Centaurs? Disemboweled. Gorgons? Manually beheaded. Cyclops? Blinded. Poseidon, Ares, Hades, Helios, and pretty much every other god in the pantheon of Greek mythology? Eviscerated, maimed, or otherwise gruesomely killed by God of War bad boy Kratos.
So when developer Ready at Dawn showed off the upcoming God of War: Ghost of Sparta at E3, their second God of War game for the PSP and the fifth in the series, my first thought wasn't about new moves, new locations, or how in the world Ready at Dawn managed to make a PSP game look significantly better than their last PSP title, Chains of Olympus.
What I really wanted to know was simple: Is there anything left in Greek mythology for Kratos to kill?
If the E3 demo is any indication, that answer is, "Hell, yes." Here are three new creatures in Ghost of Sparta for Kratos to cross off his must-kill Bucket List.
Scylla
The poet Homer described Scylla as a nasty sea creature with twelve feet and six heads, each head brimming with three rows of sharpened teeth. She lived near a narrow straight and sunk any ship that sailed too close.
The Scylla in Ghost of Sparta sports one (very ugly) head, along with multiple arms and six tentacles that extend from her torso. She towers over Kratos, who must battle each tentacle before he's able to take a crack at bringing down the whole beast.
In mythology, Scylla was always mentioned in tandem with her pal Charybdis. Since we haven't seen Charybdis in a God of War game, I wouldn't be surprised if Kratos spilled some of her blood in the game, too.
Garron
In the midst of his multi-stage battle with Scylla, Kratos runs into Garron, a giant with four arms holding up a globe charged with electricity. You'd think that holding a huge electrified globe would make for slow movement, but Garron compensates for that by teleporting from one side of the arena to the other.
That doesn't stop Kratos from killing him, however. Scratch another creature off the Bucket List.
King Midas
Granted, King Midas isn't exactly a creature, but he can turn anything he touches into gold, so he's not your run-of-the-mill king, either. In Ghost of Sparta, Kratos encounters a weakened Midas inside a cave. Kratos, in typical Kratos fashion, smashes Midas' face into the ground and carries the unconscious king toward a pit of lava.
At that moment, a pack of demonic dogs launches an attack. Kratos must dump the body and fight off the beasts, taking a breather every few moments to bash the head of Midas, keeping him knocked out and unable to transform Kratos into the Gold Nugget of Sparta.
The beasts dispatched, Kratos drags the struggling king closer and closer to the edge of the pit, tossing him into it with style. One more name gets crossed off the list. Who's next?
