It's one of the most thrilling openings in all of video games. As warrior-turned-deity-killer Kratos, you climb the Titan Gaia, who functions as a colossal, moving level upon which you battle Poseidon, the god of the sea. Gaia herself is one of Kratos' few remaining allies; her cries of pain pierce the air as you swing your chained blades, launching ghoulish soldiers into the air and slicing away at Poseidon and his many-legged steed. It is all sound and fury, almost unparalleled in its sense of scale and its translation of a protagonist's anger into bloody, brutal interactions. When Kratos strikes his final blow, you see it not from his perspective, but from his victim's point of view, in the first person. It's a striking and vicious design choice that sets the tone for the game to follow. You are no longer conquering the Greek gods as an enraged antihero, but as a full-on villain.

The question, then, is this: How could Definitely not God of War III's biggest boss. Still big, though.

This isn't the first time you use a corpse in such a way in the God of War series, but it's more striking in God of War III because Kratos has no shred of mercy remaining within him--not at this stage. Previous games allowed Kratos his humanity, Chains of Olympus' Elysium Fields sequence being an excellent example. While Kratos has never been a hero in the usual sense of the term, we have seen the source of his torment, and watched Athena refuse to set him free from his nightmares. Here, Kratos is a one-note killing machine, and we are left only with what we know from previous games to provide context. The smidgen of mercy Kratos shows towards a daughter figure in the final hours, and the accompanying message of hope, is not earned given how little development the character shows in God of War III up to that point--and reminds us that for Kratos, women are whores, wives, daughters, or paperweights. Full-on cruelty was always in the cards, but it makes Kratos difficult to root for, particularly if this is your first God of War experience.

Then again, this is not a series known for its sophisticated storytelling. Kratos is the vessel for an instinctive kind of gameplay that is rarely this successful. Your rewards for following God of War III's linear trail are genre-defining combat, excellent pacing, and the innate joy of watching enemies spew forth clusters of glowing red orbs when they fall. It's the ever-compelling quest for shinies, accomplished by slamming your cestus into the ground, then gutting a centaur and watching its viscera spill onto the floor. Your reward is more power, which you use to earn more shinies and to see more entrails. That the game finds so many ways to stay consistently fresh within this traditional structure is a feat worthy of the gods.