

Given how vast an upgrade II to III was, they have big shoes to fill.īeyond the look and feel of the artwork, the combat would get a complete revamp. They went at that task by looking at how they wanted the game to feel instead of just how they wanted it to look. Since Kratos will be younger, the art style would have to be adjusted. The team wanted to overhaul many of the systems that make up the mechanics of the game while still retaining the feel of God of War.

With over two years of development, the game aimed to make a similar leap in technology that we saw from God of War II to God of War III. Before we got started, director Todd Papy gave us a look at what has changed since our last outing with Kratos. Today that all changed when we got our hands on the first 30 minutes of the single player experience (see also the video below). In all, you can expect nine pleasantly exciting hours and one frustrating hour from "God of War: Ascension." The game is available now for the PlayStation 3.Up until now all of the God of War Ascension coverage has been multiplayer, multiplayer, multiplayer. In many of these challenges, Kratos would die repeatedly unless the player nailed jumps that were extremely hard to time. There were also some glitches that stopped buttons from working when fighting mid-sized enemies close-up and during a few flawed sequences where players were asked to move as fast as possible to avoid falls or being crushed to death. A fixed angle once froze with Kratos off-screen after the environment healing ability was used. In testing the game, less-than-flawless camera work sometimes hindered things. Restarting from more than one checkpoint might have solved that. Some puzzles could have used reminders about where to go next. While the majority of the game features inspired, fast-paced game play, "Ascension" could have benefited from a few more weeks of QA.
#God of war ascension info series
The effect blends two series staples, puzzle solving and larger-than-life moving environments, to impressive results. In "Ascension," Kratos is bestowed with the ability to manipulate environments by controlling the aging effects of time, breaking bridges and reassembling villages with blasts of magic. Early previews for Ascension may have focused heavily on new multiplayer offerings, but the single-player campaign still offers all of the massive set pieces and over-the-top boss battles that the God of War series is famous for. To move the series forward, Santa Monica Studios had to take the mythology back, delving into the origins of their world and the origin story of Kratos. I am happy to report that both are featured within the first five minutes of this game. Also born out of the primal gods was a creature with a hundred arms called the Hecatonchires, a shoe-in for the super-sized world of God of War. Previous titles in the series have slain an entire pantheon, from Hades to Zeus, so as "God of War: Ascension" hits shelves this week, the biggest question on everyone's mind is … who is there left for Kratos to battle?Īfter completing "God of War III" in 2010, I came to the conclusion that the only viable way to keep upping the ante in terms of scope was to introduce the primal gods like Uranus, super-massive beings that created the cosmos. In the God of War games, you play as Kratos, a Spartan soldier in ancient Greece bent on destroying each and every Greek god that gets in his way. Image credit: Sony Computer Entertainment America
