Review: “God of War III”

When I was in jr. high school, I checked out a couple books on Greek and Norse mythology from the school library and very quickly got hooked. I was our Scholastic Bowl team’s secret weapon. When other teams would score a lot of points of useless topics like math and science, my deep knowledge of how Hephaestus got maimed and how Freya got her beautiful necklace (gross) could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat faster than Hermes racing to the little deity’s room after a trip to White Castle.

[WARNING: God of War 1 spoilers!] A few years ago, I played the first God of War game on the PS2, and thoroughly enjoyed their spin on the Greek pantheon. The concept of interacting with the gods and visiting legendary locations was cool enough. Getting killed, thrown into Hades, crawling back out again, and finally kicking Ares’ ass was amazing. Having the series’ protagonist, Kratos, kill Ares and assume his job as the God of War at the end was nothing short of genius. At the time I played this game, I was going through a very stressful period of my life, and I’d never played anything so graphic and violent. Stomping on a harpy, ripping its wings off, grabbing another, and repeating as needed was downright therapeutic.

I never played God of War II, but when I was considering whether to play it before I tried out III, I’d heard there wasn’t much plot to speak of. Some quick research confirmed this was correct, and that it’s all about losing your powers, getting out of Hades again, and killing everything in sight. Okay, there’s a little more than that, but not so much that I absolutely needed to play it first. After finishing III, I am happy to say there was a lot of new plot, and almost all of it referenced only the first game. But enough about the old games. Let us discuss the third and mightiest in this series!

Let’s establish something first. Your opponents in God of War III are nothing less than the Greek gods themselves. Fortunately, Sony Computer Entertainment America is really, really good at epic, gigantic boss fights. You’re going to fight things that make some of the bosses in Shadow of the Colossus want to head to the gym to bulk up. For the love of Thanatos, you’re going to use one boss’s psoriasis as a climbing surface. That is huge.

The amazing sense of scale in God of War III extends far beyond mere boss fights. It is clear from the very beginning of the game that you are a tiny speck compared to the environments and creatures you will be maiming and destroying. It gives you a really excellent feeling that you are a tiny mortal dealing with forces much greater than yourself. At times, the camera pans out really far while you’re in the middle of a big fight with lots of enemies, and it looks bad ass. Normally, I would freak out when something like this happens because I can’t see what I’m doing, but fortunately this is a God of War game and all you typically have to do to kill a lot of weaker enemies is spin around repeatedly and let the ketchup flow all around you.

God of War III is incredibly violent, sometimes to the point where it made me a little uncomfortable. The entire game is based around you hunting down many of the Greek gods and pretty much murdering them. Kratos beats down his opponents, stalks them slowly as they beg for mercy, and then finishes them off in very creative and almost laughably gruesome ways. Almost. There are special finishing animations for pretty much every enemy in the game, usually involving decapitation, amputation, or disembowelment in some capacity. You’ll see them really often but fortunately it didn’t get particularly irritating.

There is also some sexual content in God of War III, but it is presented in such a way that I have trouble believing somebody at SCEA wasn’t trying to make a statement about this weird quasi-Puritanical “VIOLENCE GOOD! SEX BAD!” morality quandary we have going on in the United States. This is perhaps the most realistically violent game I’ve ever seen, and yet when the sex scene shows up, they pan away to two lesbians (no, really) giving non-descript but nevertheless spicy commentary on the totally epic sexual exploits unfolding before them. There’s also an action sequence, much like you would use in an extended finishing move, that very loosely simulates the sexual acts Kratos is performing. (Not since Rez’s Trance Vibrator feature has the Playstation’s hardware been so sexually provocative!) Other than that, there’s no shortage of bare breasts in the game, and they’re not afraid to show nipples either. Some of the monsters have decided to go topless for comfort as well, and, while still hideous, they are fortunately not apt to destroy any man’s future desire to mate like Dragon Age’s Broodmother.

You can perform a wide variety of different actions in God of War III, most of which have been designed to take the blood on the inside of something and put it on the outside. Given that you have four primary weapons by the end of the game, all of which have their own combo moves, this adds up to a lot of things to remember. Additionally, you can perform several comparatively peaceful actions like “jumping” and “dragging objects”. Consequently, the controls of the game have a bit of a learning curve – but even if you just button-mash for most fights, you will in most cases end up decapitating something. I found a couple of combinations with one or two weapons that suited me, spammed those the entire game, and still managed to render extinct at least three separate endangered species before I finished the game. (It may have been four, but I couldn’t really tell with all the blood.)

There were a couple things that annoyed me about the game, but they were relatively minor. The camera, though it at times performed feats of badassery in illustrating the scale of a large battle, frequently would place itself somewhere that made it difficult to see what I was doing. This was usually done just before a save point and somewhere I needed to jump across something that would kill me, making me waste 3-4 minutes each iteration. It also would occasionally obscure the passage out of a room, though I’m not sure if it was intentional or not. Also, the game was not particularly forthcoming about where you were supposed to go next, and I have a lot better things to do than backtrack all over the whole game in order to find a little hidey-hole I missed the first time through just to get to the next level. This game is supposed to be epic and fast-moving, not frustrating.

Though this game is pretty heavy on the “killing everybody” and relatively light on “plot”, I will say what plot is there is pretty good. Granted, 90% of this game’s cutscenes consist of some god uttering some variant of “lolz u suck kratos”, after which you’re given the opportunity to convert whoever said it into a lasagna-like substance. The dialogue between characters, though shallow and over the top, feels natural to the story and is well-delivered. The game’s biggest surprise for me, though, was the ending. After you kill the last boss, you’re treated to a very artfully done interactive end sequence that wraps up the series nicely. It took a really long time, but I found myself emotionally invested in what happened to Kratos for the first time since I saw his origin story way back in the first game. I couldn’t believe it. It was a welcome finish, and I felt like a got a couple scraps of my humanity back after so much murderin’.  For those of you who are concerned about a touchy-feely ending, don’t worry. The game’s designers still remembered what game this was, and the very last thing you do in the game literally covers the screen with so much gore you can’t see anything anymore.

I don’t know if I completely agree with all the review sites that give God of War III a perfect 10/10 rating, or call it the “Best Game Ever” — but I will say this game kicks (literally) huge ass. At the very least, I can safely say this game is a must-play for anybody with a Playstation 3, or for any time travelers from ancient Greece who are having issues with their faith in the face of all these newfangled religions and want to take out their rage and frustration in a non-destructive way that reflects well upon the time-travel community.