God of War III - The Big Chain

To begin, I'm going to mention some of the control scheme changes that occurred between God of War II and God of War III. In the last two games the d-pad selected what magic Kratos would use. It was then activated by pressing the L2 button. Pretty straight forward. God of War III mixes things up a bit. The d-pad actually selects the weapon that Kratos is using. Each weapon appears to have a special attack attached to it. When Kratos uses the Blades of Exile you press R2 and a small group of Spartans appear with their shields blocking every which direction and then they stab with their spears. It's a good group clearing move, even if it does look like a giant bug with spikes poking out. The weapon Kratos got from Hades, the Claws of Hades, has a special attack where a soul is summoned. It's a neat maneuver for the fact that you can choose what soul is summoned and you can earn more souls to use with the attack. Gotta catch 'em all!

There are still special abilities that occur by pressing the L2 button, but the abilities themselves are mapped to the face buttons. So if I want to use the Bow of Apollo I just press L2 and then I press the Square button. Helios' head is L2 plus the Triangle button. This actually makes things easier and gives more options for attack variety. I really have to applaud the dev team for this, it really opens things up. I'm not a fan of the UI however. I find reading Kratos' health/magic bars to be hard. When Kratos loses health it just doesn't really look like it so I get confused if I need to open a health chest of not and by now I know not to open a chest if I don't have to since I'll probably be back through the area at some point..

Now back to my actual play session. Last we left off Kratos had just ripped off Helios' head. This leads to a session of dark tunnels where the head is necessary to light the way. I should mention that Helios' head also reveals hidden locations. These are fairly simple to find as long as you look for the God Dust that is floating around the location. The dark tunnels are simple, there's not many enemies running around so you should never actually have to fight blind. Your weapons can also light up the area some.

At the end of the tunnels is the little blue flame girl (probably Pandora). She still wants Kratos' help and she says that she "trusts him"? Is this girl stupid? Kratos seems to think so, he's at least smart enough to tell her she shouldn't trust him.

Then comes the BIG CHAIN. It's actually called the Chain of Balance and it's actually a flying sequence. Kratos uses the Icarus Wings to fly up this truly MASSIVE chain. It requires Kratos to dodge and maneuver his way around. There's falling debris, walls are in the way and MY CONTROLS ARE INVERTED?! I am not playing a flying game, don't screw with my controls! Thankfully the controls can be changed in the option menu. At the end of the flying sequence there are these giant boxes and Kratos gets to ride on them as they move. The second set of boxes is more fun than the first. Enemies actually spawn on the second set and when Minotaurs spawn they'll try to break the chain holding the box.

At the end of the boxes is an encounter with Hermes, just a conversation I'm afraid, not a battle. Hermes taunts Kratos just like you would expect from someone with a lot of speed. Speedy people like to insult their opponents. I'm sure Kratos will slow him down soon enough and a fight will happen, eventually. But first Kratos needs to climb this really long chain. And it's a a long climb, so long that the screen actually blacks out twice to give the impression that time has passed. I think this chain is actually longer then the circumference of the Earth!

When Kratos reaches the top he finds the Flame of Olympus. Well that wasn't to hard too find. Inside the Flame is Pandora's Box Athena appears and retcon occurs! Athena explains that when Kratos used the box he only tapped a small portion of the power that is in there. The box contains all of the evils that were created when the God defeated the Titans in the Great War (which never actually happened since Kratos zapped all of the Titans to the present). Apparently the child Pandora can get the box out of the Flame so Kratos can use it to defeat Zeus. Also the box was named after Pandora, so that makes Pandora over 1,000 years old and she's still a child. I saved at this point.

Next time: Kratos probably needs to find Pandora and hopefully kill Hermes.