Oh man. This game has been so freaking good. I'm getting very close to the end - I'm just over 7 hours in and I have been loving every second of this masterpiece. The boss battles, the puzzles, the scale, the combat - everything is so finely tuned that you never feel like you're working against the controls or the design or the camera or anything! It's one of those games where the controller becomes an extension of your mind and everything just melts together.
At the same time, though - I'm not feeling the crescendo I thought I would be feeling this late in the game. As I remember them, the first two games really built the intensity to a fever pitch toward the last quarter of the game. And similar to the other two, your main goal is to find this one artifact that will aid you in beating your final nemesis (Pandora's Box in GoW and the Sisters of Fate in GoW II). In the first two games this task put you on a track of increasing "badassery" that got more and more insane until you finally got your artifact and sought out your foe. In 3, the artifact is "The Flame of Olympus" which is cool and all, but you start out the game about as bad ass as you can get, and it just never feels like it builds like the others.
The other thing I noticed is that the designers never give me a chance to really hate a boss or enemy. Perfect example:
SPOILERS GO
Last night I had a run-in with the wife of Zeus, Hera. After about a one minute conversation of her belittling Kratos, he begins to walk away when she says something like "Good luck with that little whore Pandora." (You're also looking for Pandora in this game). Now, with Kratos' past of killing his family (whoopsie) this struck a nerve in him - and also in me. I was like - oh what a bitch!
Then, just as I was starting to really dislike her - cue a cutscene of Kratos snapping her neck. The end.
On the contrary, there was a boss in Chains of Olympus for PSP that I HATED. He was super difficult and it took me probably a dozen attempts to beat him, and when you finally cues the QTE, you got those huge metal punching gloves, and the game made you rapidly press circle. This caused Kratos to pound this dude's face into oblivion, until his head was a bloody pulp of deadness. What vengeance I felt! What victory! But with Hera I was like "Oh I hate her so mu-...oh...ok..."
SPOILERS STOP
Not to say that the story and the game as a whole aren't awesome - they are. But I'm just feeling a little deflated as I near the end of the game. Hopefully the finale will change my mind. Hopefully I will get there tonight...wish me luck.
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