Sound is suitably “epic,” with Capcom footing the bill for the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra to wax hysterical, as well as a full choir to add that extra dash of over the top musical accompaniment. In other words, it’s Unreal 3 being Unreal 3. Frantic cut scenes can cause screen tearing, and the texture quality goes from blurry to sharp slowly enough that people will notice. On the other hand, the engine, which is Unreal 3, suffers from all the usual creaks and groans we’ve come to expect by this point. The heavy plumbing of Asian religious iconography creates a look that’s guaranteed to pique the interest of unfamiliar Western gamers, and tickle the fancy of Asian gamers who may have wondered what a “Buddha ship” would look like. On the presentation side of things, Asura’s Wrath has some of the most inspired art direction seen in years. Have you ever seen a man punch the ground so hard the force of impact hurtled him into the stratosphere? After Asura’s Wrath, you will.

It is, for better or for worse, completely off the rails. This is bombastic stuff, with melodrama on a scale like that of The Odyssey or The Aeneid, as epic dudes, utter epic dialog, before bouncing off to do epic things without any recognition for how ridiculous and over the top things are. In many ways, this is a little of what God of War might have been like, had Sony Santa Monica been drunk, psychotic and given carte blanche by Sony to make a game on the provision that the entire staff was fed a steady diet of LSD laced pizza and mandatory “Dev Club” fist fighting in the back lot. A team of demigods known as the Eight Guardian Generals are the world’s first and last line of defense against a corruptive influence known as “The Ghoma.” After an elaborate betrayal, one of these generals, Asura, finds himself seeking revenge against the now self-proclaimed Seven Deities, and a 12,000 year story of vengeance, violence and pure, unbridled, cosmically fuelled rage unfolds one global-scale fist fight at a time. Rather than going back to the Greco-Roman well once again, Japanese developer CyberConnect2 have looked to their own region of Asia, liberally pulling from Indian/Tibetan Buddhism, Japanese Shintoism and China’s Journey to the West to create a world unlike any ever seen before.

The story of Asura’s Wrath is mythic both in scope and in inspiration.

Asura wrath toys