Heavenly Sword has been one of the most highly anticipated PlayStation 3 games since it was first shown in cinematic trailer form. Now the release is only two months away and the playable demo is finally available on the PlayStation Store in Europe and North America. As soon as I heard the news I rushed to my PS3 and immediately started the nearly 1GB download, giddily comparing my progress bar with that of the other Kotaku editors doing the same. As soon as the download was complete I hopped back to my PS3 (yes, I hop) and fired it up. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you my impressions of the Heavenly Sword demo. First off I hit start.

Sorry, couldn't resist. This is the shortest demo I have ever played. From hitting start on the controller until the message "Redemption Arrives In September", only seven minutes passed. I timed it. Mind you this was without skipping the brief opening scene between Nariko and her adorable crazy little friend, and I managed to miss a jump and fall to my death once.

After the nifty opening scene I found myself running down a series of ropes towards a platform that seemed to serve no purpose other than to have people run across ropes towards it. Via some timed button presses I made my way down to the rocky plateau pillar thing as the enemies that were hanging out there tried to impede my progress, cutting the ropes out from under my feet. With one last flying leap, taking an enemy out in the process, I entered my first battle.

Two minutes and some furious button smashing later I was standing triumphantly over the remains of two waves of evildoers. Combat was relatively fluid, though a little confusing when the enemies really start to close in. Even on a 42 inch LCD it was still a bit hard to see what was going on. My foes consisted of enemies with just swords (fodder) and enemies with shields (annoying fodder.) Every now and again I would pull off a finishing move that would zoom in as I killed guys in various creative ways.

After that fight I learned why this pillar thing was standing in the middle of nowhere. With a kick I sent it toppling towards the main square of the fortress I was infiltrating, more button presses landing me gracefully in the middle of another group of mixed enemies. Once they were down two giant wooden doors opened, revealing three large enemies...and the demo ended.

Seven minutes, and it ends just like that. No big boss fight to try out, no giant plot revelation, no finding an ancient artifact. Just, "here comes more enemies, see you in two months!" You know that feeling you get when you're about to sneeze and then can't? Exactly the feeling I got here.

As for aesthetics, the graphics were solid but the framerate was erratic at times. Sound was excellent no matter which language option I chose in order to stretch out my playtime a little by pretending I was a different guy from another country. By far the best aspect of the whole demo for me, the music was completely top notch. Very atmospheric and brilliantly arraigned.

A demo is created to give players a taste of what they can expect once the full game comes out, and honestly if this is all they can manage to scrape together I am a little worried that this will be the whole game. So far all I am seeing is button mashing combat against endless waves of enemies interrupted by the odd interactive cinematic, and that's been done better elsewhere. Bad show.