God of War returns
Name: God of War
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Capcom
Platform: PlayStation 3, Java ME, PlayStation Portable
Genre: Action-adventure, hack and slash
Rating: Mature
Kratos is angry. That's all you need to know about the motivation of the durable protagonist of Sony's God of War series. The Spartan warrior got tricked into murdering his wife and daughter, and he's been rampaging across ancient Greece for five games now.
DIE-HARD COMBAT
God of War: Ascension (for the PlayStation 3, $59.99 [1,750 baht]) brings back the old grouch for another round of bone-crunching, head-splitting mayhem. A prequel to 2005's original God, the new adventure begins with Kratos chained to a rock and tormented by Furies. Once he escapes, he resumes his bloodthirsty campaign against the capricious Greek deities.
That means more of the brutal combat for which this franchise is known, with Kratos wielding his Blades of Chaos — twin knives attached to his arms with retractable chains. The game occasionally drops limited-use weapons, like clubs or javelins, in your path, but the Blades — which can be tipped with fire, ice, lighting or the “soul of Hades” — are usually enough to get the job done.
MONSTER KILLER
Most of the melees in Ascension begin with Kratos suddenly surrounded by swarms of low-level monsters that can be easily dispatched. Kratos is surprisingly graceful, and once you get into a rhythm of attacking, dodging and leaping, the combat is as smooth as ever.
It starts feeling creaky, though, when you get to the bombastic boss battles. These typically involve beasts many times Kratos' size, so you just have to keep hacking away until you soften them up. Then the action shifts to quick-time events, in which you have to press buttons to match onscreen prompts. This technique short-circuits your rhythm and effectively takes control away from you.
SPECIAL GIMMICKS
The carnage is occasionally interrupted by gigantic spaces in which you have to figure out how to get Kratos to the exit. Most of these puzzle rooms require a familiar formula of block pushing, switch pulling and wall climbing, although they get more interesting after Kratos has found some magic artifacts.
The story here is the series' weakest yet. Six games in, the creators have pretty much used up all the cool Greek gods — Kratos has already killed Zeus, Ares, Poseidon, Hades and a few dozen more — so we're left with third-stringers like the Scribe of Hecatonchires. And the writers don't do themselves any favours by telling the story of Ascension as a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards. The result is an incoherent mess that's probably more satisfying if you forget about the plot and just enjoy it as a series of flamboyant set pieces.
GORY GAME
The latest God of War is as gory as ever, but it suffers from a lack of humour, treating Kratos' travails and torments with an unwarranted degree of gravity.
There's the occasional glimpse of camp, like when Kratos rides a giant snake through a tunnel, but even then I wasn't sure the designers realised how ridiculous the story is. Frankly, the Spartan seems more exhausted than bloodthirsty, and it's time he rested.
By Lou Kesten
AP
Vocabulary
- protagonist (n): the main character in a play, film, book, etc.
retractable (adj): that can be moved or pulled back into the main part of something
bombastic (adj): connected with words which sound important but have little meaning, used to impress people
artifact (n): an object that is made by a person, especially something of historical or cultural interest
flamboyant (n): different, confident and exciting in a way that attracts attention
gravity (n): extreme importance and cause for worry
camp (adj): exaggerated in style, especially in a deliberately amusing way
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