Anyways, God of War 3. Yay! This review will be RELATIVELY SPOILER-FREE, but will likely have GOD OF WAR 2 SPOILERS.
For some reason, the actual box art didn't come up on image search, but this one's way cooler anyways.
I've been waiting for this game since the cliffhanger conclusion of God of War 2 in 2007. Many people found issue with cliffhanger, but I understood - I wanted my epic Titan/God battles to be jaw-droppingly huge and furious, and this could not be done with the limitations of the Playstation 2. Now on the next-gen Playstation 3, God of War 3 delivers almost everything I could have asked, albeit with a few issues.
The first thing I think I have to stress is the graphics, which are absolutely beautiful. Everything looks fantastic - most impressive is Kratos himself, who's detail has been gloriously bumped up the last two games; he is now so good-looking that you can even see his pores. This isn't to say that the rest of the game is slouches, of course. The game runs extremely well; everything looks detailed and crisp, shading is outstanding, and the framerate runs at a steady clip. In fact, the game runs so well that it took me about a half hour of playing to adjust to the speed of it: I'm just not used to seeing games look so good. This also has the effect of making the game more brutal than the others, and that's really saying something. Kratos gets realistically covered in blood as battles, people are decapitated with bare hands, and monsters are slit open, their intestines spilling out of their bodies. It's all very gruesome, obviously. Let's put it this way: the game looks so good that they didn't have to use any "cutscenes" to speak of - everything is done with the in-game engine (outside from a couple striking flashback sequences which are done in a stylistically different manner). I assure you, you've never seen anything with this much scope and scale in a game before.
I wanted to do this side-by-side but couldn't figure out how. Anyways, here's Kratos from a cutscene of the first game.....
.....And here's his in-game model from the third. Hot damn!
God of War 3 picks up right from the end of the second game (SPOILERS): the Titans are storming towards Mt. Olympus to take revenge on Zeus for enslaving them years ago. Kratos (our "hero"), having been denied of his revenge on Zeus in GoW2 and discovering that Zeus is his father, rides on the titan Gaia, and he is PISSED. What follows is an appropriately brutal conclusion to Kratos's long journey of vengeance on the gods. The plot is done pretty well, though after a few hours the game's narrative loses a bit of steam. See, the problem is (SPOILERS) that by the halfway point of the game, you've already killed all of Zeus's brothers and two Titans, which means that for the last half of the game boss battles are relatively scarce and the plot becomes a tad unfocused.
Gameplay-wise, the game is largely similar to the first two games. The combat remains relatively unchanged, though new moves have been added to deal with the larger number of enemies that are capable of being on-screen at once, such as the ability to use smaller enemies as battering rams. The magic system has been replaced somewhat: now, each magic is tied to one of four different weapons, and what would be magic in earlier games are now side weapons, which have a refilling bar. This is an interesting switch and one that works rather well - it means that you don't have to waste precious red orbs (which is what you upgrade your weapons with) on magic that you probably won't use that much, and allows you to use the more useful abilities (such as the bow and arrow) more often. My one problem with this is that the game is too easy; it is without doubt the easiest of the three games, and this is largely due to the number of ways in which you can defend yourself. Also, it's a bit of a bummer that out of the four weapons, three of them fall in the "chains with _____ attached". While they all control pretty differently, I found myself not using the two chained weapons you get later in the game at all, sticking with Kratos's default weapon and sometimes switching to the Cestus (which are basically mythological boxing gloves). This weapon balance is a problem the God of War games have always had, and it continues in the third installment.
One nice thing about the GoW3 is the puzzle design, which is actually really smart and generally pretty interesting. The second game amped up the puzzles as well, but they were still largely based on boxes and switches. The puzzles in this game are quite thoughtful, and all feel contextually appropriate (except for one weird rhythm-based puzzle which stuck out a little bit). You won't get stuck on them, but you will have to take a look around the environment a bit and actually think of what you need to do. It's a nice addition, and really helps break up the flow of the game in an effective manner.
The boss battles, as expected, are ridiculously over-the-top. The best battles are the larger opponents, such as the breathtaking battle with Poseidon that begins the game. The God of War series is known for having incredible opening sequences, and Poseidon is definitely the best opening of the three. Bosses do not disappoint at all; there was one boss later on that I wasn't too sure about, but that's because the actual "battle" with him is extremely short - the difficult part is a really nice platforming section where you have to chase him down. Now, this being said, I did feel like some of the kills were just a little bit disappointing; it didn't happen too often, but I found that some of the boss kills boiled down to "stab repeatedly in the same spot, decapitate". It all adds to the brutality, but at times I was yearning for God of War 2's interesting, almost balletic kills. Again though, this didn't happen enough to significantly affect my enjoyment the game. Also, the problem with having such huge, impressive boss fights is that when you're NOT fighting a boss, the game feels small - it's a comparative thing and a problem that only comes with the mountainous highs of the thrilling bosses.
Pacing-wise, also like the other games, God of War 3 is incredibly strong. The game keeps you moving briskly from one event to the next, switching between platforming, puzzles, fighting, and even some short flying sections (which are pretty improved from the boring flight sections of God of War 2). The pacing does falter a little bit halfway through the game - the plot changes somewhat significantly, and boss battles are scarce. This means the last half of the game is a little bit closer in feel to the first two games as opposed to the largeness of this one. It also loses the exploratory feel of the second game; it's more like the first game, where you explore one or two really large areas, at times backtracking through older sections with new abilites. It's a bit of an unfortunate sacrifice, and means you don't see too much variation in environments. Luckily, the game picks itself back up in the last few hours as it approaches its conclusion.
Which leads to some controversy. The ending of the game has been a little bit disputed with critics; some consider it a stroke of genius, others have been less than impressed. I don't want to talk about it too much for fear of ruining it (that's for tomorrow's post), but I thought the conclusion was perfectly fine; however, I took issue with the actual END of it, as in the last minute and short epilogue. More on this in a crazy spoiler post tomorrow.
As a side note, one you beat the game you unlock a bunch of behind-the-scenes videos. God of War games have always had an hour-ish long mkaing of feature, and GoW3 has that AS WELL as individual features about specific parts of the game's design, i.e. voice acting, writing, animating, etc. If you like this kind of stuff (and I do), it's a very cool bonus.
Play this game if:
-You played and enjoyed the other two (three if you count the PSP one) God of War games.
-You want some crazy ridiculous action sequences and boss fights
-You want to see the best graphics in current video gaming thus far.
Don't play this game if:
-You're squeamish
-You can't handle over-the-top, somewhat comic book-esque plots and dialogue
-You haven't played the other two main games in the series (and seriously, if you want to play this one and you haven't played the others yet, what's your excuse? Go out and buy the HD remasters of them! They look great!)
-You want a deep battle system - I say this because while the system is very intuitive and controls extremely well, it's not the deepest fighting system in a game of this type. Put it beside the Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry games and there's really no contest.
Later days,
Daniel
1 comments:
Sony said in an interview that the 'polygon count' for the Kratos model in God of War 3 is so detailed that it wouldn't fit itself on a Playstation 2 disc. Incredibly detailed.
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