Asura's Wrath

Mike Here.

Asura's Wrath

I know that Asura’s Wrath has been out for almost a month now, but this week I finally was able to pick it up and play through it. Know this before reading further, this is not a review for the game. I will give my opinion and ideas of it but I didn’t play the game even thinking I’d be writing about it. I will try to keep this as spoiler free as possible, because I hate spoilers.

I first noticed Asura’s Wrath at last year’s E3 when they showed the insane trailer of a normal sized man with 6 arms rapidly punching the finger of a man larger than planet earth. My first thoughts were, “This is Amazing!”. And then I kind of forgot about it until I picked it up earlier this week. The game isn’t very long, I finished it in six hours, but that doesn’t take away from the game at all. Actually I kind of feel like it was good that it was not very long, ill explain later. The action in the game was a mix between a beat-em-up, an on rail shooter, and a timed button press game, or quick-time-events (I am a huge fan of timed button pressing). All of the combat had its ups and downs but ultimately I enjoyed each section.

This game took everything insane, outrageous, glorious and awesome about anime and made it playable. I love anime and manga, so playing Asura’s Wrath was like a dream come true. The fight in the trailer is a great example. Fighting a man larger than the planet you are standing on is quite the sight to see. The game plays in 18 episodes, similar to anime. Most episodes can be finished within a half hour. This contributes to the six hour total game time to finish it but again I think this is a good thing. Some of my favorite anime have been short series. Baccano, FLCL, Afro Samurai, are just a few examples. They are wonderful series that didn’t need to go any further, in fact going further could have possible damaged the series (coughBleachcough). I pictured Asura’s Wrath as a playable anime the entire time, therefore I was ok with the short game span. The graphics had a very strong anime vibe to them which I fell in love with. The entire game all I kept thinking was that more anime should be done with graphics like this.

Anyway, this is a game that I believe anime fans would enjoy and I personally am glad that I could cross it off my list of want to play games.

Hey I’d love to hear your opinions, what did you think of the anime feel?

(P.S. no offense to Bleach fans, I still read it every week but still… come on.)