Obscured View

The God of War games are just their own thing.  A completely unique identity and feel, copied by many and never once equaled.

Maybe this is blasphemy, but GoW3 is a great game that suffers from the “how can we top the last one?” problem.  They try, really, really, really hard.  Cameras zoom in and out, scale is massive, environments are detailed, deaths are elaborate, bosses are sometimes epic… but for me, never once did it hit the high of that Colossus fight in the beginning of GoW2.  Actually, in many ways, I think GoW2 is the superior game.

So why do I say that?

First, there’s the weapons.  The whip and hooks are too similar to the blades in too many ways in GoW3.  They all whip out, do kinda-sorta the same level of damage with one unique thing to each.  I never felt that either of those weapons had a truly unique identity and demanded I use them in different circumstances.  The whip ended up having more individuality than the hooks, but really, the blades are just too close in nature to both of them.  The Cestus is the real stand-out.  That weapon was different enough from the others and very, powerful… until you get to the end.  We’ll get into that in a minute.  The weapon selection in 2 was just more dynamic; The blades, the spear, the hammer, and the sword all felt very unique.  Sure, they weren’t as equally powerful, but all had their moments and made Kratos behave very differently.  I didn’t get that as much in GoW3.

Next, monster encounters.  There’s only two non-boss fight in GoW3 that had my pulse racing, and both are towards the end when you’re dealing with raising the Labyrinth.  One involved cheap death, where you have to time jumping to a harpy when spikes will pop from the floor, killing everything and then waiting for the entire space to rotate.  I’m not as happy with that one than I am with the second one, where waves on waves of enemies pour at you with no respite and constant demands that you nurse your enemies that can heal you or charge your magic until just when you need to exploit them.  That was a great fight.  Everything else… well, not as good as that.  And by “not good”, you have to understand that I mean that they weren’t intense; they didn’t exhaust me or draw me in to them as much as I think they should have.  They were entertaining sure, but not demanding.

Of course, not every fight should be demanding, or you’ll exhaust your players.  However, there needed to be more demanding fights in GoW3.  Not constantly, just more of them.  2 had more of these types of fights throughout it.

So now to bosses.  The initial fight with Poseidon was very show-offy with the camera going every which way and such, but it wasn’t a really fun fight.  Nothing about it surprised me.  This was the pattern for most boss fights — they were EPIC, but not surprising.  I was never shocked, and what’s worse, most of the “shocking’ parts of any death were telegraphed a million miles away (cutting off Hermes’ legs?! didn’t see that coming!).  I did like the very end of the Poseidon fight however, where it was from the victim’s POV.  That was new.  The Hercules fight was also great just for the sheer raw brutality of it.  Again, nothing beat 2′s Colossus, the high-water mark of boss fights in the series.

So here’s the rub: I don’t have a lot of immediate suggestions for how to top what they did have.  I think they were stuck.  I do think Zeus should have been much more involved with the story than he was, especially as the rest of the gods were killed off.  I would have loved to see him toying with you and actively trying to stop you throughout the entire second half of the game, instead of waiting at the very “end” so you could eventually get there and fight him.

Now to that specific end fight… or at least a few parts of it.  I realize that the chain blades are Kratos’ signature weapon of the series, but if you give me multiple weapons and allow me to use them in a boss fight, nerfing their damage behind the scenes is really, really lame.  When you’re fighting Zeus in the end, your Cestus don’t do shit for damage — none of the other weapons do.  You can beat on Zeus for 5 minutes straight with anything but the blades, and he’ll bleed, and recoil… and never will he weaken so you can grab him and advance the combat.  Bust the blades of chaos out for only a minute though, and bam!  He’s ready to be grabbed.  I can’t stress how lame that is.  It’s like the designers knew the Cestus would destroy him in 15 seconds, and instead of fictionalizing a way around them being used, they just nerfed the damage on any non-blade weapon, figuring (rightfully so) that you’d eventually get frustrated of dying repeatedly and switch weapons.  Maybe this is because of the quicktime events between boss stages which use the blades exclusively… but earlier in the game Kratos would switch on demand for QTE and there was no problem with what weapon I used.  >shrug<

What I did appreciate in this game was that not a lot changed in how the game worked.  Still had health, still had magic.  Still opened chests to collect orbs and replenish bars, and still purchased upgrades in the same way since the original.  Still dodged with the right stick, and all my face buttons worked the exact same way.  No confusion and no rug-pulling of my expectations.  I liked the new sub-weapon energy bar, but found that extending its power only made any difference for the bow alone (a great sub-weapon, BTW).  Seems like that whole bar / power system could have been exploited further.  The GoW guys could take a lesson from Castlevania’s staple collection of awesome sub-weapons / heart usage dynamic.

I really didn’t like the flying sequences.  Too many of them and all identical in obstacles.  Also, the music sequence was poorly designed and seemed completely out of place.  What would have been funnier is that you start the music game sequence and then Kratos just smashes the entire thing into submission after a few notes because he knows it’s dumb too.  That would have been completely in character and awesome.

So in the end GoW3 is an 8.5 for me, with GoW2 being a 10 and GoW being a 7.5 on the God of War scale.  Of course, you have to factor in that the God of War scale is its own beast; most other really good games can’t even chart an 8 on it.  I’m glad to see the series end however, as I think there’s not a lot more room to grow with the Greek gods.  It’s about time that the team moved on to another franchise on which they can reset the scale of expectations yet again and deliver another 3 or so games in incredibly epic style.  And if they want to stick with the whole “mortal tears down gods” angle, I figure they can tackle Norse, Chinese, or Hindu gods next.

Fighting Kali in God of War style?  That already sounds awesome.