Asura’s Wrath Hands On Impressions

We recently went hands on with Asura’s Wrath, an upcoming beat’em up game from Capcom and CyberConnect 2. Check out our full impressions below.

 Hack and slash is not a new genre in video games. There have been many successful franchises like Onimusha who have done this before. So what makes Asura’s Wrath worth checking out?

Based on our hands on impressions we give you five reasons why you should avoid or care about this mindless yet fun fighting game.

The demo that we got a chance to play begins with a cutscene with our hero Asura facing against ‘The Great Wyzen’ who is a really fat guy, fatter than Yokuzuna may have been. After a few intimidating chit chat between the two, the game throws at you several ‘weak’ soldiers and makes you familiar with the game’s control for taking them out. As is usual with hack’ n’ slash games, Asura has three basic attacks.  The light and the heavy attack and the fire attack which can be used to take down multiple enemies at once.  During fighting the game also throws some quick time events which can be used to quickly take down the bad guys.

After you have taken care of the smaller enemies it’s time to take care of the so called ‘The Great Wyzen’ (really?!).  In order to do that you have to continuously hit him with combos until the burst meter fills up which will give rise to a quick time event. Asura will now literally grab hold of this behemoth, swing and throw him down the mountain.

If you thought that you have taken care of ‘The Great Wyzen’ than you are sadly wrong. Another Wyzen, namely ‘Vajra Wyzen’ will appear who is just epic in scale. This guy intimidates Asura by mentioning his daughter which enrages him and I mean he really gets enraged by shouting (arghhh!) and jumps literally hundreds of feet in the air  (what the?!) to take out the big guy. But much to his misfortune he gets walloped by ‘Vajra Wyzen’.

Our hero does not give up and runs towards him whilst deflecting the missiles that he encounters during his way. The Vajra wallops Asura again, this time punching him deep down the ground, but before he could deliver one final knockout punch, Asura rises from the ground and gets hold of him. Once again a few quick time events takes place so that the player can fill up the burst meter. Once the meter is full Asura somehow awakens four more hands from his back and throws the Wyzen in to the distance.

All of sudden a giant ship appears which fires missiles at Asura, which he has to deflect it back. After a few repetitions the space ship gets destroyed and our giant fatty is on the run! (But why?!) The player is than required to fire and deflect missiles at him before Asura once again gets the better of him.

Finally you will face the main Wyzen who thrusts his incinerated finger towards Asura. Our poor hero is now trapped and apparently getting mashed by this overly gigantic finger. Asura gets raged (again!) and uses his four hands to take incur some rapid punches whilst filling the burst meter before walloping one final punch to incinerate the final Wyzen.

This is where our hands on ended and there are two conclusions that I came to. If you like mindless hack and slash than you should not look anymore ahead of Asura’s Wrath. But if you are more of practical type Asura’s Wrath will probably make zero sense to you.

The game releases in Q1 2012 on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.