Clash of the Tit-ans! Or: Are You There God? It’s Me, Kratos

Few games repulse, arouse, and excite quite like the awe-inspiring God of War III.  Like the previous installments, God of War III is a kinetic, highly visceral experience where eyes are gouged, heads are yanked from necks, skulls are pummeled, and entrails paint the screen in explosions of gore. 

And then there are the exposed boobs.

And man, what glorious boobs they are.  Big boobs, small boobs, medium boobs, hairy boobs, scaly boobs, multi-colored boobs…a veritable cornucopia of flippin’ and floppin’ teats.  Just thinking about them makes me want to grab my “controller” again.  Sorry ladies, but it looks like God of War III was made for 15-year old boys!

The whole point of this is that God of War III carries on in the tradition of its predecessors by earning its “Mature” rating in spades.  But the game is not just about blood n’ tits, no; it has a story and everything!

Our hero Kratos still has daddy issues and wants to give his pops Zeus a beatdown.  In order to accomplish this, Kratos sets out on a mission to kill every God, man, woman, minotaur, Medusa, centaur, family member…and, well, basically anything else that fucking moves. 

Overall, the controls are tight and intuitive and the upgradeable combos are fluidly executed.  This time around, Kratos has the option to summon magic (which correspond with whatever primary weapons are being used), and acquires some cool secondary weapons that are obtained by slaying certain characters. 

The visuals are breathtaking; especially the memorable boss battles that continually switch from in-game fighting to context-sensitive cinematics.  Epic in scope, God of War III is a thrilling spectacle that deftly balances puzzle-solving with seamless action.  Inventive gameplay modes offer up a welcoming diversion from the familiar hack n’ slash controls (like the chance to beat the shit out of somebody from their perspective).  It was like I was kicking my own ass!

Despite this, the ambitious narrative crumbles under its convoluted mechanizations.  Kratos basically devolves into an unstoppable killing machine whose thirst for revenge gets clouded in a storyline that never quite engages.  On top of this, the fixed camera angles sometimes prevented me from advancing due to unclear objectives and flawed perspective issues. I spent an hour on one level because of these perspective issues; which was psychologically akin to slamming my nuts into a cactus.  Repeatedly.  Also, the linear gameplay does not leave any room for exploration, which leads to a fairly short single-player campaign.  After about 7 hours, I had already completed Kratos’s final quest and wished that it would have lasted longer.

Strangely enough, the last boss battle (against Zeus), is a protracted sequence that fails to live up to the epic scale of the previous bosses.  While I enjoyed figuring out each of the bosses weak points, as well as experimenting with various weapons to inflict the most damage, the Zeus battle quickly transformed into a series of button mashes.  While the narrative left much to be desired and the camera angles were sometimes infuriating (and the final boss battle anticlimactic), God of War III still managed to transcend these minor complaints.

Oh yeah, and Kratos gets to bang Aphrodite.

Anyway, the sense of wonder isn’t completely gone, but God of War III is more concerned with providing a refined gaming experience then reinventing a genre.  While some might complain of the lack of innovation; quite simply, God of War III has mastered everything that it set out to accomplish way back in 2005.  Although nothing will ever replicate the rush I got when I initially took God of War for a spin on my Playstation 2; God of War III comes pretty damn close.

Buy it!

-Gabe

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