It is easy to feel helpless in 2021.
There is not much you can do but stay indoors and wear a mask when you leave to try to stay safe and prevent the spread of COVID-19, and no one knows what to expect when the vaccine is released. If you need to take a break from that uncertainty, spend some time with Asura’s Wrath, currently on PlayStation Now. The 2012 cult classic stars a character who Never feels helpless for a long time, as long as there is something nearby to punch.
Here’s the setup: you’re a god and you’ve been betrayed, so you have to punch everything until you get what you want. Asura is exaggerated as a character, and the world around him is even more foolish and grandiose than anything he can do. Thousands of years fly in an instant. The planet is split in two, because there is an evil being living inside it, and that happens in the introduction.
Don’t worry – you really only need to worry about punching, shooting or hitting buttons when asked directly, and you will only have to focus on one of these interactions at a time. Asura’s Wrath it’s about 70 percent of cutscenes, 10 percent of fast-time events, 10 percent of rail snipers, and 10 percent of third-person fighting. Is it fun to play? To interact? Not really; fast-time events aren’t exactly challenging, and the fight is incredibly basic compared to more recent games like Streets of Rage 4. Rail shooting sections are not horrible, but there is a lot you can do with a rail shooting section. The joy of the game can be found in its presentation and sense of identity. Very little of what is happening is explained or justified, but it is always absolutely wicked.
And I don’t mean Devil May Cry– perverse style, with a real modern style and a sense of what is “cool” and what is not, but a totally self-indulgent and incoherent style, where the cool rule controls all of existence. Asura, the demigod who is trying to destroy the other gods by killing his wife and kidnapping his daughter – no one knew any other reason for video game heroes to do anything before 2015 – sometimes creates a few extra arms to be able to punch things harder.
Sometimes he punches things so hard that loses arms, which is good. They grow up again, I think? There will come a time when he will have a large number of arms, and you better believe that you will be asked to press a button repeatedly until your own arm wants to fall, just to make sure that Asura is punching things with the correct intensity. That is the nature of the player’s relationship with this game: you must prepare to press all the buttons when asked, because your enemies have swords the size of a planet.
Asura’s Wrath it’s an almost interactive anime at heart, and the creative team was stuck with that vision. There are sequences of credits spread throughout the game, since at the beginning and at the end of each “episode” there would be credits and bumpers and previews and everything in between. There are moments that explain what happened “previously, in Asura’s Wrath”, and there are even periods of momentary rest, almost like spaces reserved for commercial breaks that don’t actually exist. The implication is that if you had watched this game live on TV (?!?!?), You would have seen ads during those moments.
It is a silly trick that takes you further away from the actions of the game and ensures that none of it feels “real” or immediate, or even very identifiable outside of some basic emotional milestones. I also wouldn’t want other gods to use my daughter to feed their conquest of the planet like a hyena – that’s a very basic emotion – but I don’t know if I would be able to handle weapons big enough to cut entire planets in order to do anything at all. respect.
One of the first battles takes place against another god, who is won quickly only to return as a huge being that, again, makes the planet dwarf. This is a reality in which the Earth itself is usually torn apart or, at least, subjected to ridiculously destructive gravitational forces every hour or more while you play.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a normal person in this universe and suddenly you are hit by a tidal wave because two gods are fighting on the other side of the world. But don’t worry, if it looks like the next challenge is going to be too big for Asura, remember that he’s like Hulk Hogan, before the sex tapes and horrible racism. As long as he is angry enough, is fighting for the right reasons and can develop enough arms, he can simply grab the finger pushed into the space planet and punch it until the god he is attached to is destroyed.
Why? Go to hell, that’s why. This is Asura, and if you think he can’t do that, it’s better to rethink that assessment and find the strength within you to push a button relentlessly until you give him the help he needs. You are also assessed at the conclusion of each “episode” and need to go above a certain rating at sufficient levels to see the “real ending”. There are so many trophies, and I don’t even remember how to get them all, although there are only a few ways to impact something in the game world.
If you don’t think there’s an extensive scene where you have to avoid acting weirdly about a poorly dressed goddess, giving players an excuse to covet a half-naked woman, you don’t remember playing in 2012. Asura is all it is stereotyped “Virile”, only taken to such a ridiculous degree that it is difficult to take seriously, especially after nine years or more away. Games are much better at this sort of thing now, at least in general, and in retrospect, this turns this section into an unfortunate and strange time capsule from what used to be considered “nervous” in games.
I can’t imagine another studio getting that kind of budget and time to create something so cinematic, while offering such limited ways to interact with the world. I punch when Asura’s Wrath tells me to punch, and I shoot things when they tell me to shoot things. The reward is a glorious absurdity, and a story with ever-increasing bets, full of enemies that are increasingly powerful and ridiculous.
Very few games are willing to even entertain this type of scope, let alone start with maximum intensity in the opening minutes and are forced to constantly increase the bets and the size of their opponents. Everything is so ornate and beautifully done on the screen that the Asura’s Wrath The art team took some very silly ideas and took them very seriously, and in the process created the beauty and the sense of weight and history that gives the game so much weight undeniably undeserved.
It says something that one of the few times when Asura fails to do the right thing is due to the fact that, at that moment, he had not arms. The trauma of not being able to save an innocent causes him to regenerate instantly more, better arms.
Asura’s Wrath it is an example of a ridiculously bad idea – a video game made only of OK fights, Panzer Dragoon-style shootings and fast-time events that steal the shape of an anime episode – executed with seemingly unlimited style and creativity. I never cared that I wasn’t doing much while playing; I was looking forward to seeing what jaw-dropping scenario or ridiculous joke was waiting around the corner. This is a game that is not afraid to let your villains monologize, but you also unlock an achievement by interrupting your speeches with a straight punch in the pie gutter.
Asura’s Wrath not aged like wine or milk, but as Asura’s Wrath. It is a unique game launch, for better or worse, and again, it is currently available to play through PlayStation Now. And if Asura taught me anything, it is that no matter how much is taken from me, no matter how strong I am. is hit, no matter how many times my planet is split in two – and I just can’t stress enough that it happens all the time in Asura’s Wrath, the planet is always about to explode, and then it happens, but then everything is fine – the only solution is to keep going, keep trying and do your best to create more arms.
Speaking metaphorically. I think?