An Angry Man & His Fists

About 11 hours of mashing the B button and bursting later and I finish Asura's Wrath and all its downloadable content on the Xbox 360. I hate it when quick time events interrupt the action in video games, but they are the star attraction of Asura's Wrath. CyberConnect 2 has crafted a game that is an exception to a mechanic I hate. Along the way, they have crafted a fantastic interactive cartoon that delivers some of the best explosions and punching this year.

The non-QTE interactions of the game are very simple. There are shooting stages reminiscent of Panzer Dragoon that have you spamming regular shots and lock-on attacks. The beat'em up sections lack a variety of moves and eventually revolve around recognizing patterns and tells to open an opportunity for a contextual special attack. These special attacks build the rage meter, a meter that replaces a boss' health, much more quickly. Filling the rage meter will activate Asura's burst which advances the game in to the next quick time event.

Those quick time events are glorious pieces of action. The sense of scale in Asura's Wrath makes the demigod battles incredibly believable. While in truth you are mashing the B button to advance to the next cut scene or quick time event, what you are seeing can be so ridiculously awesome that you get caught up in the events on the screen. There are painful moments such as when you fail a circular motion analog stick input, but that doesn't matter when you are punching an enemy the size of a moon.

Asura's Wrath uses the Unreal 3 engine to great effect. All of the grand action is handled in the engine. The colorful characters and environments portray an interesting and bizarre world of gods and monsters. The music gives the drama appropriate melodies and the sound effects are suitably punchy.

Of special note is the DLC for the game which includes one titled "Part IV: Nirvana" that provides the true ending for Asura's Wrath. It is a little disgusting that the ending has been separated from the base game. However, the DLC has the game's most ridiculous and insane moments that makes up for the extra fee. As much as I enjoyed playing Asura's Wrath, it is still a video game about inputting button prompts to advance to the next cut scene. I paid a discounted price for the game and feel that I got my money's worth. BURST!