God of War III Challenge of Olympus guide

Warning: in no way attempt GOW III’s challenge rooms without the aid of this guide. Doing so will only elevate your blood pressure… and make you shout the C word loads. So do your ticker and your neighbours’ ears a favour with our fool-proof guide to nailing all seven Challenges of Olympus. We guarantee it’ll get you a gold trophy… well, provided you're not shit at games.

Above: Proof we've finished every challenge. It cost us our sanity, but it was totally worth it... probably

Population Control

Right, the objective in this first challenge room is to stop the legions of Olympian evil doers spawning. If their numbers get to 50 you’ll fail the challenge. The easiest way to win here is to simply spam the square attack with the Cestus.  Make sure you run to the edges of the arena where the enemies spawn and just keep hammering this attack. A few hefty punches from the lion gauntlets will send most baddies flying out of the arena. Simply work your way around the arena in a circular motion repeating this spamming technique and you’ll be fine… although your thumb probably won’t thank you much.

Bare Hands

This is one of the trickier rooms. The big twist here is Kratos has to kill a set number of monsters in a tight time limit without the use of his weapons. To complete this challenge, pick up the undead soliders with circle and then press square to start the battering ram technique. Now plough into the two Stone Talos – the dudes with the big-ass hammers. Just keeping picking up the smaller guys and running into the Talos and both should fall after a few hits. The best technique is to run around them in little circles while using the battering ram.

Things get trickier when a Cyclops spawns in at 50 seconds. Just keep repeating the battering ram move on him and eventually the visually-impaired bastard will go down. You can also try to barge the Talos and the Cyclops out of the arena while you’re ramming them. This will really help you save time, but it’s hard to pull off consistently. Oh, and speaking of not wasting time; don’t bother starting the QTEs when prompted. It’s quicker to just kill the two Talos and Cyclops with the battering ram.

Get Stoned

This. Is. Nails. Seriously, this is the hardest challenge room in the game and should probably come with a health warning. The objective here is to let our baldy badass get turned to stone 10 times by Gorgons without getting shattered by any of the other baddies in the room. To get a Gorgon to freeze you, initiate a grab move, which'll always be blocked. She’ll then instantly unleash her stony stare on you. When she does, press L1 to counter, but don’t press the next button prompt. This will automatically turn Kratos to stone. Now, wiggle the right stick to free yourself.

The trick here is timing. Get frozen at the wrong time and you’ll likely get taken out by one of the exploding, dive-bombing Harpies. The key is to keep rolling around the arena, avoiding attacks, and waiting for an opening to grab the Gorgon. If the enemies are getting too much for you, you can freeze them by hitting the button prompt after your counter the Gorgon stare. This will freeze all of them instantly. Things get really hectic when Cyclops start spawning in after you’ve been frozen seven times. Try to be as quick as possible from here on out, because everything becomes a huge clusterf*ck. And its incredibly easy to get knocked out of the arena by one of the one-eyed giants.