Kratos is out for blood... again.
The God of war series (for me) has been an interesting one. On one hand I absolutely love the first one from top to bottom. But I found the second one a little cluttered, with too many mindless box/switch puzzles. So where does the first one lie? well, let me first say that I really hoped that the final installment ( as far as I know) of the Gow trilogy, would recapture the amazing pacing and balance of the original. And GoW III does just that, to a certain extent. My absolute favorite thing about GoW is the combat an all the crazy and disgusting ways you can kill dudes. This time around Kratos has more weapons and more rage then ever before. So on a purely visceral level, GoW III is a sucess. However, the game seems to have trouble finding it's way during the middle of the story and resorts to the GoW II way of thinking. Which means puzzles, and lots of them. Now I'm not against puzzles in an action game, in fact if done properly, puzzles can be a great way to mix things up. But this game ( much like the second one) forces you to do one puzzle after another with very little combat in between.
The game also has a few technical issues, including a nasty audio bug that causes diolouge to repeat over and over.
Aside from some odd animations and the fact that Kratos is clearly the best looking thing in this game, the graphics are actually really great. The one thing I can always count on in a GoW game is scale, and this game is the best game in the series in terms of the overall size of well, everything.
The story is also pretty good, though it doesn't pick up until the end and the ending itself is fitting, though maybe not what most people would want from these games. I however, liked the ending.
So overall I think GoW III is what GoW fans want, a gory, epic and mindless. Though I couldn't help but think of ways this game could have been even better. And that's not just because of the bugs or the overall feeling of been there- done that. But instead I felt like the game could have done a little more to set itself apart from the first two.
