Divine Souls Hands-On

Climb all over a giant ape!

If you took a game like Devil May Cry or God of War and hurled it hard at a bucket of internet, there's a solid chance that the end result would be Outspark's Divine Souls. Divine Souls hails from the land of Korea, where the massively-multiplayer market is extremely competitive, and Divine Souls brings something quite new to the MMO realm: action.

Whereas your World of Warcrafts and your Aions have you lock onto an enemy and press buttons to attack and cast spells, Divine Souls uses a very simple, easy-to-use system that's actually a total blast. Movement is done with WASD, the left mouse button swings your weapon, and the right mouse button blocks. Combo attacks can be performed by mashing the left mouse button, and occasionally including the right mouse button to do a finisher. Sometimes the finisher can be used to chain together an even longer combo.

I spent some time playing the Slasher character -- a female warrior wielding a giant "chainsword," a blade capable of splintering into a whip a la Ivy from SoulCalibur. Hitting an enemy three times and then "blocking" with the fourth attack would knock the enemy into the air just a little bit, and I discovered that I could add onto that combo, smacking my opponent higher and higher into the air before throwing them right back down. That wasn't the end of it, though, because with another mouseclick I threw a bomb straight down after them. This move was alright against a single opponent, but when I was fighting a group, it was devastating.

Those were just the basic attacks. Each class (of which there are five total, although only three -- Mage, Fighter, and Slasher -- were playable for me) also gets a range of special moves which players much pick and choose to fit into a limited number of ability slots. These were off-limits when I played, unfortunately.

The game is filled with instanced dungeons for groups of up to four players, and much more difficult raids for up to eight. Most of the dungeons have a boss of some sort at the end, and some of the bosses are climbable, such as a giant ape that the development team has nicknamed King Kong. "Climbable?" Think Shadow of the Colossus, or God of War, where you physically latch onto your foe and continue the battle while clinging for dear life. I imagine this is pretty chaotic when there's three others all scrambling to take the beast down.

There are, of course, also player-versus-player modes which promise to be a lot of fun. There were some latency issues when I tried it out, but if Outspark can get those fixed, PvP in Divine Souls could be a dangerous new vice for many. Oh, and there will be support for Xbox360 controllers.

Divine Souls is going into its closed beta this month, and Outspark is aiming for a full debut later this year. It is -- and will continue to be -- free to download and play, with a microtransaction system where players can buy costumes and cosmetic changes, as well as special consumables.

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