![asura wrath anime asura wrath anime](http://theologygaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Asuras-Wrath-Games-Screen.jpg)
It's perhaps more revealing to look at what it isn't: it's not typical, it's not easy to define and it's certainly not boring. What is Asura's Wrath? It's an action game, sure, but it's other things too: interactive film, serialised drama, animation showcase. Rarely has there been such synergy between gameplay and concept than there is in this game: it's about a really, really angry man who punches things to death with his six arms (until they explode, at which point he punches things to death with his face.) It's exhilarating to play, and as Asura's rage rises to consume him more and more as the story goes on and his dialogue degenerates to a couple of variations on "aaaaaaaaaaaaggghh", the no-frills punching and kicking and uncomplicated violence of the third-person action genre feel like the best possible vehicle for this story. In a game where nothing's constant – characters, gameplay mechanics and plot threads appear and disappear again within the course of half an hour – the only enduring feature is Asura himself. Even without any interactivity at all, it would be a fascinating thing to watch. The artistic direction is another area where this studio's anime heritage shines through – you won't find many games as visually diverse and distinctive as this. It tells a tale that spans thousands of years, a story of revenge and retribution with elements of sci-fi thrown into the mix with absurdly exaggerated Japanese imagery (like the giant galactic Buddha that threatens to destroy the Earth with a single finger in the earliest trailers).
#ASURA WRATH ANIME TV#
It's paced like a TV series, short, intense and action-packed. It's a studio with a long heritage of great storytelling, so it's no surprise that Asura's Wrath's main strength is scripting. There is no shortage of experience with Japanese animation here, which translates into a lofty set of artistic production values in its games. The studio is famous for its spirited Naruto-licensed games and its home-grown hack series, which has extended tendrils into the anime and manga worlds as well. Lively studio head Hiroshi Matsuyama keeps a vast, vast library of more than four thousand volumes of manga, thousands of anime DVDs and Blu-rays and, of course, video games – and he expects his staff to keep up with it all. One of the reasons it's so unusual is the fact that it's being developed by a group of very unusual people at CyberConnect2 in Fukuoka, Japan. It won't be to everyone's taste, certainly, but anybody who's beginning to feel that most games are pretty much the same these days will find an abundance of things to love here. It's an experience that simply couldn't be delivered through film, manga or any other medium, one that's unmistakeably videogamey despite the fact that so much of it isn't actually interactive. If you think that disqualifies it from being a game at all, though, your definition of "game" could probably use some broadening. Of any 20-minute long episode, the average actual gameplay time is nearer five minutes. YES NO One observation about the demo does bear out, though – you spend a lot more time watching in Asura's Wrath than you do playing.
![asura wrath anime asura wrath anime](https://cdn.anisearch.com/images/manga/cover/full/10/10217.jpg)
(There's literally a whole episode spent being served sake by a pretty lady in an onsen and trying to divert Asura's attention from her… interesting costume.) It's difficult to judge it from any single episode. The gameplay changes with every episode, from on-rails shooting to, um, hot springs simulation. The truth is that Asura's Wrath has been a bit confusing ever since it was revealed at the Tokyo Game Show in 2010, for one simple reason: it just isn't a normal game.
![asura wrath anime asura wrath anime](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kV46V2uniqs/maxresdefault.jpg)
It's something else instead – something genuinely new, more along the lines of a cinematic adventure like Heavy Rain than a gory brawler like God of War (though there are elements of that, too).
![asura wrath anime asura wrath anime](https://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/aQROrnW_700b.jpg)
Having played through about two thirds of the finished game, it's safe to say that it's neither. If most of Asura's Wrath is about watching and occasionally pressing a button, is it even a game at all? Or is it just an especially long, slightly interactive anime?
#ASURA WRATH ANIME SERIES#
A series of disconnected episodes showed Asura in the kinds of epically insane and visually splendorous one-on-one battles that we had seen in the trailers, but showed little of the more normal third-person action that we had all assumed would form the main meat of the game. The demo for Asura's Wrath confused a lot of people when it hit PSN and Xbox Live earlier this month.