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This still really doesn't do justice to how good the game looks.
This still really doesn't do justice to how good the game looks.This still really doesn't do justice to how good the game looks.

Urban legend states that bald men are more virile than their more follically-gifted brethren. I don't know if that's true, but in the world of video games they certainly tend to be violent types. There's Agent 47, the genetically-engineered star of the Hitman games; there's Nod, the genocidal villain of Command and Conquer; and there's Kratos - arguably the most psychotically-unhinged of all shiny-headed killers. At a stretch, you can imagine that Kane and Mr 47 might like to kick back with a cold beer from time to time. If you asked Kratos, he'd probably break the bottle over your face. And then pull your skull out. And then set out to kill your mum.

Violence is what Kratos does best, and in God of War 3 our chrome-domed antihero gets to do it with a brand new lick of paint - red paint, clearly. It's fair to say that unless Sony is holding back some pretty big revelations (and hey, nothing's impossible) then this will essentially be the same slash-em-to-bits action we enjoyed in Gods 1 and 2, but trust me when I say that this game is looking seriously slick. In terms of what Kratos actually does - pulling off heads, cutting people open - it's largely familiar fare, and yet the added level of detail makes an enormous difference. When Kratos finishes off an angry centaur he's battling, he winds up slicing the poor chap along his horsey belly - at which point a whole spread of guts come spilling out of the slit. It's absolutely wrank, but extremely cool at the same time. As I’ve said before, God of War 3 was easily the bloodiest game I saw at E3 this year - but there's more too it than that. The violence is so vivid, and the presentation so confidently grand, that it makes the game feel like something bold and edgy - even if it's not really pushing things forward.

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And then there are the Titans. If GoW3 has a genuine claim to innovation, it'll probably lie with these guys - giant, um, giants that completely dominate the scene every time they show up. We've only seen the volcanic features of Perses so far, but he's damn impressive-looking - and if the hype is to be believed then he's one of the small ones. Mr Perses took a large role in Sony's E3 demo, during which the rocky giant and Kratos teamed up to take down the sun god Helios. If you remember, God of War II ended with Kratos promising to lead the Titans against the Olympic gods in a battle to claim the life of Zeus, King of the Gods. This no small task, even for a Spartan like Kratos. But then again, this is no small game.

As you may have worked out, the E3 demo was essentially a playable version of the sequence that Sony's been showing off for some months now. Normally that would seem like a bit of a shame, but when you're in the presence of a game of this calibre you're largely just happy to be playing. The 20-odd minutes of gameplay on offer were a combination of the old and the new, throwing several new toys into the established, combo-focused brawling. Foremost among these were the Cestus - a set of huge, Lion-headed gauntlets that allow Mr K to adopt a swift and punchy (geddit?) combat style, at the slight expense of range. This shortcoming is rarely much of a problem, however, since your special modifier still allows you to use chain attacks. There's a particularly tight move where you throw out the gauntlets on chains either side of you, then bring them crashing back together with a bloody crash - perfect for when you're surrounded by undead soldiers.

Kratos also gets a further crowd control option thanks to his new Battering Ram move. Now when you grab a standard, human-sized enemy, you'll have several options for how to dispose of them. You could just pull their head off or lob them at the nearest foe, but a better choice might be to use the Ram. Here you use your unhappy opponent as a meat-shield as you charge forward screaming at the top of your lungs. Do it right and you'll easily scatter an otherwise dangerous group of nasties - and if you're really stylish, you'll finish off by crushing your original victim against a wall or column.

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