If you’re as lucky as I am, and you may well be so if you’re in the EU, you may well have gotten a code from SCEE in your email inbox this weekend. This code was for a demo download of God of War 3 or, more specifically, the demo that was shown at E3 this year. I wasn’t aware that SCEE was doing this due to being away from the internet for Friday and overnight until around 11am Saturday morning, so I almost pissed myself with child-like excitement when I got home and went to download it immediately (promptly getting my internet capped by doing so). You may have already seen the E3 demonstration (if you haven’t, you should have), but the demo itself goes further than what was shown on stage.

The demo starts with a title screen, featuring a shockingly detailed Kratos looking mean and badass, and immediately goes into the game when you press X – much in the way that inFAMOUS went directly into a cutscene from pressing start at the title screen. The exceptionally detailed Kratos you see on the title screen, then, is the in-game model that you get to rip things apart with, and by ever-loving Christ the game looks good.

The PS3 is constantly setting the standard for graphics, first with Killzone 2 and now with Uncharted 2, and it looks set to continue the trend come March, when God of War 3 will be battling it’s way onto the shelves. There is little in the demo that didn’t look excellent, with only one or two very minor graphical bugs that I’m sure will be gone by the time the game releases. Kratos, as mentioned already, looks excellent, as does the environment, full of firey reds, smoke and, well, more fire-y reds. Enemies also look great, though the typical enemies are clearly a step down in detail from Kratos himself, some of the bigger enemies look every bit as impressive as he does.

Speaking of the bigger enemies, fighting these is where it gets obvious how much gorier the third installment of the game will be. A centaur you must defeat, for example, is killed by disembowelment (through a quicktime event, of course), complete with it’s intestines and everything else spilling out before the corpse disappears in typical God of War style. Another example of the gore is the defeat of a cyclops, by ripping out it’s eye, just before you rip the head off of a God. It’s very gory, with Kratos himself getting progressively more covered in the stuff as you play through. By the end of the demo it’s clear that Kratos really, really needs a shower. A manly shower, but still a shower.

The cutscenes are all done in the in-game engine on the fly, they’re all beautiful and they’re all unskippable. Unfortunately, they also point out exactly what you have to do next, just as they always have in God of War games – if there’s a ballista that you need to use, the game isn’t content with the fact that it’s shining conspicuously, it also has to pan the camera at it in a way that implies ‘you must use this, we show you because you’re an idiot and can’t figure it out yourself’.

The gameplay itself is classic God of War fare, with moves that can only be described as badass ripping into things in a way that can only be described as more badass. There are a few new things, such as the Icarus Vent, which is used for very fast traveling and plays like a carbon copy of the Wings of Ormazd power in Prince of Persia. Jumping between harpies to get across gaps seemed like it would get a little old the first time I saw a video, but actually doing it, it doesn’t take long at all and wasn’t really done too much throughout the demo, so it may not get too annoying, though we’re sure the harpies won’t appreciate it.

Overall, the demo is God of War upgraded to the current gen. It’s just as fun and mental as the series has always been, but with the violence, graphics, gore, everything turned up to 11 and put on overdrive. March 2010 can not come soon enough.

Filed under: Demos, G, Games, God of War 3, preview