His usual calm and thoughtful self, Kratos just can’t understand why everyone is so angry
Recently, I got the chance to play a demo of God of War III which has being floating around the gaming world for a while, since about E3. So whilst most of the press have had a chance to play the third instalment in this greek mythology influenced hack ‘n slash, most of us mere plebs had not.
Following in the line of inFamous and a few other games recently, pressing start instantly sends you into the action, as Kratos, who is still pretty pissed off at quite a few things that is happening, gets set up upon by skeletons, who happen to be armed with swords and shields, typical on your Greek holiday resort. Kratos controls still how you’d expect him to, with light and heavy attacks, grabs and variations on these, depending on you combo them together or use the block button to access different types of the attacks. I always found myself playing the original God of War a bit button mashy and although a little more timing and finesse is required against these, what I presume to be, bog standard ‘easy’ foes, I was able to get back into the combat pretty quickly, though it may be a case when the game is released in March next year of people who are used to the series breezing through it on lower difficulties.
In the preview, Kratos battles his way through Mount Olympus, fighting God’s and all kinds of creatures, including Helios, a centaur, a lot of saggy Harpy’s and various other monsters you’ll all faintly remember from any time spent in the Greek Mythos. The world does look authentically ancient, although you are limited to what you can see thanks to the camera tending to favour looking in one direction, basically so you can see the combat. One of the later scenes in the demo, which I don’t want to spoil for anyone eagerly anticipating their “Remastered Pack” demo to come through, does live up to the much of the ‘epicness’ that has been shown in most of the trailers, whether this continues in the rest of the game remains to be seen.
However, GOW III is most certainly filled with lots of events. Events from shooting down God from his flaming chariot, angering a large rock thing (most probably another God) who is climbing the mountain, jumping from Harpy to ugly Harpy by stabbing it in the neck, riding on top of a strong, if not A grade candidate Cyclops and various other things that makes Uncharted 2 look like a donkey ride on a beach. By utilising the extra horsepower that has been given to them, Santa Monica Studios have, so far anyway, brought in so many different elements of Greek Mythos, putting them in a gorey mixing pot and seeing what they can craft from this. Whilst I’m in no doubt that this preview was crafted in such a way to give me plenty of “ooohh” and “ahhhh” moments, there is nothing really wrong with that, if the game can continue a similar level of excitement through the story.
As I mentioned, you are pretty good as killing things as Kratos and the combat techniques flow nicely into one another, creating combat that doesn’t even feel like it’s out of your control. The game attempts to promote, through the combat a system, a more pragmatic approach to the combat, allowing to change from a grab, to a heavy attack, followed by a light, jump attack. This works on in theory, I’m sure you could craft really intricate and useful combos out of this, preventing you from getting hit, but there is little to zero penalty to simply spamming a favoured attack (mine was L1 and Square) which pretty much clears the floor with most of what you encounter in the preview. Whilst some of the bosses are a little more tricky, and some become a bit easier by switching to boxing-glove style weapons which basically act like wrecking balls on Kratos’ hands.
To keep this pretty brief and to the point, which is strange for me I know, God of War III looks set to be another big game of the PS3, although so far, the improvements on it’s predecessor seem mostly superficial and although you’ll definitely notice an upgrade, from what I’ve seen so far, if you ain’t into the mad amount of gore that is piled into this game and the general direction of the series, GOW III ain’t going to convince you. Unless you head happens to be easy to tear off. You never know
