☿ GöÐ ö£ wÄr III☿

After three years of development and three very long years of waiting, the end is finally upon us. God of War III marks the finale to Kratos' search for revenge and properly caps off a trilogy that ranks near the very top of the best action games ever list. Yes indeed, everything does come to a complete and decisive close by the end, and though it may not be the last that we've seen of the franchise, this really is the end of this tale.

Kratos looks incredible (and deadly).

One problem with past God of War titles was that despite the fact that you'd pick up a handful of other weapons along the way, in large part they weren't very useful as your blades seemed to almost always be more effective. That's been fixed this time, and all three of the other weapons you acquire are good in almost any situation. That's even more true thanks to the fact that you can now switch between them on the fly, mid-combo, allowing you to string together big sequences will all four weapons in use. One change that we first saw in the E3 2009 demo, which resulted in a bit of controversy, is that the quick-time event button prompts that come up during kill moves are now situated at the edges of the screen, allowing you to watch what's happening and use your peripheral vision to see which button to press rather than have the prompts appear over top of the action. I'm a big fan of this change as it allows you to pay attention to the action rather than waiting to see what button appears next.

Click the image to watch the latest trailer.

Another thing that I'm a big fan of this time around is that Sony Santa Monica uses the camera in a much more cinematic way throughout the game. No, you still don't have control over it as the camera is specifically placed in spots for each scene (it's still controlled for you, in other words), but there's a lot more play with it during cutscenes, including in-game kills. While you'll still see the slow pans here and there to show you where you should go next or what door you've just opened with a switch, other sequences where you don't have direct control over Kratos feature multiple camera cuts from some nice angles. It's great to see the team play with how the camera is used as I think there were some missed opportunities in the past.

The combat has been refined to near-perfection.

Click the image to watch our God of War in Five Minutes video feature.

Back to the good stuff though... this of course wouldn't be a God of War game without some intense boss battles, and God of War III largely delivers in that respect. What's really cool is that there are a handful of fights that aren't executed in standard form, where you would just need to kill them before they kill you. Sony Santa Monica played with how some of these encounters could work quite a bit, and in these cases, the sequences fit the story better than if these characters just stepped up and fought with incredible combat skills

The scale in God of War III is unmatched.

As far as the videos go, The Making of God of War III is your usual behind-the-scenes, all-encompassing clip that I found to be very enjoyable. In addition to this, there are some 15-plus other videos that dive into specific aspects, including level design, the music and visual effects. It's all really good stuff and will take you a couple hours to go through if you watch all of it. And yes, it's all in HD.