God Of War 3 Demo Impressions

So, after our recent poll we found that most of the readers most anticipated game is in fact God of War 3 due out this coming March. So with that being said, I figured I should write a little something about it to spur some interest.  This past week I was able to download an almost 3 gig demo of, you guessed it God of War 3. Now if your any kind of a God of War fan you already know this and maybe haven’t got your hands on the demo yet. Well I will go ahead and give anyone unable to play it, my personal experience. Having played the God of War series on the Playstation 2, I found, like so many that the games are one of the top premium of the Playstation brand. A fantastic story, game play of epic proportions and overall an enjoyable experience. Although I will say that sometimes I felt that the game was striving for more. Now hang on a sec, I am not putting it down let me finish. The grand scale of the battles is truly a sight to behold, if you have played them you know what I am talking about, if not go buy the collection releasing in about a week and enjoy the sheer scale of the boss battles in God of War. I digress, I felt at times that the team over at Santa Monica had so much in mind that they may have been sightly held back in being able to truly create the desired effects and sequences. Not to say these sequences are bad in any way, I just have always thought to myself, if they had more what could they pull off , twice as much going in the background? Taking boss battles to an even more dynamic level? So queue God of War 3. The main menu gives the impression that Kratos has seen and incredible update( I believe I heard in an interview that Kratos’s polygon count could not fit on the ps2!) and polish worthy of his vengeance. The demo, spanning about 10-15 minutes is a god send for anyone that is looking forward to seeing Kratos tear through the heavens in glorious High Definition. First off, for still being in the developmental stages the demo is polished to a point of final code (probably because they wanted to showcase what the game is going to be capable of). The graphics are clean with impressive texture quality and most of all use of dynamic lighting. The emanating glow of Kratos’s blades, reflect off almost everything from enemies shields, to the murky root protruding cliffs. Game play is what we all have loved from the previous titles, brutal, relentless, and satisfying. Although now, the combat feels more alive and dynamic, adding abilities such as the use of an enemy as a shield to batter your way through hordes of undead armies. Even more the fact is that several more enemies will be attacking you at once than on previous titles creating a tad bit more difficulty to which you must remember that you can indeed die, so the use of the block button is required more often at least in my experience. The take down sequences are a sight to see, which they have been in the past, but now the details are so far defined that a new level of satisfaction is born when you slice your way up the behemoth cyclops and grab his single eye with your bar hands. I am really trying not to give to much away here in, simply because you must experience the sheer brutallity yourself. The basic foundation that the series was built on is being fleshed out with bigger boss fights, more dynamic moving backgrounds and creating a more living breathing world, hell the camera in many instances creeps its way down behind Kratos as he wanders the dark corridors creating cinematic experience we all expect with this generation. Overall if this demo is any indication of the capabilities that the team at Santa Monica Studios has, us gamers are in for a really big treat come this march. And my predictions of an epic and even more cinematic experience is definitely on its way.

So my demo impressions have got you even more excited for the game? I am sure you wish you could get your hands on experience with the demo? Well your in luck! I have an unused demo code up for grabs for any of our readers that are unable to get their hands on a demo code. How to get it? Well all you need to do is come up with a funny caption for the screen shot below and send it to me at ryang@chooseadifficulty.com with a title of God of  War caption contest . I will be running the contest for two days and once all entires are in we will take a look and choose the best one. Once chosen I will update the post and send an email containing the code to the winner, so be sure to be checking back to see if you won. Good Luck!

Congratulations to Josh for the winning entry:

“Damnit, Helios, I paid good money for that giant nude painting of Rosie O’Donnell!!
NOW LOOK AT IT’S WONDER! LOOOOOOK!!”

After all caption considered we came to the conclusion that this was the best of all. Stay tuned for additional contests in the future.