God of War III

Out today is the third in the God of War series. A Playstation exclusive God of War is known for pushing the console to its limits, so appearing for the first time on the PS3 what's it done?

First off I'm looking at the demo, the retail game has made alterations in lighting and textures supposedly improving on that. This is a good thing as some of the larger textures definitely needed work.

Having played both GoW1 and 2 playing the demo was like slipping into a pair of comfortable shoes, I knew the moves and combinations and at one point racked up a healthy 197 hit streak without really thinking about it.

Lessons have been learned particularly on quick-time events. Yep developers are truly learning that having to concentrate on one small section of the screen to determine button presses means not watching the results of said actions. To that end the buttons you're supposed to press appear in the correct relative position on the screen. Circle appears on the left, Square on the right, X below and Triangle above, and L1 and R1 appear top left and right. One thing that did catch me out is they've still got button mashing, it's only the circle but that appears bottom right. With the first QTE putting everything in the correct places this left me with a "What's bottom right?" until it clicked; still annoying when they've done so well otherwise.

Graphics are silky smooth, and happily runs from close-up action to pull-out far views with no judder or screen tear, it is only a default of 720p, but that's fine and gives enough detail. Running it for the Bratii the first thing Major said was "This is HD" it just screams next-gen at you this is how all PS3 games should look and feel.

So any flaws? Well pretty much the same as for the older versions. It still likes to snatch control away from you to show you where you're supposed to be going and the fixed camera angles mean it can be difficult to get precision or sometimes to determine where you're supposed to go; narrow corridors with corners in particular mean being unable to see what's coming up and running straight into a group of enemies.

So am I heading out tomorrow to buy this? No. Not because it's not a great game and not because I don't want it. It's the fact that the HD PS3 versions of GoW1 & 2 have been released for some time in America and haven't appeared over here except as part of the £110 Ultimate God of War set. I'm not going to buy the stand-alone game until I know they're going to get their own release; and I'm not buying the Ultimate box set at that price because there's nothing in it I really want bar the games themselves.

Sorry guys but once again the Sony brand gives the short-end of the stick to Europe and that's lost you a sale.