Publisher: SCEE
Developer: SCEA Santa Monica
Released: 19th March 2010
Platforms: PS3

With two excellent efforts under their togas (three if you include Ready at Dawn's slightly rusty 'Chains of Olympus'), God of War 3 was never going to be a bad game. As long as they served up a HD bucket of 'more of the same' gamers (myself included) would have been happy. And while that's exactly what they've done, this particular bucket is very shiny and the familiar steaming offal inside has been revitalised by a dash of graphical Lee & Perrins and several storyline bouquet garnis.


This. Is. Spartan.

Santa Monica Studio has the double edged sword of success to juggle. Ignore the motto 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' in order to mistakenly try to sex up an already winning formula and they'll get savaged by the world (sound familiar Monsieur Ubisoft Prince of Persia team?). On the flip side, just churn out more of the same and they'll be accused of, well, just churning out more of the same, and the review scores will suffer (Treyarch's Call of Duty installments spring to mind).

Thankfully, the God of War series has managed to walk this tightrope by spoon-feeding us raisins of the 'new' mixed up in the Garibaldi biscuit dough of the 'familiar'. With God of War 3 the story isn't new - it's a direct continuation of the narrative of GoW2, the power-ups aren't really new - you get to keep several you earned in GoW2, and the weapons are pretty damn similar to boot. What's also far from new is that despite this same-old same-old, you really couldn't give a toss because the gameplay is just as fresh as it was back in 2005.

Grecian 2010

They say 'familiarity breeds contempt', but the mix of combat, puzzles, combat, platforming and combat has been honed to such a keen edge over the previous games you could now cut Greece's budget deficit with it. Every facet of the game is carefully balanced; the combat requires skill, but not too much, the puzzles are challenging, but not too much, and the platforming is unforgiving, but not too much. In the words of the house-breaking child burglar Goldilocks, "This one is just right". 

Goldi' would also be more than happy with other aspects. The voice acting is memorable, but not over-the-top, the length of the game is long enough to preserve value-for-money, but short enough to see most people through to the end. Even the music is rocking enough to match the visceral action, but not so much that you have go out and buy a studded belt. In fact, by this measure, God of War 3 is the closest thing to the perfect game we've seen. 'Perfect' like Kelly Le Brock in 'Weird Science' kind of perfect - the constituent parts are all A-Grade but the whole still looks a little boss-eyed.

There's Zeus loose aboot this hoose

GoW3 has so few things wrong with it it seems almost churlish to mention them, but mention them we shall. Firstly, it 'borrows' heavily from other games - Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and Max Payne spring to mind for the Pandora escorting, Titan climbing and blood-drenched psychosis levels respectively. But each time it does so with panache and fits with the gameplay, so we'll forgive them these sins.

Second, the violent pummelling of Zeus in the closing scene was so vastly and hilariously over-the-top that all that was missing was the comedy 'clangs' and it could have been a scene from Bottom. In fact, all of the god deaths revelled in the violence too such an extent we had to wonder which teenager storyboarded those sections. How the Daily Mail didn't attack these scenes is beyond us.

Lastly, the fact the story just sort of ebbed away at the end with the 'death' of Kratos left us open mouthed with disappointment (as Monica Lewinski might say). It was full narrative steam ahead until that point, and then it went 'phut'. What happened to the world dammit?!

God of War 3 is Santa Monica Studio's 'Return of the Jedi'; it's the final part of a massively popular series,  it doesn't do anything particularly new, it benefits from the advances in technology, piggy backs on the storyline of its predecessor, but ultimately delivers the epic, heart-stopping, emotional climax fans were hoping for. Lets hope they don't fuck it up and 'do a Lucas' with some prequels.