It was nothing compared to what Kratos did to Helios, however. Jumping down from the Cyclops and grabbing Helios' head, he began tugging and twisting his head, and though the Sun God tried valiantly to fight back, the second pull completely tore his head off his shoulders. The detail here was, frankly, cringe-inducing. We actually saw Helios' skin begin to tear moments before it was separated from the rest of his body. Locked in an eternal scream, the head was then used to "paint" a nearby wall with the light pouring from his eyes and mouth to reveal the door.

Striding through the door into the inky black cavern beyond, we finally got a sense that Sony was starting to throw some effects around. Rocks were slippery looking, craggy and hewn from Olympus' innards. When enemies approached, they were blinded by the light and would actually glow for a time, allowing Kratos to dispatch them without plunging things back into darkness. A few enemies dispatched, the Spartan ran up to what looked like a steaming vent, a massive chain rising from the depths below. This was to be the final demonstration Sony would show off: Icarus Ascension.

Donning the Icarus Wings, Kratos started riding the air stream straight up, and had to bob and weave around falling objects, around the criss-crossing beams and bits of support and through a don't-hesitate-or-you're-dead series of small holes in plates otherwise blocking off the tunnel. It felt, to our little geeky eyes, a bit like the Millennium Falcon Death Star escape scene from Jedi, but it also served to get Kratos from Point A to Point B while actually doing something -- precisely what the Pegasus segments in God of War II did.

It would be easy -- and even understandable -- to simply see God of War III as God of War II but prettier, bumped up to HD resolutions and with the normal increase in detail for the characters that one would expect from a jump from the PS2 to PS3. On a very basic level, God of War III seems to be delivering just that, but we were definitely hoping to see more. More scale, more conflict (Sony mentioned trying to combine the beach assault of D-Day with the lumbering monster in Cloverfield), more of a sense that this was really pushing the PS3 to its limits. While we're satisfied (for now; we really just want to play the damn game already), we're equally as eager to see what E3 will bring.

In the mean time, however, we have plenty to digest. Few games can deliver the same kind of raw, visceral violence and intricate level-wide puzzles that the God of War franchise offers with each iteration. The advancements to the combo really do make the game feel like it'll be a playground for players, allowing them to beat on a crowd with the Cestus, uppercut one of them into the air, use the Blades to pull Kratos up to meet and then shred that enemy, lash out and pull himself back down into the crowd, it with a massive impact with the Cestus, grab a remaining enemy and turn him into a battering ram to slam away any other remaining enemies and finally finish the ram off by crushing his head against a wall.

If nothing else, the game seems poised to amp up the level of gore the series hasn't yet seen, and we guarantee the first time you see one of the game's finishing moves, delivered with the kind of animation detail and smoothness that SCE's Santa Monica Studios have come to be known for, you'll react exactly the same way we did: "Holy. Shit."