Sony pulls out the stops for God of War III launch party (video)

Just after Sony debuted its new motion controller tonight, the Japanese company threw a big God of War III launch party. The game has been in the works for more than three years and it finally debuts on March 16. After a day full of GamesBeat@GDC panels, I made it to the party, which was bathed in neon light and featured a cool band.

In the game, you play Kratos, the fallen god of war who is out to get revenge for being killed and then reborn and then tricked into killing his wife and child. Kratos is after Zeus, and he pursues him into the Greek underworld. If this sounds a lot like Electronic Arts’ Dante’s Inferno, that’s because Dante’s Inferno basically takes its game play from the God of War series.

The party sure looked like an underworld. The game is a bloody mess and you basically swing your giant chain around to wipe out enemies and then you take on god-like creatures. It’s an over-the-top violent game that will likely be a huge bestseller on Sony’s platform. You basically whack, whack, whack at the hapless creatures and then fight a gigantic god. Rinse and repeat. Check out the video below, which includes a belly dancer who seems to be pulled out of Greek mythology. (Yeah, doesn’t quite make sense, but this is Sony and it has to have some scantily clad dancers).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhENWwT_Se0&w=425&h=344]

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.