Here are some points that immediately pop up to mind upon finishing the third and final chapter of the God of War franchise. Minor spoilers ahead:

- As usual, the first 10 minutes of the game will make you piss your pants in sheer glee.

- That other bit where you face off another titan? Also pretty epic in scale and action.

- Clancy Brown and Rip Thorn are awesome. Both actors bring much viciousness and character to their portrayals of Hades and Hephaestus respectively.

- Guess what one of your new weapons is: a purple hook-shaped variant of the Blade of Athens that shoots out souls. Way to set the creativity bar high, developers.

- The only new weapons are the cestus and Nemesis whip. The former is slightly slow but packs a heavy punch (heh) and has ground-pound attacks that come out quickly. The latter extends and twirls around if you hold down the attack button after a combo, along with its other attacks (L1+Triangle makes you do an area-of-effect attack that launches you and your enemies) and making your dodges slightly faster.

- Who knew that kicking dogs could be worked into the game as a “hilarious” puzzle? Don’t go spouting off litanies, PETA: these dogs are made out of magma and are bred to kill.

- You can’t skip cutscenes, even after viewing them the first time. For all of the game’s flash, this one little thing that belonged in the late ’90s really irks me. Still, the abundant checkpoints make up for it.

- Is it just me, or did the designers forgot to put in an epic “trilogy-ending” boss fight to top off the first 10 minutes at the end of the game? All I got for a game-ending climax was Kratos swimming in a pool of blood,s ome trippy flashback artsy thing, and a 3D perspective of a QTE input sequence. That’s pretty weak, considering that the first game made you take on a behemoth-sized Ares with sharp spider leg things on his back.

- At the end of the day, if you peel off all of the flash and into the backbone of the game’s design, the developers seem to play it safe and just copied the template of the first game and rolled with it. The first 10 minutes, the corridors, the blocks-pushing and pitfall-navigating with a time limit, the typical Greek mythos enemies with exaggerated animations (and not much else): it’s all there. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s just that gut feeling I have whenever I play it for the first time. I feel that the developers could have taken more chances to close the trilogy.

- That said, it’s rather odd that a game that’s a third of a trilogy is better catered for people new to the action game series. The tutorials pop up without being in-your-face about it, the controls and dodging are flexible and responsive, and the pacing is great enough even if you’re not familiar with part 1 and 2. It will feel fresh for new players, but veterans like me will feel that slight contempt-breeding familiarity, only that it comes with a prettier paint job.

Don’t let that bit of cynicism throw you off from buying this game. For all of its few faults borderlining on nit-picking, THIS is a great reason to get a PS3 if you haven’t got one.