Review | God of War III

Format: PS3 | Genre: Action adventure | Publisher: Sony | Developer: Santa Monica | Release date: 19/03/10 | RRP: £49.99

The final game in the God of War trilogy impressed us when we played a preview build last year. Now, Phill Cameron sits down with the release version, and comes away very interested indeed…

Better, stronger, faster, bigger, prettier, broader, cleverer, angrier, epic-er, muscley-er, stabby-er, brutal-er, err… what was I talking about again? Oh yes, God of War III. That’d be the one.

I’m confused by God of War III. I came to it expecting a (mostly) mindless hack-and-slash, featuring all sorts of brutal finishing moves and the angriest man alive in the most ridiculously epic situation there ever was, and I come away with questions of who the player is really playing in a third-person action game. It’s like they’re luring you in with the stabby stabby choppy choppy, and then bam! The wet fish of contemplation slaps you in the face.

I probably need to provide some context, otherwise you’re all going to think I’ve gone mental. Maybe I have. God of War III is everything I was expecting: you start the game on the back of the Titan Gaia, climbing mount Olympus to kill Zeus, because he stole your godly powers, and if there’s anything that makes Kratos angry (although in his case, everything makes him angry), stealing his power is going to get him pissed.

I’m not really sure if they could have given the game a more hilariously over-the-top opening. That you’re soon fighting huge water horse/crab things that seem to erupt from Poseidon’s… somewhere, while on Gaia’s arm, which is at least as wide as the M6, just exacerbates things. I mean, you’ve only been playing five minutes, and already you’re fighting a god that sits comfortably in the top three Greek gods ever? Shit is crazy.

NOT THE FACE
Shit gets crazier when you defeat him, though. God of War has always taken delight in its kills, showing in vivid detail the stabbings and punchings that Kratos doles out to those who serve as ambiguous targets for his revenge. But this is suddenly, strikingly different. You’re still pressing the buttons that make Kratos beat the living snot out of the Lord of the Sea, but you’re doing it through the eyes of Poseidon. As in, you press circle, and suddenly you’re punching yourself. You’re watching Kratos punch the screen, until finally he grabs Poseidon’s head, your head, and holds his thumbs over you. Press R2 and L2, the screen prompts. What, so that I can gouge my own eyes out? Are you mental?

But you do it. Of course you do it. You hold down the triggers, and the thumbs plunge into the screen, leaving you with blackness for a moment, just the blood-curdling scream of a god losing his sight and probably his mind, before you’re blissfully wrenched from that perspective and you get to watch Kratos hurl him off the cliff to his death.

And that’s just the first ten minutes. The game that follows has Kratos killing legendary, mythical figures left and right, cutting them down with just a sneer and a brutally efficient, if slightly excessive, amount of punching and stabbing. But that’s what Kratos does. That’s what you’re here for, right?

Developer Santa Monica have stated in the past that the God of War games are there to serve as a reason that the Greek pantheon died out, to be replaced by Roman and then eventually Christian belief systems. I can’t help but think that there’s another purpose behind the games: to create something almost comically violent, and then provide the player with a few moments of revelation; to hold up a mirror to allow them to see exactly how needlessly violent they’re being.

This is all done through almost painfully clever use of quick time events. You might see Heavy Rain as the game championing clever, context-sensitive use of controller prompts, but God of War III has it down to a fine art. When you’re performing a finishing move, the game relegates the button prompts to the sides of the screen, each corresponding to their location on the controller. Square lights up the left side of the screen, meaning that you can watch what’s actually going on, while just relying on your peripheral vision to inform you which button to press. [Continues]

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