God of War III had a lot to live up to. The first two games are considered among the finest on the PS2 and both had won many game of the year awards. Could lightning strike thrice? Is it possible that all three games in a trilogy are all better than the last?
Story
You are Kratos. You must defeat the God of War. That was the tagline for the first game - a pretty simple premise, but the first game's story took so many twists and turns you felt as though you were watching a piece of Hollywood cinema. In God of War III, you are
still Kratos, but you must defeat the God of Gods - Zeus.
The story picks up right where the second game left off - with Kratos riding the back of titans while they climbed Mt. Olympus, all to take their revenge of Zeus for his awfulness. About thirty minutes into the game, you are face to face with Zeus. At this point, I was thinking that I would fight and kill him early in the game and the story would take a much different path - a "curveball" as they say in the industry. Unfortunately, no curveballs were thrown, at least at that point. Zeus knocks you off the mountain, and you spend the rest of the game trying to get back to him. That's not to say the rest of the game is boring.
They story effectively weaves in details from the first two games to complete the larger story arc of the trilogy as a whole; like what were the implications of Kratos opening Pandora's box in the first game, and the consequences of the Gods and mortals he killed throughout the series - all told through 2D pop-art flashback sequences which were beautiful to watch and really added a sense of grandness to the story as a whole.
The fantastic 2D flashback art.
On the downside, the story didn't crescendo like the last two games. There was usually one giant task to complete in these games - killing Ares, finding the Sisters of Fate, etc. but in I and II, the story really felt like it built and built upon itself until I was about an hour from the end and the tension and action were so frantic that not even God himself could rip the controller from my hand; like a roller coaster that climbed and climbed and climbed for six or seven hours,building anticipation and tension and then sent you careening over the edge to a wild and exciting conclusion.
God of War III seemed to clunk around itself, sending you on random fetch quests and (ugh...) escort missions, to reach your main objective. I never really felt that sense of urgency or that palpable taste of revenginess that coated my brain in the other entries in the series.
Meandering story aside, the development team really did a great job of tying up all the loose ends, so when you finished the game you weren't left wondering about anything at all. They touched on everything from Kratos' past present and future, and after the last scene, you will truly feel that Kratos got his revenge that he so desperately wanted.
Gameplay
If you've played a God of War game before - you know what to expect. Pitch perfect controls, a finely tuned automatic camera, a nice smooth difficulty curve and top notch enemy design. All of those things are still very much in tact, and they somehow made the controls even tighter. With the exception of the rare case when the camera isn't quite in the right spot, you never feel like you have to work against the controls to get through the game - your ability to fight your way to the final battle is purely based on how good you are. That's not to say there aren't frustrating sections.
There are these new segments where you are flying up, or falling down a long pipe or tube. During these sections your only objective is to avoid hitting obstacles. The problem with these parts is there are often obstacles very close to one another, and once you crash into something, your visibility is cut down to zero with the subsequent cloud of smoke that comes out of everything you hit. So if you hit a single thing in one of these tight sections, you're hitting all of them - there's no sense in even trying to realign yourself. These sections are really about memorization, which is something I despise in most video games. But this was really my only gripe with the game design.
One of the most satisfying things in this game was the new arsenal of weapons. In the first two games, I never used any of the secondary weapons - the blades were just too awesome. In this game, however, you're given three additional weapons, each with their own magic spell, and all of them were awesome. Early in the game, you get a set of new blades from Hades. These are similar in design (swingable blades on chains) but they behave very differently, so it really changes up the play style if you swap to a different weapon. The other weapon I'll mention was my absolute favorite - the greaves. These huge, lion shaped iron gloves were like hand held wrecking balls. You really felt like you were wielding some seriously destructive gear because hitting an enemy with these caused them to fly halfway across the screen, and the vibration in the controller really punctuated each punch.
The sweet, sweet punchification of Greece has begun.
The puzzles in the game were few and far between, but most were pretty clever. They all seemed to draw from other, modern puzzle games. There were ideas from Portal and Echochrome and even the movie "Cube" (which is awesome). Of course this is an action game, not a puzzle game, so these felt like Portal-lite and Echochrome Free Edition, but the casual nod to those games was pretty cool nonetheless, and really broke up the action in a nice way.
As with the other God of War games, the pacing was fantastic. And while I feel like Uncharted 2 is the new king of perfect pacing, God of War III certainly gave me that "OK, I'll play to the next save point" feeling. Then of course I would play for four more hours after I said that. A testament to great game design and spot on gameplay.
Presentation
The first and second games pushed the PS2 hardware as far as it would go - to the point where you were amazed that you were still playing a PS2 game. God of War III certainly doesn't disappoint in the visuals department, but there are better looking games out there. I'm not a graphics nerd by any stretch of the imagination; as long as the art services the game well, I'm happy with them. And this game's graphics were way above serviceable - they were fantastic. But as we nerds, know, it's not only graphics that can prove how much cooler a PS3 is over a 360.
The framerate ran at a constant - and I mean
constant - 60 frames per second. What made this even more impressive was the amount of enemies they crammed on the screen at certain points. I never actually counted, but there were definitely times where there were at least 30 dudes on the screen at once -
plus Kratos - AND SOMETIMES A BOSS - all animating and reacting independently. At 60 frames per second. Damn.
Beware. Extremely violent spoilers inside.
The other thing that must be mentioned is the sound design. The epicly orchestrated score from the first two games makes its immaculate return in the third game. The music is a perfect fit for every moment of the game and really rose and fell at the right points. The sounds of the weapons and magic spells all were dynamic and unique. There was never a sound or song that took you out of the fantasy.
The voice acting was mostly excellent. Kratos is still voiced by the same subtle-as-a-nail-bomb voice actor, but the other characters were fantastic. Specifically, there is this God named Hephaestus (voiced by
Rip Torn) who was by far my favorite character in the game. This is one of the few sympathetic characters we meet - punished to a life of torment and pain by Zeus, I truly felt for this guy and he sat at the edge of Hades, doomed to work for all eternity. His character's voice performance was about as perfect as you could ask for. He sounded like a genuinely nice guy who had fallen on hard times (really hard times), and I felt myself actually having real sympathy for him, and kind of wanting to hang out with him.
Hephaestus and his sweet beard.
Stuff I Loved:
- Awesome combat - still made me feel like a man.
- Epic music and spot on voice acting, especially Haphaestus.
- Satisfying conclusion to the three part story.
Stuff I Hated:
- Flying sections.
- Meandering story.
- Not much else.
In the end, I was totally satisfied with this game. I don't think it's the best in the series, but certainly a more than adequate conclusion to an extremely excellent trilogy.
Ten Words or Less Review
Awesome controls, graphics, music, and design. Story was OK.
