God of War III

I'm late to this party, but that's okay! Right? Keith and Sween both posted about this game five years ago and I've also made posts on four other games in the series since then. There really isn't a ton left for me to say here, so let's just check out a list of every notable god, demi-god, or titan Kratos ends up killing in this series.

God of War: Chains of Olympus

Charon, the ferryman of Hades

Persephone, Queen of the Underworld

God of War

Ares, the original God of War

God of War: Ghost of Sparta

Erinyes, daughter of Thanatos

Thanatos, God of Death

God of War II

Prometheus, former Titan who gave the humans fire

Thesius, King of Athens

Perseus, killer of Medusa

Icarus, son of Daedalus

The Sisters of Fate: Lakhesis, Atropos, and Clotho

Athena, Goddess of wisdom

God of War III

Poseidon, God of the Sea

Hades, God of the Underworld

Perses, Titan God of Destruction

Helios, God of the Sun

Hermes, son of Zeus

Hercules, son of Zeus

Cronos, Titan God of Time, father of Zeus

Hephaestus, God of Metallurgy and Volcanoes

Hera, Goddess of Marriage, wife of Zeus

Gaia, Titan Goddess of the Earth

Zeus, leader of the gods

Kratos, the new God of War

Yes, that's more or less everyone. I'm not even sure what a God of War IV would look like - and not only because Kratos ends this game by running a sword through himself. Hey, I like it - the first game used restrained storytelling. Kratos was hellbent on killing Ares, and that's exactly what he did. Looking back on my post for God of War, it's kind of funny to see how excited I was about killing things like the Hydra and Medusa. By God of War III, if you weren't killing multiple gods per hour, you were doing it wrong.

So yeah, this game was fairly conclusive. It also went all out on its gory quick time events, a real staple of the God of War series. There was a whole lot of decapitation and disembowelment. Hell, Helios's head becomes a key item you need to use in order to illuminate dark passages, and I never got over Kratos just casually pulling out a screaming severed head to use as a flashlight. The gore was one thing - this is a video game - but I truly wasn't prepared for the nudity here. Tits, tits, tits. I'm not sure there was a single adult woman in the game who wasn't bare-chested at least once. You know, come to think of it, there were naked women in earlier God of War games - maybe I was just taken aback here by the "stunning HD" aspect. There's also a sex minigame here, as there is in every God of War game. This time around, you're not nailing slave girls or your wife or anything - you're straight up getting it on with Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love. In fact, Aphrodite is probably the most high-profile Olympian to survive the events of God of War III. Instead of killing her, you just fuck her.

Alright, time for some quick closing takes - mostly nitpicks.

• The controls felt disappointingly sloppy here. I played the game on easy mode and never once died during combat. I did however die 64 times over the course of the game (yes, they track it) exclusively from jumping to my death. Half of these came when my double-jump just didn't deploy. I also got stuck in a wall once, all glitch-like, and had to restart from the last checkpoint.
• Not helping matters were the camera angles. God of War III uses a fixed camera, like all God of War games, which really screwed me up several times when it came to gauging whether or not certain jumps could be made. I understand the fixed camera angles in such a cinematic game - and they also probably cut down on production costs since they didn't have to design an entire surrounding environment - but they were a nuisance at times.
• Combat has never been a strong point for this franchise, but here more than ever before it just felt stale to me. By the twelfth time I take down a minotaur or a siren with the same quick time event button sequence, the badassery of the kill is completely lost on me and I just kind of want to mash my way through hordes of enemies.
• That's all I've got, really. I still have God of War: Ascension waiting on my shelf, but it's a prequel to the series (and a poorly received one at that) - so it seems safe to say I've seen everything this franchise has to offer. I liked it overall, but a few technical issues (from lack of polish to game-ruining save glitches) prevent it from being an all time great franchise for me. Ironically, the two PSP games were probably the best from a gameplay perspective - they were just far too slight and minor from a storytelling perspective for me to consider them my favorites of the franchise. Lots to love about all these games, really - and anyone reading this who hasn't checked them out yet would do well to do so.