God of War series

[gunslingerNZ]

Just finished it and I finally understand where the reviewers were coming from. God of War II is undoubtedly a better game, technical issues aside. Although GOW III is filled with awesome moments and kickass action setpieces I just didn't feel the motivation of the character at all. I just sat there thinking, "why am I killing all these people? Kratos really is a dumb sunnova...."

Also the ending was pretty weak. The low saturation section actually got pretty boring even though it was nice to hear audio clips from throughout the series. It didn't get any better when Athena revealed the big power was "hope", I mean come on how contrived can you get! I actually scoffed at that part and it was a real disappointment to me.

So yeah closing thoughts; the game looks and plays amazing but the story lacks motivation and is downright weak at times. By all accounts the game should have been stunning, it had most of the ingredients to be, but I left feeling that I'd already played a better version of it on my humble old PS2.

Edit: I typed that during the credits but just saw the little coda where Kratos has apparently crawled into the sea? dun dun dun...

[kiwiatlarge]

Hmm, yeah... it's funny comparing the games, their design and stories... A lot of people have always felt that the first is better than the second, aside from the technical and gameplay improvements and tweaks in the sequel....

I mean 90% of the sequel is Kratos trying to go back in time to prevent dying (dying and going to Pits of Hades seems to be second nature for Kratos) to then fail killing Zeus... So I tend to agree with that. I just don't like that even on the easiest setting of the first game there are parts of the game that make you want to throw your controller.

I suppose being on the fourth released GOW game now, I was that watered down by Kratos being ***** and wanting revenge at all costs that I wasn't expecting much more than Kratos killing gods and Mt Olympus being a large part of the setting... The fact that for the first time he is actually off killing multiple gods (instead of just Ares), leading to inevitable showdown with Zeus, I couldn't see there being any happy day cheery Return of the Jedi ending.. Knocking off all these significant figures in greek mythology has to have it's consequences.. And revenge is never the most holy of motivations.

One thing I didn't mention in my 'recap' was I did think that bit before the end was too long.. neat idea, but it could have been half the length of time at the most.

[gunslingerNZ]

If they were going to go for closure though they shouldn't have gone the redemption route. A better ending in my view would have seen Kratos become gigantic at the end, I know they've already done that but this time they could make him and zeus the size of Mt Olympus and with the better hardware it would look a lot cooler. Ok so stay with me, then they snap the chain of balance and it becomes your weapon. Kratos wields the underworld while Zeus wields Olympia and you battle to the death.

Then when you finally kill Zeus there's some sort of epic implosion and the world is destroyed, fade to black, roll credits.

I just felt the ending needed something more epic, instead I just ended up hammering circle for about 3 minutes (I knew it wanted me to stop but I wanted to see how long it would let me wail on him) before watching Kratos kill himself, not satisfying!

[T-Rocket]

I both liked and was dissapointed by GOW3.

Liked

- the boss fights. The titan battles were intense and amazing visually. The other boss fights were great too. Highlights Poseidon, Hercules and Cronos

- the scale/epicness. All the way through the game it had the huge GOW feel.

- most of the story.

- classic GOW combat

- the new additions to the combat eg using the cyclops to kill other enemies, long range grapple

- the cestus

- the visuals

- the sound. From the score to the sound effects

Dissapointed by

- parts of the story. Mainly the ending with Athena, it felt like a big ***** moment with Athena

- lack of titan fights. I expected a few more

- lack of more varied QTE to kill regular enemies. Kratos can kill the regular grunts in many ways but can't kill the others in many.

- some of the voice acting

- 3 chained weapons some thing else could have been used

- lack of platforming and puzzles compared to GOW1 & 2

Overall though GOW3 is a great game and I would heavily recommend it to anyone. One of my favourite games of this generation. I guess I was expecting a little bit more than what we got. It'll be interesting to see what the Santa Monica studio do next, hopefully a new IP.

[Kizaru]

I think what most people forget is that the God of War series is practically like The Matrix trilogy, in that the second and third films are supposed to take place at the exact same time, so when Kratos finishes god of war II with him riding on Gaia, still ***** off, that feeling would logically sustain itself, especially given how long he's waited for revenge.

[smokeypsd]

I agree with Kizaru completely. I thought the story was a tremendous finale to the series. I think it really brought the story full circle and really completed the idea of Kratos as being it's own little Greek Myth and i think it adds a bit of dimensionality to even the previous games.