Though clearly a God of War knockoff at heart, Sony's new Heavenly Sword for PlayStation3 has enough substance and a few unique features to make it a stand-out rampaging sword slasher game in its own right.

Firstly, you play as a woman, Nariko, in Heavenly Sword (also in small stints as her sister, Kai). Naturally, she's verily bursting with sex appeal, boasts superhuman agility and supreme swordsmanship... er, swordswomanship, complimented by way too much red hair that flows about dreamily as she delivers stereotypically-excessive shots to the groin (when dispatching foes in melee combat, anyway).

Set in a mystical Far East of yore, Heavenly Sword has a distinct Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sort of motif to it -- or Squatting Kitty, Misplaced Gecko when compared to Nariko's majestic feats of martial artistry.

Her sword can be wielded in different ways, standard guì-Ronco slicer dicer, power hack-o-matic, and, as with the default weaponry on God of War, also converts to a two-fisted paring knives of immense proportions and of the attached-by-rubber-chain variety, so used as a bullwhipping grapple hook thingies, long-tethered mace-type tools that can swath through conveniently-circling (read: shamefully stupid) hordes like a malevolent magical scythes on 20-foot retractable cables. Unoriginal but immutably cool.

There's also the odd occasion to fire weaponry, which can actually be steered en route from a "projectile cam" point of view, guided to target using the flight-like motion sensitive sensibilities of the SixAxis controller. More original, also cool.

Just on an aesthetic level, Nariko is easier on the eyes than God of War's musclehead, Kratos; she's a lot easier to follow around for 10 hours, that's for sure. The environs she explores a likewise all dressed up in new-gen superlativeness while the now-requisite slo-mo super moves look super awesome in the interactive cinematica sense; it's a great looking game through and through.

Heavenly Sword's gameplay steers towards monotonous if you go at it for extended lengths of time, bauble collecting a bore, but geez, take a break once in a while. Play it in snack-sized portions of interactive eye-candy and it's all good.

Watch Video Montage

TIP: "Knockoff" is perhaps an unfair description of Heavenly Sword. If you look in the trophy cases in the armory, you'll see Kratos' armor and swords somewhere in there, which suggests Heavenly Sword an "homage" to God of War.