through the planet, the demo ended.

While the second episode was more what I was looking for, the ease of the battle and the sheer abundance of QTE’s again left me feeling unchallenged. I really wanted to enjoy the battle – it looked fantastic and the music was equally epic (one of my favourite parts of the demo), but I just felt like I wanted to get stuck in a bit more and actually have some real control over Asura.

Seeing as the demo was purely boss fights, I feel like I’d need to see more of the game to make a real judgement of the game – some trailers have shown Asura battling more regular enemies which could be enjoyable if done right. Perhaps if the game were a bit harder I’d also have felt more of a challenge – which could also be remedied by difficulty settings. Overall however, the demo was something of a disappointment – while the combat was indeed over-the-top, so much of it was scripted and QTE-based that I didn’t really get into any kind of rhythm, nor did it give me any kind of blood-pumping excitement that I’ve experienced with other action titles in the past.

I look forward to seeing more of Asura’s Wrath in future as I sincerely hope that the demo was merely a poor choice of representation for the game, but I’m certainly more wary that the title may not quite be the God of War beater that many have deemed it to be thus far.

- Leon