Getting Up Close and Personal With God of War III

(NOTE: This critical analysis of the plot of God of War III will contain story spoilers.)

God of War II closed by setting the stage for what could be one of the most epic games of all time: As Zeus delivered a confident speech to assure the Gods that they would easily wipe out the "plague" that was Kratos, the ground shook underneath them. They ran to look down the side of Mount Olympus and saw Kratos and the Titans staring back up at them.

The End Begins...

Sure enough, that's exactly where God of War III picks up, never stopping until there is simply nothing left to destroy. The Ghost of Sparta's vengeance is finally complete, but it wasn't exactly what I had expected and I came away feeling somewhat unfulfilled. After playing through it a few more times and giving it more thought, I can finally articulate why that is.

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The Measure Of A Man

After a brief, very stylized introduction reminiscent of the James Bond movies to sum up the events of the first two installments in the trilogy, the game's title screen sets Kratos' face against a world thrown into complete chaos. An angry sky cracks and shifts as lightning flashes, tornadoes rip through the ground below, the rain beats down and locusts pervade the air.

Press start and Kratos will say, "My vengeance ends now," before everything flashes back to the end of God of War II. As the camera pans up Mount Olympus, following the Titans' ascent, Zeus gives a rousing, eloquent speech to the other Gods detailing how the rise of Olympus brought order from chaos and is now being challenged by the mortal, Kratos. Zeus vows to "wipe out this plague" and the Gods confidently stride over to watch the Titans climb.

The contrast between Zeus and Kratos is obvious once the perspective shifts. Kratos is not a man defined by words, but through violence. He delivers one quick line before handing off control to the player, instead choosing to express himself through mass murder. These two men could not be more different.

However, it's apparent that God of War III's introduction, while mostly faithful to God of War II's ending cutscene, has made subtle, but significant changes to the tone of these early events. At the end of II, Zeus' speech carried a much stronger air of arrogance and ended with the walls beginning to crumble around him, visible evidence of Kratos' challenge to Olympus. The other Gods had to jump over and dodge falling debris to reach their vantage point over the Titans. But in III, no walls crumble and the Gods are able to walk with poise and composure.

These are minor differences by themselves but represent Stig Asmussen's different direction for the series. Asmussen has gone to greater lengths than previous game directors David Jaffe and Cory Barlog to portray the Gods as at least somewhat just and vilify Kratos. Over the trilogy's arc, Kratos has been making a slow transition from a sympathetic antihero to a villain with daddy issues.

Asmussen smartly illustrates the monster Kratos has become, consumed by revenge, through Kratos' early, grisly murder of Poseidon. When the player presses the familiar circle button prompt as Kratos stands over the bloodied, broken water god, the perspective shifts to Poseidon's point of view as Kratos brutally beats him, kicking him while he's down, slamming his head into rocks, and throwing him aside. We watch from Poseidon's eyes as he coughs up blood and tries to crawl away until Kratos picks him up and punctures those eyes with his thumbs.

It's a gut-wrenching moment that makes you realize that there aren't any heroes left in the series. Kratos is much less sympathetic than before, and while the Gods are portrayed much more favorably in this entry, showing them on the defensive and fighting for order against Kratos' unrelenting chaos, they are still far from heroic.

I don't think it's been an entirely fair transition, though. Kratos used to be a flawed character whose actions were at least understandable, even when they clearly crossed all sorts of moral and ethical boundaries. In III, Kratos still has legitimate grievances and reasons to kill Zeus, but those reasons fall by the wayside in the narrative, opting instead for blind rage, making it harder to identify with his quest than it should be.

One of the biggest failures of God of War III is letting players lose sight of why Kratos is fighting in the first place.

When It All Falls Down

God of War III's introduction wasn't just impressive; it was a remarkable step forward for the series, representing an evolution in seamless level design that flowed from one incredible scripted moment to another with ease. But it was also paced uncharacteristically badly. By allowing Kratos to reach Zeus in the first 45 minutes, the game had nowhere to go but down.

The first meeting with Zeus goes exceptionally, predictably poorly for Kratos. After a heated exchange where Kratos exhibits classic Greek hubris, Zeus fires a single bolt of lightning that sends Kratos and Gaia tumbling back down the mountain.

Kratos struggles to hold on to Gaia, demanding that she help him. Gaia refuses, telling Kratos that they'd both fall if she tried to help him. She says that he's just been a pawn this whole time and lets him fall. Kratos lands in the River Styx, is stripped of all his powers, and you're back playing another by-the-book God of War game.

After such a fantastic opening sequence, it felt like Sony Santa Monica was eager to get back to its established formula and put the rest of the game on autopilot.

To be realistic, we knew that the fragile alliance between Kratos and the Titans would have to shatter, but it was a mistake to rush that plot point with such a weak, unconvincing betrayal. There was nothing Gaia could do to help Kratos; she could barely keep herself from falling. After she played such a pivotal role in helping Kratos in God of War II, such a quick, frail double-cross doesn't really make sense and comes across as cheap and rushed.

It felt like a cop-out. When Sony Santa Monica realized that the game they had set up at the end of God of War II could only really be about four to five hours long, they had to find ways to stretch it out. Of course, the easiest way is simply to repeat the beginning of II: Kratos is betrayed and killed by someone he thought was helping him, sent to the Underworld, and loses all his powers, sending him on an eight-hour quest for revenge.

Let's get something straight here: This is the third time that Kratos has been killed and sent to the Underworld in this trilogy.

Making things exponentially worse is Athena's return once he crawls out of the River Styx. Kratos accidentally killed her at the end of II, but she's back anyway as a ghost. Or something. Regardless, the reunion cutscene between the two is melodramatic and poorly acted on both sides. Kratos turns away from her like a cheesy soap opera star and spouts awkward lines like, "Be quick with your words," and Athena's new voice actress saps all the personality from a once-great character.

Athena's presence in God of War III is like an anchor from start to finish. She adds nothing to the story but needless complication; for instance, after Kratos' blades presumably get corrupted in Styx, she immediately replaces them with much weaker blades to earn his trust. But how are weak blades supposed to convince Kratos that he can trust her? Clearly though, Kratos didn't share my concerns.

Rewriting History

Athena tells Kratos that to kill Zeus, he'll need to find Pandora's Box again. This is troubling not just because this is the second time Athena has sent Kratos on a quest to kill a god using Pandora's Box, but because Athena's motivations are extremely suspect. She gave her life at the end of God of War II to stop Kratos from killing Zeus, determined to protect Olympus and end of the cycle of son killing father.

Once you reach the end of the game, you realize that Athena's true motivations had been to use Kratos to reopen Pandora's Box so that she could retrieve the power of hope that she had stored in there long ago. What she didn't know was that, after Kratos opened the box in God of War, he inherited the power of hope while the rest of the Gods were infected by the evils that had been locked away.

This twist changes how we have to view every God of War game released so far other than Chains of Olympus, which is set years before Kratos was ever tasked with opening Pandora's Box in the first game.

So rather than maintain the sublime, almost poetic opening of God of War II, which forced Zeus to kill his son, Kratos, for the exact same reasons he had tasked Kratos to kill his other son, Ares, in the first game, Asmussen chose to retroactively change these events to propose that Zeus had simply gone insane with paranoia, a result of the infection Kratos had released. Once again, he attempts to cast the Gods as victims.

The implications of this twist are more far-reaching than Asmussen probably anticipated. From the moment Athena told Kratos to find Pandora's Box near the beginning of God of War, she doomed everyone. As the Goddess of Wisdom, Athena should've known better. She should've told Zeus long ago that Ares was only on a warpath because he desperately sought his father's approval.

But that's just it. In his attempt to put his own stamp on the God of War legacy and deliver a memorable ending to the trilogy, Asmussen opened his own Pandora's Box. Now we are forced to reevaluate David Jaffe and Cory Barlog's work. Whether or not they approved of that twist, it directly affects how we play their games.

Once Athena realizes that Kratos has the power of hope within him, she demands it from him. Kratos instead chooses to kill himself, releasing hope to the world. Athena has the last line in the trilogy, telling a dying Kratos that she is disappointed in him. Kratos manages to sputter out a chuckle before collapsing.

Athena's radical shift in behavior in God of War III could be attributed to a possible infection of any greed released from Pandora's Box, but why did it take until after her death for that infection to manifest? No, if Athena had actually been infected with greed, she wouldn't have sacrificed herself to save Zeus at the end of II. She would've seen that as an opportunity to take over Olympus.

Simply put, all Asmussen does with his insane twist is create plot holes in the series.

Death Cannot Hold Those With Purpose

Not much really noteworthy of real criticism happens during the middle sections of the game, besides raising questions about why Pandora was never seen in God of War, the first time Kratos embarked on a quest for Pandora's Box. Why wait until the box is empty to guard it with the Flame of Olympus?

Really, Pandora's role in the game is as unnecessary as Athena's. I simply don't believe that Kratos would be willing to jeopardize his revenge on Zeus simply because this girl he just met kind of looks like his daughter, Calliope. Asmussen's big play to humanize Kratos falls flat on its face when we remember that Kratos is the guy who burned an innocent man alive just to open a door in the first game. Kratos has no reason to care about Pandora, and neither do we.

But God of War III is an action game through and through, so the most interesting parts of the story are at the beginning and the end. And it's with the ending that Asmussen gets especially bold.

The inevitable conclusion to the trilogy had to be a fight with Zeus; that much was obvious. The first round of this fight was absolutely incredible to watch and play, a 2D-plane match reminiscent of the silhouette fight against the last Spartan in God of War II. The second round is also a play on God of War II, starting off in a circular arena lined with columns, just like the final fight with Zeus with II.

Asmussen flexes the PS3's muscles by interrupting that fight with Gaia's massive hand slamming down in the middle, forcing both men to leap inside her to end it all. Kratos ends up stabbing the Blade of Olympus that Zeus used to end the Great War right through Zeus' torso and into Gaia's heart, killing both at once.

Zeus has one more trick up his sleeve and manages to come back and knock Kratos out, triggering one of the weirdest, most unexpected segments imaginable.

Kratos falls into blackness and relives some of his greatest regrets, like the deaths of his family and Athena. Pandora helps guide him along through this blackness until eventually Kratos finally forgives himself. He comes back to kill Zeus in a first-person sequence similar to the murder of his family. Then he pummels Zeus with his fists until the screen is literally covered with blood for just a little too long, creating an awkward moment where I didn't really know what to do.

Athena shows up, pieces everything together, and demands the power of hope back from Kratos, who responds by plunging the Blade of Olympus through his torso. The camera zooms out while Kratos bleeds on the ground. After the credits, the camera zooms back in and all that's left is the Blade and a blood trail leading off the cliff.

So what does this mean for the franchise? Will every subsequent game be a prequel, or will we see the ideas from the special features of God of War play out? A game based on the modern day military finding Pandora's Temple chained to the bones of Cronos could be interesting, but it would have to be radically different from anything else in the franchise. In fact, a simliar game already exists in Legendary, a first-person shooter set in a New York City ravaged by mythical beasts after Pandora's Box is opened.

But really, is Kratos even dead? The smart money would be on "yes," but you never know. If Kratos is dead and returns to the Underworld for good, he could face up to his brother, who was killed when they were children in the traditional Spartan ritual of abandoning the weak, despite Kratos' best efforts. That idea was also introduced in the first game's special features and has yet to be explored.

Regardless of what happens next, we do know that this is a big deviation from the series creator David Jaffe's original plan, which was a smooth transition from Greek mythology to Norse mythology until Kratos becomes Death himself, explaining why these mythologies have all died out.

So despite being the most fun game in the trilogy, it also ranks as the weakest overall. Asmussen clearly had some interesting things to contribute to Kratos' story, but ultimately, he created several glaring plot holes and ended up with a story not nearly as strong as David Jaffe or Cory Barlog's.

Review // Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

Why would anyone ever want to play a game that chronicles the transformation of the arrogant yet irresistibly charming Prince from Sands of Time to the brooding asshole from Warrior Within? Because, as it turns out, that game isn't nearly as awful as it sounds, though it's still definitely not great, either.

First Impressions Can Be Wrong

Maybe it was the shockingy bad new look for the Prince that casts him as some horrible amalgamation of Jake Gyllenhaal and a caveman. Maybe it was the mindless combat against hordes of identical enemies that required more patience than skill. Maybe it was the platforming that felt like it was just going through the motions, with hollow setpieces like scripted arrows that come from off-screen, even while indoors, and pose no threat to the player. Whatever it was, The Forgotten Sands' first few hours repulsed me.

But slowly, too slowly, the Prince finally began to find his footing and it felt like I was playing a proper Prince of Persia again. As I gained powers, like freezing running water to use as poles, columns, and walls, the platforming started feeling inspired. I was leaping through one waterfall and running up the next, jumping to platforms that materialized out of thin air at the last possible second, and warping to enemies halfway across the room. It looked and felt complex but became second-nature quickly and was consistently satisfying.

On the other hand, the combat is worse than it's ever been, a mindless, boring exercise in tedium that a drinking bird could sail through if you pointed it toward the square button. I became a total pacifist, ignoring all fights unless mandatory, which are thankfully sparse. It became a metagame to see how much I could avoid combat and made the game infinitely more enjoyable.

Living In The Past

Returning to the Sands of Time universe sounds great in concept, but in practice it just doesn't work. The Forgotten Sands doesn't make a single reference to the trilogy it sandwiches itself into and feels like dull fan-fiction. The characters are unsurprisingly boring, with the Prince's brother going through an extremely predictable character arc, the female sidekick only used to deliver backstory, and the main villain simply jumps around and growls occasionally.

The real tragedy is that, as shockingly low-impact as this entry into the Sands of Time universe is, they still had opportunities to make it worthwhile. For instance, the Prince's brother gets possessed by the villain and starts slowly turning into a monster himself, looking more and more like the Dahaka that relentlessly chased the Prince in Warrior Within. "Hey, that'd be a cool twist," I thought. "It would certainly help explain why the Prince was so damn moody in that game." The game disagreed with me and opted instead for Typical Video Game Ending #3.

If you're a big Prince of Persia fan craving some fun, familiar platforming, it's worth a rental, just don't expect a return to greatness. Everyone else can rest assured that they're not missing anything.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands / $59.99 / PS3 [reviewed], 360, PC

Review // Red Dead Redemption

While it makes an extremely strong first impression, somewhere along the way, Red Dead Redemption lost me. It's still a good game, but it made enough mistakes that I couldn't help but come away feeling disappointed.

Which Button Do I Press To Saunter?

It's not reductive to describe Red Dead Redemption as "Grand Theft Auto but with horses." Everything from the gunplay to the basic feel of movement to the structure of missions is almost identical to Grand Theft Auto IV, coming with the same exhilarating moment-to-moment gameplay and the same litany of problems. For example, firing a gun feels great, especially with the new Dead Eye system that allows you to slow time, paint targets over multiple enemies, and take them all out at once, but using cover still feels awkward and outdated. Sometimes everything worked perfectly and my character slid right into cover; other times he just stood there as I frantically jammed the cover button, as though on strike.

That's about how it goes in Red Dead: When everything works, it's a really fun game. When it doesn't, it can get frustrating. I failed several missions because my character refused to take cover, or decided to take cover in such a way that he could still easily be shot, or because I couldn't accurately gauge how much health I had left, or thanks to the unrealistically "realistic" movement speed and momentum that work okay in large, open areas but fail miserably whenever precise movements are needed, like indoors or near ledges. Still, the game is at its best during basic missions that involve you and a posse riding out to a set location to kill dozens of enemies, though the lack of mission variety definitely hurts; it often felt like the same few objectives were being recycled again and again.

The simple joy of having a good Wild West shootout is why the game's multiplayer can be incredibly satisfying at times. Matches generally start out with a tense Mexican standoff where all players have guns pointed at each other, and the last man standing has the advantage of a slight head start to go position himself. Despite being extremely brief, these segments became my favorite part of multiplayer. Unfortunately, it's all kind of unbalanced as the unlock system grants players huge benefits, like significantly upgraded weapons and horses, the more they play. Control issues are more evident against human opponents, and lock-on aiming, while enjoyable in single-player, turns the game into a race to see who can run toward dots on the minimap and lock-on to barely visible targets in the distance the fastest.

This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Forty Of Us

What excited and disappointed me most, though, was Red Dead Redemption's story. John Marston, a reformed outlaw, is forced by the government to hunt down key members of his former gang. The tale starts off incredibly strong and very focused, showcasing some of the best pacing, voice acting, and writing I've ever had the pleasure to experience in a video game. But very quickly, it branches off in a thousand different directions, completely losing the pinpoint focus of earlier sections. Marston is a driven man with a clear goal and a lack of tolerance for anything that gets in his way, so attempts to artificially extend the game's length by having him help everyone he meets and shoehorning obvious double crosses are audaciously transparent and detrimental to the overall narrative.

After the game's mostly sublime first act, everything falls apart. Truly interesting characters you'd just spent hours with, like Bonnie MacFarlane and the phenomenal Marshal Johnson, are tossed to the wayside and never revisited in a meaningful way. Taking their place are droves of worthless, unlikeable characters during the game's second act in Mexico that drags on and on and should've been cut entirely. Rockstar delivered a fantastic lead in John Marston, who is constantly presented as the kind of man you do not lie to or jerk around, not ever, then completely squandered it by allowing every lowlife around to lie to and jerk him around, wasting both mine and Marston's time. His tale concludes in such a remarkable way that it's definitely worth seeing through to the end credits, but the journey there is not always easy.

While the frontier presented is stunningly beautiful at times, a shocking amount of technical problems broke any sense of immersion for me on many occasions. During one mission, a critical enemy was spawned inside of a wall, so I had to restart from the last checkpoint. While roaming, I encountered a man riding a horse five feet in the air. After losing a duel mere feet away from a save point, I hit an infinite loading screen and had to restart my console. Most tragically though, were the times when the game clearly went to great lengths to set up powerful moments where songs with vocals kick in while you play. These are brilliant conceptually, but in my experience, each song was cut off within seconds because I got on or off my horse, triggering different music, utterly ruining each scene and reminding me how clumsy the game can be.

Red Dead Redemption isn't perfect. In fact, it's pretty deeply flawed in a lot of ways I hadn't expected it to be. But it takes a setting not explored often enough and makes a good enough game out of it that you should at least check out.

Red Dead Redemption / $59.99 / PS3 [reviewed], 360

Review // Just Cause 2

Despite featuring some unforgivably bland, forgettable missions and a boring, cliched story, Just Cause 2 still might just be the most fun sandbox game ever created.

All Hail The Grappling Hook And Parachute

The amount of stupid, ridiculous shit you can do in this game is staggering. It really all comes down to your imagination. There were so many moments while playing Just Cause 2 that I saw something interesting that I just had blow up, or launch a car into, or tether to a helicopter and fly away. There's also an in-game recording and uploading feature, making it super easy to save moments like my mid-air car hijack above. The most fun I had here came from hours and hours of unscripted exploration and experimentation as I flew around the sprawling world, wreaking havoc and destruction. It's the kind of game where the sheer act of playing, even without any direction, is enough to put a smile on your face and cause you to lose track of time.

Most of the joy you'll experience will be directly linked to the game's absolutely brilliant grappling hook and parachute combination. You can grapple to anything in the world from a good distance away, then use the parachute to start gliding. While parachuting, you can use the grappling hook to keep yourself propelled, essentially allowing you to fly forever, cover ground incredibly fast, and reach ridiculous heights. You can also use the grappling hook to pull people toward you, latch onto buildings, quickly zip away from danger, hijack helicopters and planes, or tether any two things together, like a human being to a flying propane tank. I wish I could use the grappling hook in almost every game; it's that good.

What's really shocking though, is how, with all the crazy stunts possible in this game, the missions still end up being the same tedious chores you do in every other open world game. With this many tools for creating awesome scenarios, there's simply no excuse for falling back on tired concepts like escort missions where you drive a VIP in a slow limousine from Point A to Point B. There are some legitimately cool moments here, like jumping back and forth between speeding jeeps to disarm bombs or the insane final mission, but there just aren't enough of them. What makes it really insulting is that the game makes you do the exact same missions over and over for different factions.

I Barely Remember What Happened Here

Apparently you play as Rico Rodriguez, an agent for a US agency called, well, the Agency, as he tries to overthrow an evil dictator and track down a rogue agent. I say "apparently" because the story here is so bad and so poorly executed that, by the end, I could barely bring myself to pay attention to what was going on, much less care. At first, the lackluster story and awful voice acting was kind of amusing since I typically enjoy movies and games where the story is so bad that it's good, but as the game dragged on, it overstayed its welcome and wasn't so amusing anymore. In a game like this, clearly the story isn't supposed to be the focus, but it isn't supposed to bore me either.

The real beauty of this game could never have anything to do with whether or not the story is good, though. The best part of Just Cause 2 is conceptualizing increasingly dangerous and moronic stunts to pull off, practicing them again and again until you finally succeed, then thinking up some absurd way to make them even more dangerous and moronic. Topping myself became the whole game after awhile. Whereas anything scripted was practically guaranteed to disappoint, roaming around making my own fun never ceased to entertain. However, this is definitely a game meant to be played on easy difficulty. Worrying about dying will only hamper your creativity.

I highly recommend Just Cause 2. It both allows and encourages the kind of creative play that throws caution to the wind and favors fun over logic. The missions and story are a waste of time, but everything else is a blast.

Just Cause 2 / $59.99 / PS3 [reviewed], 360, PC

Review // Heavy Rain

I don't think I've ever played a game before Heavy Rain that so skillfully straddles the line between intensely captivating and mind-numbingly boring. But the foundation laid here is exciting and should definitely be explored further.

The Most Uncoordinated People

Let's get it out of the way right now: The worst part about Heavy Rain is actually having to play it. Even simple tasks like walking from one room to another can be a huge pain with the cumbersome controls. You hold the R2 button to walk and can look around with left analog stick. It sounds easy enough, but combine that with too much character momentum and the game's jarring tendency to switch camera angles on you for "cinematic effect" and you've got a recipe for wasted time as you constantly fight to get your character to go where you intended. But the real problem is that it doesn't just feel awkward, it looks awkward, too. For a game that relies so heavily on its cinematic presentation, it's surprising that basic movement is so counterintuitive.

As for what you actually do in this game, typically you'll just walk around triggering little cut scenes of your character talking to people or opening drawers or shaving or other inconsequential actions. If that sounds like it could get boring, it's because it does. Face it: Most of the things you do in real life are extremely mundane. Well, in Heavy Rain, you do a lot of extremely mundane, realistic things, but it helps put you into your character's shoes. If you like playing the role of a character, you'll probably enjoy how refreshingly boring it can be. It attempts immersion in a much more ambitious way than most games do. But if helping your virtual kid with his homework before making him dinner and sending him to bed doesn't sound like your cup of tea, then this isn't the game for you.

While the majority of Heavy Rain plays out like an adventure game, with you calmly walking around trying to figure out which part of the environment will progress the story, that calmness is punctuated by moments of intense action. Where these moments differ from typical quick time events is in how natural they feel. Rather than appearing in the same place every time, becoming a visual distraction, the icons here appear directly over whatever they correspond to, letting you keep your eyes focused on the action. Most of the inputs usually make sense in the context of the scene instead of just being a reflex test, all resulting in quick time events that look and feel like a true evolution.

An Eight-Hour Film

The plot revolves around a father trying to rescue his son from a serial killer, boiling down to a slight twist on SAW, and three other characters also trying to bring the killer to justice. It's certainly absorbing enough that I was never really bored, but it definitely has flaws. There are whole sections of the game that are completely irrelevant and make it feel like a film that needed better editing. In fact, the female character, Madison, probably should've been cut out entirely since she doesn't really add anything that worthwhile to the plot, yet ironically, she was the only one of the four playable characters that made it to the credits alive for me.

Persistent character death is just one of the ways that Heavy Rain makes you feel like your experience with it is unique. My favorite moment in the entire game occurred in the first fifteen minutes when, playing as the father, your wife and two sons come home and you get into a play sword fight with one of the boys. It's ultimately just a scripted moment, but I felt more in control there than anytime outside of the quick time events. I gave the kid a good fight but purposefully lost in the end because, well, it was his birthday. It actually felt pretty good. I talked to a friend who had also played it and he had just slaughtered his virtual son without thought. Little moments like that helped immerse me in the story.

Unfortunately though, a lot of little moments are ruined by the game's presentation, which is decidedly mixed. Sometimes, everything comes together and the game impresses with lots of interesting camera angles, stunningly detailed people and environments, and a realistic sense of style. Other times, characters look decidedly fake, the animation is unconvincing, and the voice acting sounds unnatural. The only thing that makes poorly delivered voice acting sound worse is poorly written lines of dialogue, of which the game has plenty. It doesn't get frustratingly bad or anything, but some lines occasionally stand out.

Heavy Rain is a very engaging game and a very interesting step in trying to evolve how video games work that is hopefully followed up on by other developers, but it has enough problems that I'd only recommend renting it.

Heavy Rain / $59.99 / PS3

Review // God of War III

While it definitely drops the ball in a few key areas, God of War III is still so packed with exhilarating, memorable moments and extremely satisfying combat that the flaws are easily forgivable. It may be the weakest entry in the trilogy, but it still completely crushes all other competition.

By The Gods...

Easily the best part of any God of War game is the brutal, visceral combat, and God of War III gives you the best version of Kratos yet. His basic moves remain unchanged, just as fluid and responsive as ever, but his new tools for eviscerating foes absolutely change the game. The best of these is the new grapple where Kratos throws his blades into an enemy and launches himself forward, allowing you to get back into the fray much more quickly and move from one enemy to the next without breaking combo. It's improvements like this that make replaying the previous games much more jarring than I had expected.

A problem with the prior games is that any alternate weapons given felt so lackluster compared to Kratos' blades, but here, the new weapons finally feel like fun, worthy additions, particularly the Claws of Hades, purple hooks on chains that operate like flashier versions of Kratos' standard blades. Switching between these weapons has been simplified beautifully, making it incredibly easy to change mid-combo and get creative with your kills. The problem with all of these tools is that you're not really challenged to utilize everything in your arsenal often enough, so it's up to you to keep things fresh for yourself.

Too much of a good thing is the least problematic issue with God of War III, though. Pacing, level design, and backtracking are all a step backward from God of War II. Different environments don't feel as connected as they used to, with portals leading back and forth across the world, giving the whole game a feeling like it was loosely stitched together. There's also more backtracking than ever before which, rather than making the world feel more connected, only serves to make it feel more disjunctive as you hop back and forth through radically different environments.

...What Have I Become?

However, the biggest problem I have with God of War III is how inconsistent it feels in terms of quality and how much it rehashes from the first two games. There's nothing wrong with the premise here, that Kratos is out to kill Zeus, but the game treads such familiar ground in exploring that premise that it nears the point of mockery. Kratos is sent to the underworld for the third time, has to find Pandora's Box for the second time, and is still getting help from Athena even though he killed her at the end of God of War II. Simply put, Athena should not have been in this game and is only a drain on the story.

But almost all of these issues melt away when you're actually playing. God of War III has flaws but by no stretch of the imagination would I call it disappointing. This game is filled to the brim with some of the most exciting and impactful sequences I've ever played in a video game. In particular, some of the boss fights here are beyond epic and each ends in such a spectacularly violent and gruesome way that I couldn't help but enthusiastically describe each kill to friends, all of whom then demanded to see it for themselves. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I often had an audience when playing.

The moment-to-moment encounters with enemies and bosses in God of War III are easily the best in the genre thanks to Kratos' new moves and some very smart refinements, like completely revamped combat while climbing. As a result, even if it doesn't surpass the previous games in the trilogy in the quality of the overall package, it's often the most fun entry in the series. It's also unbelievably gorgeous both in terms of fidelity and artwork, and I frequently stopped just to ogle the amazing environments. This game is just impressive in every sense of the word.

It's unfortunate that God of War III makes the mistakes it does, but at the end of the day, those mistakes won't prevent you from having to pick up your jaw at least once per hour. It's a stunning game completely worth purchasing.

God of War III / $59.99 / PS3