God of War 3 (GOW3) pushes the action-adventure genre forward on the Playstation 3. The stunning graphics and epic opening battle paves the way for an exhilarating 10 hours of savage, cinematic, gaming glory. It took Santa Monica Studios a while to get this into our hot hands but there is little that disappoints.
This video provides a great catch-me-up. Although it will spoil things, so if you haven’t played the first two games don’t watch this movie.
I bought the Ultimate collectors edition which comes in a replica of Pandora’s Box. I don’t regret the purchase at all but I am a fan of this series and objectively, it may not really be “worth it”. Especially since the included art book is a total joke. It is the same size and only slightly better than the throw-away-voucher-code booklet by virtue that it is printed on thicker stock. I would have preferred a digital version of something well-thought out and viewable without having to squint. I was pleasantly surprised to receive an GOW3 exclusive metal album via download although this does not make up for the art book.
GOW3 is brutal, epic and showcases some of the best game graphics and design in any console game. An aspect that I found surprising was the implementation of the quicktime events having the button symbols on the correlating side of the screen to the respective button positions on the controller. This really helped make these usually annoying tropes actually quite enjoyable as an interactive element to a cutscene and made things flow a lot better. It also meant that the action, the whole point of a stupid quick-time event, is front and centre without any button graphics overlaid.
One of the first things that I found disappointing about GOW3 was Kratos’ voice actor. Being the main character I would of expected them to be a bit more attentive to him not sounding like an amateur attempting to play huge-man. Thankfully most of the other voice acting was pretty good and Kratos is not overly verbose anyway so one does not have to suffer for long.
The cinematic camera is fairly good; I certainly wouldn’t trade it in for one I could control. There were some annoying points where I couldn’t see myself behind a mob of creatures or something in the foreground. But this only happened about 3 times throughout the entire game so that is within reason.
Story issues
I must admit that I found some of the story aspects a little incongruent after the epic opening. Perhaps “incongruent” isn’t the right word but something just didn’t feel right throughout and at times I felt like I was just playing a game rather than being immersed in an adventure. Some of that I put to the implementation of the “bosses” which felt a little shallow and JRPG-like: all posey and “here is the outline of what you face throughout the game”. Hades in particular just sort of happened without much depth. It was a great fight but I kept thinking how much better the boss King Minos was from Dante’s Inferno.
Another sticking point is Pandora. This, perhaps, ties in with Kratos’ poor voice acting as his sudden change of heart towards her was abrupt and hard to believe. The concept was there and I believed how he could treat her with remorse due to his family but the transition from “I am Kratos I must eat you if you’re in my way” to “no Pandora don’t die, I have your teddy bear with me” was sudden, contrived and stupid.
The “conclusion” of the game also annoyed me somewhat. I won’t spoil anything but wait through the game credits and you should see what I mean. Also apparently there was a big sequence cut from the ending which is disappointing.
Re-playability
I noticed after I finished the game that when changing costumes it not only affected the game model but the menu and cutscenes, meaning that most/all the in-game movies cutscenes are game engine which is just amazing! This certainly helps re-playability since the costumes look pretty cool as well as adding some interesting perks.
The game itself did seem short. Especially as a concluding piece and in the wake of such life-draining titles as Final Fantasy 13. The challenges are quite fun although some are frustratingly hard and thus I haven’t got access to the intriguing “Combat Arena”. I was hoping for some ingenuity regarding a multiplayer aspect after seeing Dante’s Inferno’s Trials of Lucia but was not overly surprised to not find anything.
