God of War III

God of War III (apparently) marks the end of the God of War trilogy.  It follows Kratos, the “Ghost of Sparta”, as he finally gets his revenge for everything that happened across the course of the first two games.  What this means, essentially, is that you get to kill everything and anything that stands in your way — Titans, Gods, slave girls…  Anything that looks like it might bleed is probably worth a stabbing.

"In the end there will be only chaos..."

Perhaps I just came to the franchise a little too late, but God of War III didn’t really live up to my expectations.  Hold your winged horses, fanboys — give me a chance to explain. There are a lot of reasons to like GoW3.

For one, it is one of the most brutal games I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing; it’s very difficult to describe how satisfying it is to rip the horn off of a Chimaera and then stab it through its brain, or to repeatedly punch somebody in the face until the screen is completely splattered with their blood.  I think it’s something that probably speaks to everybody at some level, though — my mum (who doesn’t like games) insisted on being present for most of my playthrough simply because it was so gruesome.

The immense scale of some of the creatures and environments is also worth a mention.  Think Shadow of the Colossus, but bigger.  One boss fight pits you up against a titan, whose fingernails are easily ten times the size of Kratos.  At other times, a simple camera zoom-out or pan makes you realise that every single level you’ve visited is part of a much larger whole; that the huge chain you’re climbing really does stretch from Hades to the top of Mount Olympus…

Unfortunately, by the time that I really started to get into the game, I knew that it was almost over.  My stats were (mostly) maxed out, a bloody trail of Gods had been left in my wake and I had only been playing for eight hours.  Eight.  Now, I know that this criticism seems unfair — my recent review of Heavy Rain made plenty of excuses about why its length didn’t matter — but I can’t help but feel that the game would have been better if it were longer.

Perhaps the harder difficulties and Olympus Challenges will add a lot of replay value (or be so frustratingly difficult that an eight hour playthrough needs to be stretched across months of real time), but that’s something I can’t really comment upon at this point.

My recommendation to people who haven’t yet bought God of War III would be to wait for the God of War Collection available for pre-order at all good online retailers.  The price difference isn’t that much, but you’ll get at least three times as much fun out of it.  That, and that you should definitely pretend it doesn’t rip off Max Payne at all.