What you won’t like
Nothing really happens
If you were expecting a grand, sweeping tale of betrayal and triumph, you might want to dial back your excitement. All the major plot points of God of War: Ascension could fit on a page or two of text. Kratos doesn’t really do all that much: He breaks free from his prison so he can go and kill the Furies, experiences a few flashbacks, and … that’s it.
I spent 10 hours fighting countless enemies and bosses only to have Kratos finally get over his guilt and then move on with his path of revenge (which the five other God of War games cover in exhaustive detail). On the bright side, the sheer magnitude of the levels and setpieces help offset the feeling that you’re accomplishing an otherwise insignificant task in the God of War timeline. They’re flashy for the sake of being flashy.
Frustrating exploration
One major drawback to the “bigger is better” design mantra for God of War: Ascension is the platforming. Many levels require you to climb, jump, or swing with your blades across vast chasms to get to the other side. Since the camera pans back so far to take in the large vistas, it’s somewhat difficult to see where you have to go next.
Ascension has color-coded markers to let you know what areas in the world you can interact with, such as a green glow for swinging or a flashing white light for ledges you can climb. But even with this system in place, I still went through a trial-and-error guessing game to figure out where I needed to go. Poor Kratos must have died dozens of times as I made literal leaps of faith in hope I could grab something on a nearby wall before I fell down.
It gets annoying real fast, especially in scripted places where you only have so much time before part of a path or building collapses. I felt dumb starting these over and over. What’s worst is when I finally discovered that the only reason I kept failing was because I couldn’t land on the exact spot (invisible to the naked eye) that triggers Kratos’s climbing animation.
Rough edges
For all its technical bells and whistles, Ascension can seem a little unfinished. I had two instances where it crashed on me in midbattle — once in single-player as I was casting a magic attack, and another in multiplayer during a free-for-all match. Dialogue and music would cut out for seconds at a time as I entered new areas in the single-player campaign. And at one point while I was on a ship, Kratos fell through the level and ended up in some sort of purgatory of flat textures and backgrounds; I had to restart the console before I could resume.
Conclusion
Ascension isn’t a reinvention of God of War; it’s a refinement. It plays on its strengths – exciting combat, great visuals, and huge levels — even when those strengths might overshadow some of the new things it tries to accomplish (like adding emotional depth to its lead hero). If you’re not yet sick of Kratos and his long-running war against the deities of Olympus, Ascension does a fine job of giving you yet another reason – possibly for the last time on the PS3 – to wield the Blades of Chaos.
Score: 80/100
God of War: Ascension releases March 12 for the PlayStation 3. The publisher provided GamesBeat with nonretail PS3 code of the game for the purpose of this review.