Back in 2005 Sony unleashed the God of War series, an action-adventure title fea­tur­ing one of the most badass char­ac­ters ever to hit the mar­ket. Kratos and his gore fests have become an icon in the Playstation Universe and with 2 highly praised games on the PS2 and a highly praised game on the PSP, it’s no won­der every­one is cuckoo for Kratos’ adven­ture to hit the PS3. Well it’s finally here and does it deliver an exper­i­ence that will make the gods green with envy, or does it fall under that massive hype?

Story

God of War III picks up exactly where the 2nd one ended. The Olympians pre­pare for all out siege as the Titans, led by Gaia and Kratos, climb their way up Olympus. Immediately after killing Poseidon, Kratos is betrayed yet again but by Gaia this time. As Zeus knocks Kratos down to the Underworld (yet again), Gaia refuses to help him and saves her­self instead. In the Underworld Kratos meets up with Athena’s Ghost who informs him of his only way to kill Zeus; retrieve Pandora and get back Pandora’s Box.

God of War III offers one of the best send-offs in any recent tri­logy his­tory. All the char­ac­ters are well defined and developed. The gods in par­tic­u­lar are enjoy­able to hear and battle. Poseidon com­mands water to enlarge him while Hades hides in the shad­ows taunt­ing Kratos. Helios flies through the sky lob­bing fire at the Titans while Hermes speeds around toy­ing with Kratos. While the gods are well defined, the Titans are not. In fact the only Titans Kratos truly inter­acts with are Kronos and Gaia even though there are many Titans. Its espe­cially weird see­ing as Typhon and Atlas were fea­tured in God of War II but are not fea­tured here.

What’s even more impress­ive is just how well the game wraps all the events together. At first God of War was not planned to be a tri­logy, Sony wasn’t even sure it would be a suc­cess. Once it became suc­cess­ful a tri­logy was born. Usually games like this have a lot of their plot in the first game pretty much wrapped up so the Writers have to go make some­thing new with very few ref­er­ences to the ori­ginal. God of War III couldn’t be more dif­fer­ent. The game once again cen­ters on find­ing the Box once again, although for a dif­fer­ent pur­pose. Never before has a tri­logy been wrapped up so tightly to where people aren’t left guess­ing about any plot holes.

Score: 9.6/10

Design

Might as well get it out of the way; God of War III is hyper-linear. Every place vis­ited is pretty much just a straight run through with the occa­sional branch­ing path that leads to Orb and Item chests. Of course there are many sites to see, from the crum­bling halls of Olympus, the burn­ing city of Olympia, to even the insides of a Titan. God of War III is a beast when it comes to loc­a­tions. Every loc­a­tion is vast, I mean that every place Kratos goes to is huge and is so bril­liantly detailed that it is easy to tell every loc­a­tion apart. The Underworld uses gothic imagery to con­vey a sense of dread while gold lay­ers all of Olympus with beau­ti­ful silk cur­tains line the walls.
God of War III is littered with inter­est­ing enemies to fight. Olympian min­ions are fought quite a bit; in fact some­times they can become a little too much. Thankfully there’s a whole mena­gerie of creatures worthy to spill blood on. Dastardly battles await as Kratos battles through cen­taurs, Cyclopes’, deadly satyrs, Cerberi, and many other deadly enemies. With an increased enemy count the screen can get a little busy with some very rare frame-rate issues, but they are frantic and com­ing out of them alive makes you feel more badass then any other game out there.

Puzzles play large roles in the series so it should come to no sur­prise that God of War III con­tin­ues that tra­di­tion. While God of War had inter­me­di­ate dif­fi­culty in its puzzles, God of War II went with a much more dif­fi­cult set of puzzles with some actu­ally mak­ing the player scratch their head before the solu­tion became obvi­ous. God of War III’s puzzles are pretty simple due to the fact that there aren’t many. There are 2 puzzles that will make you scratch your head for a second, but then the answer will become pain­fully obvi­ous.

The biggest fault with the design is that it can feel too much like the other games. Running down cor­ridors and solv­ing puzzles is the series staple. However it pulls everything off so well that it just doesn’t mat­ter much. The enemies are re-designed from the pre­vi­ous games and offer vari­ous levels of chal­lenge. It’s a fun game to just play around in, although the lack of “Bonus Play “isn’t going to help the re-playability.

Score: 9/10

Gameplay

If you’ve ever played a God of War game then you should know what God of War 3 is like. It’s still the same intense action and over-the-top gore the fran­chise is known for. Santa Monica has gone over­board with the finale and has pushed a bunch of new game­play ele­ments.

The biggest change within the game itself is the new way the magic is handled. In the past all magic could be switched to with the D-pad and could be used with any weapon the player so chose. Well in this game there are 4 new weapons and a dif­fer­ent power is assigned to each weapon which causes the player to switch back and forth between all 4 to gain access to each of the powers. Thankfully Santa Monica has made altern­ate weapons actu­ally use­ful this time. In the past altern­ate weapons were just throw-away and were use­less com­pared to the Blades. Now the weapons are full fea­tures with 5 levels to unlock each and mul­tiple com­bos to mas­ter.

To replace the but­ton where magic used to be are new items. Holding L2 and then press­ing a cor­res­pond­ing but­ton will allow Kratos to pull out Helios’ Head, Apollo’s Bow, or Hermes’ Boots. Helios’s Head and Apollo’s Bow are lim­ited to the amount of power you have on your orange bar. The more the items are used, the lower your bar falls. Don’t ever fret though as it refills itself pretty quickly. The boots how­ever can only be used at pre-determined loc­a­tions. The items feel a bit of a drag though, if there weren’t trophies for using them most people would prob­ably for­get they have them. It prob­ably would’ve been a bet­ter idea to have just not included them and left the L2 but­ton with the Powers received in the 2nd game, which are never explained why they are never there at the begin­ning.

Many can gripe that God of War III doesn’t add much to its for­mula and that it plays like the pre­vi­ous games. The ques­tion is why do they have to re-invent them­selves every game? God of War is a blast and as a series that needs to have con­tinu­ity such as its basic game­play is defi­antly ok.

Score: 9.3/10

Presentation

God of War III is eas­ily one of the best look­ing games on any plat­form. The scale of the whole game is just enorm­ous and all the detail the developers man­aged to pack in is astound­ing. Kratos climbs Titans, Olympus, and even the depths of the Underworld. The envir­on­ments look spec­tac­u­lar to look at espe­cially with all the
Greek Mythology etched into every crevice of the game.

God of War III con­tains world-class act­ing. All of the char­ac­ters are per­fectly cast with Motion Capture tech­no­logy being used on the actor’s faces to get all their emo­tions across as the lines are said and then trans­lated into the game. On the soundtrack, a riv­et­ing orches­tra sweeps notes as Kratos sends his blades fly­ing at enemies. Every piece heard is like a treas­ure chest.

Textures are crisp and beau­ti­ful with light­ing that enhances just how great they are. The tex­tures and mod­els are so good that as each char­ac­ter moves you can see their muscles con­tract­ing and relax­ing. There can be some argu­ment that Uncharted 2 may look bet­ter, but Uncharted 2 never attemp­ted this kind of scale before, and to have everything look­ing as beau­ti­ful and won­der­ful as God of War III is just spec­tac­u­lar. This is a present­a­tion that developers, on con­soles, will be try­ing to top for a long time.

Score: 10/10

Final Thoughts

Fans rejoice, God of War III is eas­ily one of the best games to come out in 2010 and will be dif­fi­cult to beat. Everything about the game is great and provides a fit­ting end to Kratos’ tri­logy of revenge. There is very little to say except go buy it!