[Official Review] God of War III - Monday, March 8th

[The Grue]

Opening sequence was amazing.  Very epic.  It's definitely more God of War, which is a good thing and it really does look amazing.  Can't wait to play more.

[Bullwinkle]

I've played about an hour, and the graphics are even slightly better than I was expecting... which is to say pretty damn amazing.  The lighting is probably the most impressive thing.  Oh also the water in a certain river looked incredible.

The combat mechanics feel exactly the same as the previous games so far, which shouldn't surprise anyone.  It's nowhere near the depth of DMCs or Bayonetta, but that's never been what God of War is about.  GoW's presentation and cinematic story are the selling points, and they are second to none.

+1 to lighiting and river.  Stunning.

And, while the graphics are astounding, they're only a small part of the atmosphere.  The characters and story and just HOLY SHIT stuff going on in the background has me grinning from ear to ear.  It's looking like my kid's going to be home all week from school after the weekend storm, and it's killing me!!!!

[leo8877]

4.5 hours in and I love me some KRATOS!  GD these games are fantastic!

[KePoW]

Okay I stopped tonight at 3.5 hours in, and I think everyone can get off David Jaffe's back now.  When he said a long time ago that GoW3 looks like a painting come to life, everyone thought it was BS.

But I have never seen another game that looks this good, and it truly does look like a painting in motion.  I think this looks noticeably better than Uncharted 2.

[Ridah]

I'm glad everyone is so easily impressed by graphics but this is my first God of War game and the gameplay is a little weak, especially all the fights against Poseiden (which is all I've really encountered thus far). It doesn't feel like my weapons actually make contact with the enemies.

And I still think Uncharted 2 looks better, especially when it comes to indoor environments and character animations.

[KePoW]

I'm glad everyone is so easily impressed by graphics but this is my first God of War game and the gameplay is a little weak, especially all the fights against Poseiden (which is all I've really encountered thus far). It doesn't feel like my weapons actually make contact with the enemies.

And I still think Uncharted 2 looks better, especially when it comes to indoor environments and character animations.

If you've only gotten to Poseidon, then you haven't seen anything yet as far as environments.

But I will agree with your comment on the combat feedback... it doesn't compare to Bayonetta or DMC 3/4.

[Morgul]

Damn it I got stuck last night,  need some help in the beggining...  hades area

Spoiler for Hiden:

   Anyways, I am at the room with the guy behind the tree wanting freed.  I got the cart of embers, I push it over to the hellhound who lights it on fire.   I cant seem to get enough lift to make it over the edge of the gate to the lever.   What am I missing?

[Roman]

Damn it I got stuck last night,  need some help in the beggining...  hades area

Spoiler for Hiden:

   Anyways, I am at the room with the guy behind the tree wanting freed.  I got the cart of embers, I push it over to the hellhound who lights it on fire.   I cant seem to get enough lift to make it over the edge of the gate to the lever.   What am I missing?

Ha! This was my first challenge too.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Have the hellhound light it on fire and leave it right in front of his cage. Then go back to 'burning man' and hop back up ontop and jump on the hanging platform and ride it all the way down. You will see the gate above the hellhound rise. Once you stop moving on the platform run back as quick as you can to the cart of embers and use the thermal updraft to allow you to soar up above and and trigger the lever. That unleashes the hellhound fight him and ride him and kill everything - including the burning man  Get the bow and arrow thingy. look for secrets........

[Morgul]

Damn it I got stuck last night,  need some help in the beggining...  hades area

Spoiler for Hiden:

   Anyways, I am at the room with the guy behind the tree wanting freed.  I got the cart of embers, I push it over to the hellhound who lights it on fire.   I cant seem to get enough lift to make it over the edge of the gate to the lever.   What am I missing?

Ha! This was my first challenge too.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Have the hellhound light it on fire and leave it right in front of his cage. Then go back to 'burning man' and hop back up ontop and jump on the hanging platform and ride it all the way down. You will see the gate above the hellhound rise. Once you stop moving on the platform run back as quick as you can to the cart of embers and use the thermal updraft to allow you to soar up above and and trigger the lever. That unleashes the hellhound fight him and ride him and kill everything - including the burning man  Get the bow and arrow thingy. look for secrets........

Spoiler for Hiden:

nice..   I spent a solid 45 minutes moving that ember cart all over hell trying to find something to jump on..  Sadistic imo..  heh  I would have spent another night and may not have got all that.

I must be getting old..  Oh well, I will be back on whatever comes up and sticks me tonight at 2 AM  heh

[leo8877]

Regarding hit feedback, iirc the hit combo counter should start any time you hit an enemy.  With the smaller guys it's usually not much of a problem because you can see geysers of blood spout out, but on the big guys, yeah, it can be tricky to know if you're damaging them. 

Regarding the wraiths, the underground spinning guys with the gladiator helmets and dual blades (they have been in all the GoW games)

Spoiler for Hiden:

I LOVE that you can pull them out of the ground now.....thank you thank you thank you!!

[leo8877]

Damn it I got stuck last night,  need some help in the beggining...  hades area

Spoiler for Hiden:

   Anyways, I am at the room with the guy behind the tree wanting freed.  I got the cart of embers, I push it over to the hellhound who lights it on fire.   I cant seem to get enough lift to make it over the edge of the gate to the lever.   What am I missing?

Ha! This was my first challenge too.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Have the hellhound light it on fire and leave it right in front of his cage. Then go back to 'burning man' and hop back up ontop and jump on the hanging platform and ride it all the way down. You will see the gate above the hellhound rise. Once you stop moving on the platform run back as quick as you can to the cart of embers and use the thermal updraft to allow you to soar up above and and trigger the lever. That unleashes the hellhound fight him and ride him and kill everything - including the burning man  Get the bow and arrow thingy. look for secrets........

Spoiler for Hiden:

nice..   I spent a solid 45 minutes moving that ember cart all over hell trying to find something to jump on..  Sadistic imo..  heh  I would have spent another night and may not have got all that.

I must be getting old..  Oh well, I will be back on whatever comes up and sticks me tonight at 2 AM  heh

Regarding that kind of puzzle:

Spoiler for Hiden:

Whenever you see "swooshing" air going upwards, you know it's a column of steam to ride on your wings.  That's the visual hint.

[Morgul]

Oh yea, impressions..

I will start by saying I have never owned a playstation in any form until now.  I seen GOW advertisements and started GOW 1 from suggestion on this thread about 3 pages back..   First thoughts on that game was..  "a ninja gaiden rip off"..   heh  I am in the caves of chaos on gow 1..  so went pretty deep in two nights..

I started liking gow better then ninja gaiden, I like the setting better I guess,aand the mini game to kill bosses, etc.

GOW3?   I Don't see anything at all "weak" so far on this game.  Graphics are gorgeous  (I like better then uncharted2)...   and man, ..  holy smokes that fighting on posiden on the back of a titan climbing mount olympus was a wild ride.

I cannot wait to kill the rest of these gods after they grovel at my feet..    
I loved ripping apollos head off in the demo, but not quite as much as the beat down on posiedon..  Good stuff, great game.  

[Morgul]

Damn it I got stuck last night,  need some help in the beggining...  hades area

Spoiler for Hiden:

   Anyways, I am at the room with the guy behind the tree wanting freed.  I got the cart of embers, I push it over to the hellhound who lights it on fire.   I cant seem to get enough lift to make it over the edge of the gate to the lever.   What am I missing?

Ha! This was my first challenge too.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Have the hellhound light it on fire and leave it right in front of his cage. Then go back to 'burning man' and hop back up ontop and jump on the hanging platform and ride it all the way down. You will see the gate above the hellhound rise. Once you stop moving on the platform run back as quick as you can to the cart of embers and use the thermal updraft to allow you to soar up above and and trigger the lever. That unleashes the hellhound fight him and ride him and kill everything - including the burning man   Get the bow and arrow thingy. look for secrets........

Spoiler for Hiden:

nice..   I spent a solid 45 minutes moving that ember cart all over hell trying to find something to jump on..  Sadistic imo..  heh  I would have spent another night and may not have got all that.

I must be getting old..  Oh well, I will be back on whatever comes up and sticks me tonight at 2 AM  heh

Regarding that kind of puzzle:

Spoiler for Hiden:

Whenever you see "swooshing" air going upwards, you know it's a column of steam to ride on your wings.  That's the visual hint.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Oh, I was riding the air stream all over..  my problem was not knowing how to raise the gate up to get to the lever..  Instead I tried flying over it from every direction..  dragging it around trying to fly to other things, etc..  
I even drug it over to the thing you jump on with the fire trying to light it, heh..  I didnt have these wings in gow1, so still getting used to them  

[leo8877]

Damn it I got stuck last night,  need some help in the beggining...  hades area

Spoiler for Hiden:

   Anyways, I am at the room with the guy behind the tree wanting freed.  I got the cart of embers, I push it over to the hellhound who lights it on fire.   I cant seem to get enough lift to make it over the edge of the gate to the lever.   What am I missing?

Ha! This was my first challenge too.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Have the hellhound light it on fire and leave it right in front of his cage. Then go back to 'burning man' and hop back up ontop and jump on the hanging platform and ride it all the way down. You will see the gate above the hellhound rise. Once you stop moving on the platform run back as quick as you can to the cart of embers and use the thermal updraft to allow you to soar up above and and trigger the lever. That unleashes the hellhound fight him and ride him and kill everything - including the burning man   Get the bow and arrow thingy. look for secrets........

Spoiler for Hiden:

nice..   I spent a solid 45 minutes moving that ember cart all over hell trying to find something to jump on..  Sadistic imo..  heh  I would have spent another night and may not have got all that.

I must be getting old..  Oh well, I will be back on whatever comes up and sticks me tonight at 2 AM  heh

Regarding that kind of puzzle:

Spoiler for Hiden:

Whenever you see "swooshing" air going upwards, you know it's a column of steam to ride on your wings.  That's the visual hint.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Oh, I was riding the air stream all over..  my problem was not knowing how to raise the gate up to get to the lever..  Instead I tried flying over it from every direction..  dragging it around trying to fly to other things, etc..  
I even drug it over to the thing you jump on with the fire trying to light it, heh..  I didnt have these wings in gow1, so still getting used to them  

Gotcha!

[leo8877]

I don't know if they would have been able to pull this off at launch, but seeing this on the PS3 makes me wish they would have done GoW2 on the PS3 as well!  And I loved that game!

[Kevin Grey]

I don't know if they would have been able to pull this off at launch, but seeing this on the PS3 makes me wish they would have done GoW2 on the PS3 as well!  And I loved that game!

There is no doubt for me that GoW 3 benefits enormously from three years+ of PS3 development experience.  Not just for Sony Santa Monica but also other first and third parties (Sony first and second parties are traditionally very aggressive about sharing tech).  I expect that GoW 2 for the PS3 wouldn't have measured up technically. 

[KePoW]

Yeah, there is no way any launch game would have looked like this.

[leo8877]

Got my ultimate edition today, not too impressed with the Pandora's Box.  Looking forward to watching the documentary though and the art book, while little (not pages, but size), is nice.

[MonkeyFinger]

Got my ultimate edition today, not too impressed with the Pandora's Box.

You didn't... open it... did you? 

[leo8877]

Got my ultimate edition today, not too impressed with the Pandora's Box.

You didn't... open it... did you? 

    EEP!

[Chaz]

Yeah, I was hoping for a slightly more solid material from the CE box as well.  Still, it does look really nice, and it could be fun to use as a horribly impractical dice rolling box.

[MonkeyFinger]

Mine comes tomorrow. 

[leo8877]

Oddly enough, the in-game title screen for the Ultimate Edition even says so.  Ultimate Edition is written below God of War III.  It's actually a different title screen than the normal edition disc.

[Kevin Grey]

They are doing some interesting things with the story in this one (spoilers through about 7 hours into the game):

Spoiler for Hiden:

  It seems like they are kind of making Krators the villain of the piece.  He was never a "good" guy before but I aways felt that he was at least at moral parity with the Gods in the previous games.  This time out they are going to trouble to humanize his enemies a bit and even some of his foes from previous games (like when you read various notes from his victims in Hades).  Zeus's bad behavior seems to have been due to Kratos opening Pandora's box which released all of the hate and paranoia that Zeus had locked away.  Indeed it seems Zeus thought fondly of Krators before GoW2.  Every time that Kratos slays a god he is basically inflicting a great plight upon the mortals (blocking out the sun, releasing a plague, uncontrollable sea level, nothing but torment in the afterlife, etc).  Even his customary human sacrifice was a bit offputting- in past games it was either a soldier or translator (whose sole purpose in life was to be sacrificed) but here he casually sacrifices Posiedon's mistress.  Hell, I felt bad when he killed Hapheastus since the guy was only trying to protect his daughter.

I expect he will have some kind of epiphany or change of heart in the end.  Definitely an interesting tactic to take this time around. 

[Morgul]

Hades was giving me a beat down last night until I turned it off and went to bed.   I need to work on my dodge and evade skills I think.

heh

I think I like this game the best so far (I have only had ps3 for about a month, but I got about 10 games)

Well, I laugh at the kids playing little big planet, its a good one too, but I have not been able to pry a controller from one of them to actually play it myself.  And when they are not around I cant help myself from putting in gow1 and gow3.

Hey, remind me..   I made a "profile" when I first turned on the playstation 3.  And it seems like everyone (Kids and myself) play under the same profile.   Anyway I can make dad a seperate profile?   Little kids are starting to bug me thinking I am my son or something.  Would like to login as me and drop their friends list.

[Morgul]

spoiled ass kids, my mom wouldnt even buy me a atari when I was a kid...   I had to become a gygax geek and throw dice on the back porch..  heh

[Chaz]

If you go to the far left of the XMB, there should be an option to create a new profile, and you can create a new PSN ID with it.  However, all save data is profile-specific, so you may want to create a new profile for the kids and you keep the old one.  I think you may even be able to password protect your profile, but I'm not sure.

[leo8877]

I had to take a night away because of St Patty's but I return to the loving arms of Kratos tonight!  CHAOS!!

[Roman]

I gave up at the puzzle part in Hades palace after about 30mins of head bashing. Talked with a guy at work today and he gave me a hint - back to the grind this evening.

Roman

[The Grue]

I guess I am a puzzle genius, because these puzzles have been pretty obvious to me (both the fire one and the ones in Hades).  Must come from all the Infocom games I played as a kid.

[leo8877]

I guess I am a puzzle genius, because these puzzles have been pretty obvious to me (both the fire one and the ones in Hades).  Must come from all the Infocom games I played as a kid.

I've had good success with puzzles as well, but I figured it's because of playing 3 other GoW games.  They seem to be pretty similar.

[Kevin Grey]

I do enjoy the puzzles but so far I don't think they have been as good or as memorable as the puzzles in the first two games.

[leo8877]

I do enjoy the puzzles but so far I don't think they have been as good or as memorable as the puzzles in the first two games.

KG, did you play Chains of Olympus?  It's fantastic, a must play!

[Chaz]

After the massive frustration I felt in the last 1/3 of the first two, I'm kind of nervous about playing Chains.  I worry when I have the ability to chuck the entire system across the room.

[leo8877]

After the massive frustration I felt in the last 1/3 of the first two, I'm kind of nervous about playing Chains.  I worry when I have the ability to chuck the entire system across the room.

It's much shorter (like 5 hours) and I only remember the last boss being real tough.  Definitely worth playing, IMO.

[Chaz]

After the massive frustration I felt in the last 1/3 of the first two, I'm kind of nervous about playing Chains.  I worry when I have the ability to chuck the entire system across the room.

It's much shorter (like 5 hours) and I only remember the last boss being real tough.  Definitely worth playing, IMO.

Yeah, but people said the end of GoW2 wasn't hard either, and that had me ragin'.  I have low tolerance for GoW difficulty, it seems. 

[leo8877]

After the massive frustration I felt in the last 1/3 of the first two, I'm kind of nervous about playing Chains.  I worry when I have the ability to chuck the entire system across the room.

It's much shorter (like 5 hours) and I only remember the last boss being real tough.  Definitely worth playing, IMO.

Yeah, but people said the end of GoW2 wasn't hard either, and that had me ragin'.  I have low tolerance for GoW difficulty, it seems. 

I thought the end of GoW2 was difficult, FWIW.  The last QTE made me fee like murderous rage!  The Loom Room was no picnic either!

[Louis Cypher]

Am I crazy or 

Spoiler for Hiden:

was that Kevin Sorbo's voice for Hercules?

[kathode]

Anyone having trouble with the double-jump control in the game?  I find that pretty much every time I go to jump over a "pit of death" I fall in at least once because somehow I manage to mess up the timing on the double jump.  Either I let go and hit the button a third time (thinking that deploying the wings is a separate "action") or I hold the button down somehow that causes him not to execute the second jump.  It's weird because if I just stand in place I can double jump all day, but I guess I'm subconciously doing something different when I jump over a pit.

[leo8877]

Anyone having trouble with the double-jump control in the game?  I find that pretty much every time I go to jump over a "pit of death" I fall in at least once because somehow I manage to mess up the timing on the double jump.  Either I let go and hit the button a third time (thinking that deploying the wings is a separate "action") or I hold the button down somehow that causes him not to execute the second jump.  It's weird because if I just stand in place I can double jump all day, but I guess I'm subconciously doing something different when I jump over a pit.

I haven't had trouble with the double jump, but using R1 to open chests has been spotty, at best.  I'd say just about every chest I have to try different pressures holding down R1 for it to register properly.  I thought maybe my controller was going kaput, but it seems to work just fine in every other game.  Some chests I have to try for a couple minutes for it to open all the way.