Rate Your Vengeance! God of War III Reviews are in.

The game may not have dropped yet (although you can get some serious hands-on time if you happen to be in the San Francisco area) but the reviews are everywhere. God of War III can now be considered a hit amongst gaming critics. A stop at any one of you favorite gaming sites will likely find you at a review for the game, but you're already here, right? 1up.com, IGN and Europe-based CVG all have fairly level-headed reviews that, in general, seem to agree: God of War III is awesome. Fun side note, if you have a certain amount of time you need/want to fill by reading the review, CVG has the shortest review, followed by 1up and IGN definitely has the longest.

Note that I said "in general" they seem to agree. IGN still seems to prefer GoW II, with the other two sites granting slight favor to the most recent entry. In regards to the graphics, while they all seem to agree that God of War III is absolutely, drop-dead gorgeous at times, both IGN and CVG claim that the game can range from that to pretty good. 1up, on the other hand said "the visuals almost make it worth playing on their own." The same can be said for the story with regards to how well and coherent it is as well as how it compares to the previous entries in the series. Although from the sounds of it, the ending seems to be quite the dividing factor.

The best part of all these divided opinions, though, is that they are a great excuse to play the game and see for yourself. So...you know...get on that.

"Wand" Afterall?

While the Playstation Motion Controller has yet to receive an official name, it looks like the unnofficial "Arc" moniker may have just been thrown out.

According to a story at CVG, a Microsoft-held patent on the name Arc for PC accessories has killed any possibility of that becoming the name for Sony's forthcoming controller. Although, with the controller still having no official name and Arc being more of a codename for developers, the likelihood of this becoming a real issue is about the same as Kratos challenging his opponent to a dance-off. So the search for a name for the Playstation...thingy continues. Let's just hope they don't go with that other, shinier codename.

Bungie is developing for Playstation 3...maybe. Also, an interview with the team behind Halo:Reach

In a brief, but potentially important, article from our brothers across the pond at CVG, some new light may have been shed on Bungie's post-Microsoft plans.

Having severed ties with Microsoft in 2007, the rumor factories immediately started spitting out stories of new titles in development for Sony's system. With the hugely successful Halo series as well as gaming classic Marathon games, Sony fans (who may very well have been claiming that "Halo sux0rz!" mere moments before the announcement) have good reason to be excited about the possibility. So it's good news that, while Bungie hasn't confirmed any rumors of creating a new IP for Playstation 3, they haven't denied it either.

In fact, when CVG fired the question point-blank at Bungie community boss Brian Jarrard he had this to say:

"I mean, I think our whole future's kind of undefined right now and it's definitely not something we're going to be comfortable getting into too much detail about.
We've had another team internally [other than those making Reach] for quite a while now - they've been working on the genesis of what will become our next big thing.
It's a little premature to get into specifics, but you know I think we have a really good mix of old blood and new blood in the studio."

Let's hope that if Bungie does bring something new to the PS3 it will bring the goodness (story, characters...well most of them, frantic gameplay, even more frantic multiplayer) and the innovative (the Forge) but leave the wackness behind (poor, repetitive level design).

Speaking of Halo, if you want to check out an interview between CVG and certain members of the Halo:Reach team (creative director Marcus Lehto and the previously mentioned Brian Jarrard) you can head right over here.