Sony has been touting the scale and scope of the game as God of War III’s biggest achievements. It’s true, the game is massive in terms of its set pieces, characters, locales, and epic sense of grandeur. Kratos’ tale of revenge begins directly where God of War II left off, atop the Titan Gaia, ascending Mount Olympus. The first twenty minutes are jaw-dropping in their sense of scale. It truly is something gamers haven’t seen before. If the boss battles of Shadow of the Colossus were a memorable high-water mark for scale on the PS2, God of War III is the quintessential benchmark of what is possible in this generation. But the size of the Titans isn’t the only thing that’s been scaled up. Some of the environments are overwhelming in their size. The camera will often pull far away, reducing Kratos to nothing but a speck amidst some of the largest set-pieces in gaming. I labor the point because the scale goes a long way in creating the long-lasting effects of God of War III. It’s an experience on-par with any Hollywood blockbuster and, in many ways, supersedes anything on the silver screen. If Heavy Rain demonstrated the power of storytelling in video games, God of War III reaffirms there will always be room for an incredible action game to satisfy a gamer’s blood-lust. While the developers certainly nailed the sense of scale, there’s another ‘s’ that seemed to fall by the wayside– story.

The story of God of War III isn’t necessarily bad, it just never feels fully fleshed out. Many will say the story should only work to facilitate the action and nothing more. While, for some gamers, that may be adequate, I often felt a lack of direction. Kratos jumps from location to location without much exposition or explanation. In the end, it became clear my sole objective was to not ask any questions and just kill whomever or whatever was in front of me. In the later stages, the developers did include some interesting twists to the inner-struggle within Kratos, but it was hard to imagine the man, as ruthless as he’d been throughout the game, could really be capable of internal duress. For those who don’t need a story on-par with Pride and Prejudice with their games, just know the basic plot will suffice: Kratos is out for revenge and will stop at nothing until he gets it.

For gamers familiar with the God of War series, the gameplay won’t comes as much of a surprise. Kratos still wields his trademark blades although he does acquire some new, actually useful weapons throughout his journey. Most notably are the Cestus, a pair of brawling metallic gloves that let Kratos pummel enemies into submission. The other weapons, though fun to tinker with during combat, felt too much like the original blades. I wish more creativity had gone into crafting different weapon types. Luckily, magic is linked to each weapon and those attacks more than make of up for the weapon selection and greatly diversify the combat. Keep in mind, the game is about ten hours long and is packed full of combat. It’s a testament to the design that it never felt stale. You’re constantly upgrading or acquiring new weapons and abilities which allows players to mix up the gameplay.

Puzzles are also back and while they’ve usually been the series’ weakest aspect, they’re actually implemented quite well here. Don’t expect anything as complex as Portal but there are a few environmental puzzles that were a welcomed refreshing break from the constant barrage of enemies. These moments break up the pace quite nicely. In fact, I often wish there’d been more of them. Otherwise, the basic gameplay is almost untouched from its PS2 counterparts. While the visuals are something only possible on this generation of hardware, it felt like a missed opportunity to see the gameplay so rooted in last-gen design. For many fans, this won’t be a problem. It’s essentially more of a great thing and I can’t argue with that. Boss battles play a much larger role than any other God of War game. Some of them are obviously better than others- many even bordering on annoying. However, a few boss encounters are absolutely awe-inspiring.

This brings me to one of my long-standing issues with the series. In every entry, the game runs along at a steady pace, only to be sporadically road-blocked by moments that seem grossly unbalanced. Whether it’s an infinite enemy spawn point from an older game or a moment in this game that suddenly throws everything it has at you. It’s a matter of personal taste whether these spikes in challenge appeal to you, but it feels unbalanced at times, especially when the series has always implemented a “switch to easy mode” option after players die repeatedly. It’s aware of these areas of unbalance and, again, while some may see the ‘easy mode’ switch as a welcomed leg-up (which, in many ways, it is) I couldn’t help but ask myself, as I died in the same room ten times- is this fun? Am I having fun? Luckily, these moments of frustration are short-lived and accompanied by a fist-pumping sense of accomplishment when you finally overcome the challenge. There was also an issue with checkpointing as I would complete a particularly difficult combat sequence only to be foiled by the game’s atrocious platforming (the timing of that double-jump is unforgiving) and then be sent back to before the fight began. Similar to a game like Uncharted 2, the problems with God of War III are minor and only noticeable amidst the backdrop of excellence seen throughout the rest of the game.

God of War III doesn’t set out to reinvent videogames in terms of storytelling but it manages to innovate in terms of visual design and an overall sense of scale unseen in any medium. This is a fitting end to Kratos’ tale of revenge. Looking back at some of the moments in the game it’s still hard to imagine how much time it must have taken to create these worlds. It’s not as if the opening sequence is the biggest or even the best sequence of the game, it’s merely the tip of a massive iceberg. God of War III follows the mantra of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” as the gameplay is very reminiscent of the older games but it’s hard to be upset when it feels (and looks) this good.