It's the little things that kill...
Unfortunately, the fun quickly fades when you find yourself hacking up bloodless skeletons in the second stage, which feels like an out-take from the Pirates of the Carribean game, and slowly come to the realization that the fixed camera and broken targeting system are the only two things that (a) cause you to die and (b) impedes progression.
The problem with the targeting system becomes most apparent when you enter the challenge mini-games where you must kill or destroy a certain number of enemies or barrells. The challenges are timed so every second counts, and they are essentially required to get bonus pick-ups throughout the game.
The issue is that the protagonist auto-locks, and if you're trying to destroy objects - good luck. He only locks onto enemies, and while you can strike between two enemies or remove the lock altogether by tapping the trigger button (this game pretty much requires a gamepad), he will automatically snap back into a target lock even after you 'disabled' it.
What this means is that running toward objects to break open is unnecessarily frustrating and causes many deaths/retries/controller spikes. This is something that could be dealt with if the game didn't force you to focus on objects you can't target, but as a result of bad game design, the developers brought the games key flaw right to the forefront and introduced frustration into our nice little session of carefree skull-cracking.
The second flaw is of equal frustration and is downright gamebreaking - the fixed 'cinematic' camera view. At times, this is done well. At other times, it conceals whatever puzzle element you need to see leading to unnecessary frustration when you realize that your character can f*#%ing see what he needs to do, but you can't command him to do it because you can't see it.
The game also throws you into situations of enormous backtracking sessions, and several paths lead to what appears to be a flat dead-end. Of course, no game should have a spot that 'appears' to be a dead-end due to s#%^*y camera placement (would it have been so difficult to implement a snap-to first person view like in Jak & Daxter?!).
All in all, this game was a major disappointment. It has nice graphics and probably has some nice brutality later in the game, but after several hours of busting skeletons apart again and again and dealing with these insufferable issues, I threw in the towel on this. It's a game I really want to like, but can't justify wasting my time on... there are better games out there for those who want this type of gameplay- to name a few: God of War, Devil May Cry, and even Age of Conan. Please do yourself a favor and play one of those and don't waste your time on this disappointing clunker.