There had to be a moment when Santa Monica Studios was developing God of War III when they they realized something. Steve the Intern was all like, “This game is the best! It’s three hours of insanity!” All of a sudden they all realized something; their game was amazing, but it was only four hours. And so they freaked the fuck out, and they started shoe-horning shit loads of mundanity into the title. You go from such a mind-boggling opening confrontation with Poseidon to running around boring ass levels pushing blocks and fighting the same eighteen enemies over and over and over again. Interspersed within this tediousness are epic confrontations that justify your toiling in such bullshit banality. The battles with Cronos, Hercules, and ultimately Zeus make up with the blaise you encounter for several hours at a time. And so while God of War 3 is one of the most tonally uneven games I’ve played in years, I can’t help but recommend it to anyone looking for a genuine killer app. Just take it with a grain of salt.

God of War III is like an amazing sexual experience, interspersed with mediocre moments. That’s the best and only way I can describe it, because I am a juvenile asshole. There comes a time, probably right now in my twenty-seventh year, when I realize I’m not going to grow up, and to just prattle on with the ridiculous sexual conceits.

This game opens up like a blazing little batch of oral fundom. And you’re like, OH FUCK, this is going down. However, right about the time Kratos has milked you, he then throws you into the missionary position for a few hours. And you’re laying there, much like I imagine anyone who has the misfortune of copulating with me, looking very, very bored. It isn’t all bad however, since there are some crazy positions he then throws you into you, and you’re like oh fuck, maybe he was just saving his energy. And you’re totally digging it. But then all of a sudden, he’s like ZEUS, PUZZLES AND SHIT, and you’re again laying on your back. And right when you think you’re so fucking bored, he blows you away with this insane swerving-hips-pelvis-thing and you’re throwing fluids everywhere. His finishes so well, you almost forget how mundane some of the shit was in there.

Almost.

I’ve tried to figure out if I found the tediousness of moments in the game the result of shitty gameplay or if the bar was raised so far in the more special moments that anything following them was going to be disappointing. And the answer I’ve come up with, is typical for Ian the moderate, which is to say it is the word “Yes.”

There’s no doubt that the highwater marks for the game make anything following them dull as fuck. There’s simply no way to top the set pieces they built the game around. It’s not something uncommon to God of War III. Even Uncharted 2, which is the most killer of fucking apps this generation, suffered from this problem. There’s simply no way to compete with the absurd moments in the game. Running around and shooting Sasquatch-type motherfuckers is going to pale in comparison to ridiculous battles in a collapsing apartment complexes.

The problem with God of War III though?

The gameplay that they used as the medium to get you from set-piece to set-piece is much, much, much, much more boring to me than Uncharted 2’s.

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Here’s the thing about God of War III. As redundant as the generic gameplay can be sometimes, it always beats pushing around fucking blocks. I don’t know why they’re shoehorned into the game, but I fucking hate solving puzzles while I’m the god damn God of War. Most of the time my thought process is: I’m the fucking God of War, can’t I just punch through this door? Can’t I just fly up to the top of the ceiling? What the fuck is this bullshit?

Now don’t get me wrong, I like puzzles in games. Most of the time. But they feel so ill-fitting within the confines of our little Kratos experience. Not only do I find it implausible that Kratos wouldn’t just punch through someone’s skull as soon as push around and align crates, but they kill the pacing of the game.

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God damn, they weren’t kidding. The first thirty minutes of God of War III are fucking insane. I can’t describe the scope of what’s going on. You’re running around on motherfucking Gaia, throwing down with Poseidon. Blood and thunder! Whipping around climbing Gaia, fighting the Lord of the Seas. It’s not so much the graphics, though they’re pretty spectacular. It’s the amount of shit going down on the screen. Epic clash? Hells to the yeah, fools.

The climax of the opening sequence is fucking absurd, yo. Kratos rips Posey out of the guts of some water manifestation of his might, and really just lays down an ass-whupping fit for the God of War. Props to whoever came up with the idea to convey the ass-kicking from the perspective of Poseidon. There’s a point at the end where you’re viewing Kratos through the eyes of Poseidon gouging his eyes out. As Kratos’ thumbs close-in on the dude, you can’t help but feel it some extent. It’s such a visceral idea, that I have to tip my cap to the boys at Santa Monica.

It seems as though this shit is legit. I have a suspicion that this game like all the other God of War titles prior, as well as the Uncharted games, is going to rip its hugest load far before the end of the game. How do you open a game up with such pomp and circumstance, without having a let down by the finale? I’m not sure it is possible.

So far though? Kratos is fucking deities’ eye-sockets with his fingers, to their doom.

Kratos is coming, and he’s fucking pissed. Still. He tried therapy once, but ended up just gouging the dude’s eye out and stamping it into mush. Wait, I think that was actually the thirteen-thousand cyclops he has run through in his travels. Either way.

I rocked out to the God of War III demo back in November and threw it aside with a resounding MEH! The graphics weren’t the second coming I was promised, and the gameplay was the same button-mashing, air-juggling bullshit that I had romped through in the first two games. Mind you, these were games I had enjoyed, but had already gotten my fill of.

Now though?

Now I’m fucking amplified, bro! How can I have a change of heart? Well, there’s a few reasons.

On a superficial level, apparently I wasn’t alone in thinking the graphics were less than mind-fucking in the demo. And better yet these emo complaints were addressed. For the actual game looks far more pimpin’ than the demo. There’s all sorts of complicated terms like Light Density Shadowing and Renderistic Manipulation of Polygonal Testicles and shit going on to explain why they look nicer. I don’t really care why, I’m just happy they do. I’m a superficial douchebag, okay? I got my HDTV, I got my 5.1 system, and I want a bass line so fiercely cranked through my subwoofer I void my bowls into my underpants willingly.

And secondly, let’s be honest. The God of War franchise has never been fantastic because of its base gameplay. The running around and smashing useless enemies thing never blew your pants off. Instead, what got your juices flowing all over your inner thighs were the action sequences. Whether it was fucking up the Hydra in the original game, or uh, doing something in the sequel, the games’ awesomeness were derived from the set pieces. The gameplay inbetween these sequences really don’t serve any purpose for me other than to guide me from one epic confrontation to the next.

Ain’t none of that found in the demo. Ain’t none. So while I was initially disappointed, I did some soul searching. And I came to the conclusion that while I found the regular gameplay highly repetitious, I always had. Realizing this in my heart of hearts, I came to the conclusion that there would certainly be the sort of sequences in the game that had blown me away in the previous two. I had to chill out, man. I had to relax.

This has all been confirmed by people who have gotten to play the game already. What a bag of dicks, those lucky ones. The general consensus is that the game is insane, and the first level will force-fuck your awesome gland until it’s flinging fluids everywhere. All the reviews gleam, I already informed FFXIII we were going to take a quick break, and I’m ready to rock at midnight.