God of War comes back to consoles with its most tepid launch in the franchise. A return to consoles returns the grand scale that's been sort of missing in the two portable version.

Unfortunately, some of the new things Ascension tries to do with scale and presentation don't work all too well in execution. The game plays around with the camera a bit, shifting some of the set pieces as you play on them. You could start a battle right up near the camera, only for the object you are riding on to shift to the foreground or for the entire object to flip over.

It's an interesting idea in concept but the game fails in executing this in a satisfying and cool way. This is mostly due to the color palete of this game. Ascension, unlike God of War 3 suffers from the same issue a lot of PS3 games did of being a bland and drab color palete that's mostly filled with different versions of grey.

Because very little pops out or looks different, especially from the perspective of both Kratos and the enemies of the game, everything gets lost in the shuffle when these perspective shifts occur. I was constantly losing Kratos in a sea of enemies, having no idea where I'm aiming my attacks, if I'm taking damage, if I'm even attacking in the first place. These shifts don't last forever and do usually go back and forth but it's still frustrating to be in the middle of a combo and then thanks to a shift in the perspective, I'm no longer sure if the combo is going on still, let alone if I'm down on the ground or taking damage.

The combat in this game also is the weakest since the first game which doesn't help these shift in the perspective either. I can't quite put my finger on what's off about it, it just feels completely different. A bit stiffer, a bit slower perhaps. It's nothing that is one massive shift, a few minor changes across the board that just change everything in a negative way.

My issue with the combat also comes to a head near the end of the game. There's a final area that, because of the changes in combat, I had the worst time with. It's a three part, three level battle with no save points in between and no way of regaining health. It's a huge spike in difficulty that, with the changes in combat, make it an absolute chore to get through. Results obviously may vary but there was one point I actually thought about just dropping this game altogether instead of giving the section another chance. Rarely have I done that with a game but this one makes that very exclusive list.

It's also because the story, simply, isn't that interesting. Why stick around to see how this story ends if I don't care about it? I usually play games for the fun or for the story. If neither are good, there's no point in sticking around. My pride eventually got the better of me though and I managed to power through it, it's just unnecessary to take this shift in difficulty out of nowhere really. Especially since there's no way of changing the difficulty once you've started playing.

Since this is near the end of the game and the rest of the game is boring but rather harmless, it's not all that bad despite my varied critiques. It's still rather good looking in spite of the grey palette, the scale and scope are back to console levels, though again, not every set piece works. The game is also gorier and more brutal than ever.

If the scale and over-the-top brutality are things you enjoy about this series, this game may hit better for you than it did for me. But for me, the combat is such an integral part of this franchise and what's made it so fun, both on console and on handheld. That piece being so poor this time around, it leaves Ascension at the bottom of my list of God of War games and the toughest to recommend in the franchise up to this point.