The God of War franchise is undoubtedly one of the most precious and most important series to ever affect the Playstation family. We’ve seen the first two games come up on the PS2, and a prequel on the PSP. Needless to say, gamers rejoiced everywhere when God of War 3 was first announced for the PS3 at E3 a while back, but how does it play compared to its successful predecessors?

If you’re one of the lucky people to get a demo code via email, then the first thing you will notice is the enormous size of the demo. Coming in at just over 2000 Megabytes, it goes without saying that despite being a short segment of a game, it still packs in a whole lot of content.

After getting past the Santa Monica/ Sony Entertainment/ Rating Pending screens, you’ll arrive at a loading screen. Some people may find resemblance to the revolving omega logo found at the bottom right to the Uncharted games.

Past the loading screen, we come to a menu reminiscent of previous GOW titles. A selection of ’Play Demo’ and ’Options’, with a half-shot of Kratos’s head in full high definition glory. From this screen alone you can already see the amount of detail on Kratos, the scar on his right eye, the deeply textured skin and the dramatic lighting.
Once you press start, the game seamlessly transitions to the actual gameplay. The camera pans out from Kratos’s face, revealing his Herculean physique. Helios flies overhead in a blazing chariot as Kratos looks on. Suddenly, a group of soldiers slaughter civilians heading towards you.

Here you are taught the basic attack mapping. Nothing has changed - Square is still a light attack, triangle a heavy attack, and circle grabs the enemy. However an interesting spin on the grab is that once you have the enemy in a grab, the next face button you press determines a different outcome. In other words, grabbing an enemy and pressing ’x’ throws him, pressing triangle rips him in half, tapping circle pummels him to death, and square uses him as a battering ram.

While tearing the squad into shreds, you’ll notice a few visual beauties. The light emitted from Kratos’s blade is a lot brighter, giving off this glorified violence feeling. Blood has always played an important role in the game, since the God of War doesn’t earn his title from arranging flowers. Kratos literally paints the entire world red. Though it looks a lot shinier and a lot slimier, it still looks gruesome in some sequences.

Once the soldiers are taken care of, we continue walking along the cobblestone, corpse-littered path. Looking to the left, we see the entire city and the crimson sky. The draw distance is simply massive. The music also begins to take a dramatic turn at this point, where the foreboding drums match the overall tone of chaos and destruction.
At the end of the path, we see more soldiers slaughtering more civilians. Now you are taught special attacks. A combination of L1 and the face buttons has you hurling enemies into the sky. With the newly taught special attacks, it only takes a matter of seconds to take on the team of 7 or so soldiers. We also come across our first health chest. Holding down R1 opens the chest and the green glowing orbs (another example of the excellent lighting to be found in the game) regenerate your health. After the short exercise, we come across a massive gate seven times the height of Kratos with soldier statues framing the doors. Kratos pushes the gates down with ease (he is the God of War after all).

Through the gates we come across a dark cave. Here he game shows off some more of its dynamic lighting through the fires that trace the path. The camera closes up to Kratos as he walks. Depth of view is also shown off when Kratos spots a harpy munching on an unlucky soldier. The harpy suddenly sees you and flies to the other edge of a divide. In this part we are introduced to a new mechanic in the GOW combat: The bow and arrow. A few button presses has you firing a shot at the harpy. Once the harpy gets hit, she flies over you. Another gameplay mechanic is introduced: Harpy Rides. Holding the L1 bumper and tapping circle jabs your blades into the beast, and repeatedly stabs her in order to control her. After moving around and reaching the end of the divide, pressing jump doesn’t just jump off the harpy; Kratos literally rips her wings apart before he even touches the ground.