Heavenly Sword - updated hands-on

What's really fun, though, is Nariko's ability to hurl stuff around and control it in midair. Just about anything can be picked up and thrown - discarded weapons, shields, hats, dead enemies - and if you hold down the button when you toss them, you'll be able to guide their slow-motion flight using the Sixaxis' motion controls. This opens up the door for all kinds of fun, whether it's bonking enemies with melons, bouncing a shield between their heads or bowling them over with one of their fallen comrades. It's also key to solving several of the game's puzzles (figuring out how to hit switches with flying shields, for example), and it's how you'll control rockets on the rare occasions Nariko finds a bazooka. We probably don't have to tell you this, but launching high explosives into crowds of sword-wielding baddies is endlessly rewarding.

The whole experience is capped off by frequent (but not overly intrusive) God of War-style quicktime events and boss battles against King Bohan's nasty generals, the latter of which are usually preceded by fights against large hordes of baddies. Larger than any you might have already fought in the demo, anyway, although not nearly as big as some of the skirmishes in the final game, which we're told will feature Dynasty Warriors-style battles against hundreds of enemies in wide-open fields.

After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.