BitSnark

Sony’s titan sized killer app got both a release window and a demonstration at the Sony conference, reminding gamers that the titular god himself Kratos still has what it takes to get the blood pumping, and indeed, spraying.

The demonstration commenced with the camera centred on Kratos, in all his HD glory surveying the landscape as a cataclysmic battle happened in the skies with flaming dragons fighting each other and generally a whole load of utter destruction in the distance. Moving smoothly, yet looking every bit like a God Of War title with the HD sheen applied (hey, it was a stunner to start with) Kratos charges toward a cabal of unfortunate undead folk, melting them with fire and throwing them off the cliff with brutal aplomb.

After using his trademark insane strength to open a massive set of stone doors, we see our favourite Greek anti-hero snatch up a giant vulture and use it to fly across a gap in a similar way to how Link would use a chicken to negotiate gaps and chasms in the Zelda titles. The difference? On the way over, Kratos is seemingly bored so he repeatedly guts said birdie with his swords a number of times until he reaches the other side of the chasm, at which point the vulture is nothing more than a pile of gore with broken wings. Nasty.

After a short rinse and repeat of bird flying and airborne mutilation respectively, Kratos leaves the cave and glides down on a pair of funky black wings to what appears to be a gargantuan arena. At the far end of the arena just past its walls, a staggeringly huge molten/meteor giant makes its appearance known; looking all shiny and detailed with lava trickling down its face and detailed cracks and fissures punctuating it’s overbearing physique.

Again, Kratos gets rushed by a patrol of people who should really know better than to screw with an angry God Of War, as we scores of foot soldiers swiftly dispatched by his twin blades in a masterfully kinetic demonstration of wheeling chains of fire and spinning blades. One thing that I did notice however, besides the fact that the frame rate didn’t hitch once, is that everything just bleeds a lot more. I mean, a LOT more, as each death brings with it scattered pools of blood and real time splatterings of the red stuff everywhere.

Moving on, a centaur turns up with about twenty more guys thinking that they have a ghost of a chance, which of course they don’t, as in Matrix Reloaded style, we see them all attempt to smother Kratos only to literally get blown away and scattered to the winds as a result. Obviously sick of said centaur sticking his hooves in where they don’t belong, Kratos turns his sadistic attention to the centaur whom in a matter of seconds is lassoed to the ground with a rope of amber fire and then shortly disembowelled, spilling the contents of whatever he ate previous to his now regrettable meeting with Kratos all over the floor. Again, nasty.

Next in line for a good bit of mutilation at the hands of Kratos is a chimera styled creature that is some kind of screwed up combination of a snake, lion and goat. Interestingly here, when Kratos beats the creature down and initiates a QTE sequence (yep, they’re still there) to destroy a particular part of the creature, say the snake part for example, the creature will revert to whatever forms it has left to attack Kratos, and this was shown by Kratos destroying the serpent part, only be to pounced by the lion part shortly after. Pretty cool indeed.

After destroying all the forms and dispatching the confused creature with a particularly nasty optical lobotomy, Kratos proceeds to turn his attention to the pissed off molten giant stomping around in the background and…. that’s a wrap!

Yep that’s where they finished it the teasing gits. At this stage God Of War III looks every bit like the worthy title to finish(?) the series; boasting a solid, smooth framerate, detailed monsters and environments and the gore factor ramped up to eleven, I cannot imagine this disappointing *any* PS3 owner when it finally sees the light of day in March 2010.