The definition of epic stands as:
-adjective :-
heroic; majestic; God of War 3; impressively great;
For you see, that is exactly what this game is. The problem these days is that the word is thrown around all too easily. Anything that is good, bad or anything in between has the word epic thrown at it, usually by idiots. I hereby reclaim the word to be used on only things worthy of such an epic word... oh you see, now I'm doing it!
I haven't played much of God of War games in the past. I have Chains of Olympus on PSP, but only because that brick is so starved of half decent titles. I never really got into the hack 'n' slash genre of gaming, possibly due to my outrageously short attention span, but this game had me gripped for a lot longer than most games.
As soon as the game loaded I was treated to what I can only describe as a Greek mythology style James Bond intro. Live and Let Kill Everything in Sight would be it's name. Well, it's more of a "previously, on..." kind of intro. It sets the mood right with angry music and plenty of bloodshed.
Once the game starts up proper, you get one of the best starting levels of any game. It begins with the Titans climbing up Mount Olympus to lay some ancient smackdown on Zeus, when it becomes evident that our man, Kratos, is coming along for the ride. The whole intro to the game is played out on the back of the earth titan, Gaia, while fighting Poseidon and his minions. Even in text, that is an amazing intro.
After the inevitable fall from Gaia, you lose your powers and the game begins for real. After such an awesome intro, it's hard not to feel like the game has lost a lot of pace. Still, if you slow from 250mph to 70mph in a car, you're still going pretty fast. You end up coming across Athena, an ethereal figure who I assume dies in a previous game. She gives you your new blades and you can begin chopping people up again. Huzzah!
One thing that can really bug me about a game is how the character controls. Games like GTAIV and Resident Evil 4/5 have got it totally wrong in my opinion. Granted these games are nothing like GOW3, but the point is, get it wrong and it can ruin a game. Kratos, on the other hand, controls superbly making the combat not only easy, but incredibly fulfilling. Slicing minions of Hades up a treat has never been so fun. It's not just combat that benefits from the great controls.
That pretty poor link leads me to the other aspect of the game. Puzzles are a big part of the game, tying most brawls together in an interesting way, rather than just jumping from one fight to another. Some of them are truly wonderful too. At one point it feels like your playing inside an M. C. Escher painting while trying to figure out how to escape the Gardens of Olympus. The other major puzzle is Daedalus' Labyrinth. A fantastical piece of ancient engineering deep underground. Moments like these are hard to find in games these days, and to have multiple examples in a single game is astounding.
Some parts of the game, however, are pure frustration. The series is big on quick time events, like, seriously is in love with them. Fair enough, a lot of them are good and let you feel like you're still playing a game, but others are thrown in randomly and can catch you completely off guard. Especially those half circle moments that are nigh on impossible. Now, I have no shame in saying I played on the easiest difficulty setting, but when I nearly get killed by Hermes kicking me in the face after taking out Poseidon and Hades with ease, something is wrong there. Also, another small point is that Kratos' strength is wildly inconsistant. At one point he's stopping himself from being crushed between the building sized hands of a titan, the next he's being stopped by doors that need keys. Just punch your way through, Kratos, you've obviously got the strength.
When it comes to Kratos as a character, he can be painfully one dimensional at some points. His rage at the Gods of Olympus makes him seem like he's just angry at everything. Fortunately we see other sides of him at later points in the game. The character list for the game is pretty short after Kratos. Most other characters are merely façades put in place so Kratos can fight them. Only Zeus, Athena, Hermes and Pandora have any say in the story of the game other than Kratos. Some others make an appearance, but are really just a means to deliver objectives, such as Haephestus and Daedalus.
After everything that has happened in the game so far, the ending becomes incredibly important. Battles with other Gods have been superb and dangerously awesome so far, so when it comes to the battle with the big daddy of all Gods, Zeus, they should have something pretty amazing lined up, right? Well... no, they didn't. To begin with it's a straight up one on one, which is fair enough, you don't want to exhaust the awesome in the first 5 minutes. Then Gaia makes an unwanted appearance to try and kill Zeus herself. This really broke the flow of the battle, which was pretty disappointing. I'm trying to kill the king of the Gods here, lady, piss off.
You finally get rid of her then battle Zeus' final form, which is just him again. I was expecting a 200ft behemoth ready to shove lightning bolts up various holes in my anatomy. Zeus then manages to kill you, sending you on a Max Payne style trip. This leads Kratos to forgive himself for killing his family. The whole sequence could have been done via cutscene, with it condensed to 2 or 3 minutes instead of 10 minutes of running around in nothingness.
Kratos' soul then returns to his body and he beats the living shit out of Zeus. This really is probably the most brutal game I've ever played. Any game that ends with you mashing the O button to repeatedly punch a God in the face while the screen slowly gets completely covered in blood is pretty brutal. He also rips Helios' head off with his bare hands earlier in the game, which is badass.
Anyway, the game properly ends with the inevitable redemption of Kratos. You've been used by Athena to recover a weapon she put in Pandora's box upon it's creation. It turns out Kratos' will to defeat Zeus has come from this weapon, which is... hope. Awww, how very Disney.
As you've killed pretty much every God keeping the world in shape, everything has gone to shit. The only way for man to recover is to give them hope. You see where this is heading? Kratos sacrifices himself with a gigantic sword to release hope to the world. I suppose this ending was necessary to give Kratos some development, but it felt a bit too lovey-dovey to me. I was expecting Kratos to tell man to "eat a dick" while he goes round killing people for fun. Maybe it's for the best that I don't write stories for video games.
Overall, this game is excellent. Games that have no multiplayer have to stand up solely on their story mode, and what it offers is simply superb. Yes, it gets a little Disney at the end, but to be honest, it's needed after all the bloodshed. This is one game that should be in everyone's collection.
-adjective :-
heroic; majestic; God of War 3; impressively great;
For you see, that is exactly what this game is. The problem these days is that the word is thrown around all too easily. Anything that is good, bad or anything in between has the word epic thrown at it, usually by idiots. I hereby reclaim the word to be used on only things worthy of such an epic word... oh you see, now I'm doing it!
I haven't played much of God of War games in the past. I have Chains of Olympus on PSP, but only because that brick is so starved of half decent titles. I never really got into the hack 'n' slash genre of gaming, possibly due to my outrageously short attention span, but this game had me gripped for a lot longer than most games.
As soon as the game loaded I was treated to what I can only describe as a Greek mythology style James Bond intro. Live and Let Kill Everything in Sight would be it's name. Well, it's more of a "previously, on..." kind of intro. It sets the mood right with angry music and plenty of bloodshed.
Once the game starts up proper, you get one of the best starting levels of any game. It begins with the Titans climbing up Mount Olympus to lay some ancient smackdown on Zeus, when it becomes evident that our man, Kratos, is coming along for the ride. The whole intro to the game is played out on the back of the earth titan, Gaia, while fighting Poseidon and his minions. Even in text, that is an amazing intro.
After the inevitable fall from Gaia, you lose your powers and the game begins for real. After such an awesome intro, it's hard not to feel like the game has lost a lot of pace. Still, if you slow from 250mph to 70mph in a car, you're still going pretty fast. You end up coming across Athena, an ethereal figure who I assume dies in a previous game. She gives you your new blades and you can begin chopping people up again. Huzzah!
One thing that can really bug me about a game is how the character controls. Games like GTAIV and Resident Evil 4/5 have got it totally wrong in my opinion. Granted these games are nothing like GOW3, but the point is, get it wrong and it can ruin a game. Kratos, on the other hand, controls superbly making the combat not only easy, but incredibly fulfilling. Slicing minions of Hades up a treat has never been so fun. It's not just combat that benefits from the great controls.
That pretty poor link leads me to the other aspect of the game. Puzzles are a big part of the game, tying most brawls together in an interesting way, rather than just jumping from one fight to another. Some of them are truly wonderful too. At one point it feels like your playing inside an M. C. Escher painting while trying to figure out how to escape the Gardens of Olympus. The other major puzzle is Daedalus' Labyrinth. A fantastical piece of ancient engineering deep underground. Moments like these are hard to find in games these days, and to have multiple examples in a single game is astounding.
Some parts of the game, however, are pure frustration. The series is big on quick time events, like, seriously is in love with them. Fair enough, a lot of them are good and let you feel like you're still playing a game, but others are thrown in randomly and can catch you completely off guard. Especially those half circle moments that are nigh on impossible. Now, I have no shame in saying I played on the easiest difficulty setting, but when I nearly get killed by Hermes kicking me in the face after taking out Poseidon and Hades with ease, something is wrong there. Also, another small point is that Kratos' strength is wildly inconsistant. At one point he's stopping himself from being crushed between the building sized hands of a titan, the next he's being stopped by doors that need keys. Just punch your way through, Kratos, you've obviously got the strength.
When it comes to Kratos as a character, he can be painfully one dimensional at some points. His rage at the Gods of Olympus makes him seem like he's just angry at everything. Fortunately we see other sides of him at later points in the game. The character list for the game is pretty short after Kratos. Most other characters are merely façades put in place so Kratos can fight them. Only Zeus, Athena, Hermes and Pandora have any say in the story of the game other than Kratos. Some others make an appearance, but are really just a means to deliver objectives, such as Haephestus and Daedalus.
After everything that has happened in the game so far, the ending becomes incredibly important. Battles with other Gods have been superb and dangerously awesome so far, so when it comes to the battle with the big daddy of all Gods, Zeus, they should have something pretty amazing lined up, right? Well... no, they didn't. To begin with it's a straight up one on one, which is fair enough, you don't want to exhaust the awesome in the first 5 minutes. Then Gaia makes an unwanted appearance to try and kill Zeus herself. This really broke the flow of the battle, which was pretty disappointing. I'm trying to kill the king of the Gods here, lady, piss off.
You finally get rid of her then battle Zeus' final form, which is just him again. I was expecting a 200ft behemoth ready to shove lightning bolts up various holes in my anatomy. Zeus then manages to kill you, sending you on a Max Payne style trip. This leads Kratos to forgive himself for killing his family. The whole sequence could have been done via cutscene, with it condensed to 2 or 3 minutes instead of 10 minutes of running around in nothingness.
Kratos' soul then returns to his body and he beats the living shit out of Zeus. This really is probably the most brutal game I've ever played. Any game that ends with you mashing the O button to repeatedly punch a God in the face while the screen slowly gets completely covered in blood is pretty brutal. He also rips Helios' head off with his bare hands earlier in the game, which is badass.
Anyway, the game properly ends with the inevitable redemption of Kratos. You've been used by Athena to recover a weapon she put in Pandora's box upon it's creation. It turns out Kratos' will to defeat Zeus has come from this weapon, which is... hope. Awww, how very Disney.
As you've killed pretty much every God keeping the world in shape, everything has gone to shit. The only way for man to recover is to give them hope. You see where this is heading? Kratos sacrifices himself with a gigantic sword to release hope to the world. I suppose this ending was necessary to give Kratos some development, but it felt a bit too lovey-dovey to me. I was expecting Kratos to tell man to "eat a dick" while he goes round killing people for fun. Maybe it's for the best that I don't write stories for video games.
Overall, this game is excellent. Games that have no multiplayer have to stand up solely on their story mode, and what it offers is simply superb. Yes, it gets a little Disney at the end, but to be honest, it's needed after all the bloodshed. This is one game that should be in everyone's collection.
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