As much as I loved Asura’s Wrath, I just couldn’t bring myself to love this new DLC add on, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I just personally wish I had more Asura’s Wrath to play is all, and this is far from what hardcore fans will be looking for.
The price is certainly worth it, for £1.40 (160ms points) you get another episode (filed under the “lost chapters section”) which lasts about 5 minutes game time, and around 10-15 minutes total. It’s certainly an extra, not adding to the story in anyway, but giving you that little bit of extra time showing the extent of Asura’s Wrath (which seems to be endless)
The gameplay is definitely weird. Fans of Streetfighter will immediately notice that although the fighting style is familiar, the controls certainly aren’t. You have 4 buttons to press to fight, X makes fireball projectiles, A jumps, B to attack and Y to use special when Ryu is knocked on the ground, all of these attacks require no control stick like traditional Street fighter games. It’s basically the open scenes of the game but with the controls confined to a 2D plane rather than 3D. It’s all really strange, and takes a while to get used to, but don’t expect a proper fighting game out of this DLC.
The whole episode concludes with a cliffhanger for the next DLC (released next Tuesday) as is tradition with Asura’s Wrath, and will be priced the same. Replay-ability is ensured with “missions” placed on the menu screen when selecting this chapter once it’s been finished. These take place in the fight scene between Asura and Ryu, and require you to complete challenges such as: “KO within 40 seconds!” or “Get a perfect KO!”; Challenging, but not over-the-top hard. It’s certainly one way to make you work for that extra 15 gamerscore this DLC adds to the title.
So in conclusion: Should you buy this DLC? Well chances are if you’re a massive fan of Asura’s Wrath like I am, you’ve already got it. If you’re on the fence though, well what have you got to lose? It’s cheap, and a little bit of fun. Certainly something to spend those left over points on.