IGN Score: 9.0
Gamespot Score: 9.3
A*Gamers Score: 8.5
Gamespot Score: 9.3
A*Gamers Score: 8.5
Yes, you know who I'm talking about - Kratos! In every God of War installment, Santa Monica Studio never fails to deliver a meld of great gaming experience coupled with amazing visuals. The story hasn't changed much: Kratos, as always, is on a journey for revenge only this time, he is finally going to take down the big bosses of Greek Mythology. A good game needs no further introduction, immediately from the start they take you into an epic battleground where you start off fending attacks dished out by the stellar team of gods while the titan Gaia, carries you skywards on Mount Olympus. The tutorial blended in well with all the action and dynamic backgrounds of falling debris and crumpling landscapes, similar to the prologue of Bayonetta. This is a common technique I noticed from most games used to hook the players only within mere minutes into the game.
Kratos starts off god-like like every other GoW but will drop back to basic level after falling from Mount Olympus where he fails to kill off Zeus on his first attempt. After which the real game begins. As usual, players will need to bear with a weak starter hero but will gradually gain a sense of achievement when Kratos evolves into a strong blood-thirsty fighting machine later onwards. Most of the game from then on is structured in a way that every regular intervals they will drop you a new feature, with a new set of tutorials and trial-runs for practice. Reasonable, but nothing new here. Somewhere down the line, you will be forced to use those features again to clear puzzles but otherwise they are not really very useful in battle. At most they give you a little variety when defeating the hordes and hordes of monsters they throw at you.
The story is pretty shallow: Kratos goes to kill Zeus but failed, he then learns about the key to the Pandora's Box and goes to find it. It turned out to be a her and she sacrificed herself to the flames of Olympus to end the madness of the box. Kratos, overwhelmed by a familiar sense of rage from losing his daughter, heads into a showdown with Zeus once again. In short, revenge is sweeter the second time. Good thing stories are not a very important component in hack-and-slash games. The very least it gives you a way to identify with Kratos' immense rage.
So how is it fun exactly? Well for starters, battles are very engaging, which is expected of a hack-and-slash game. This especially applies to late game, where a variety of creatures will appear in the same wave so players will have to be mindful of properly timed dodges or counterattacks while landing hits and dishing out pain back at them. Boss battles are divided into 2 parts, the actual fight and button-pressing finales. The actual fight most of the time includes a mini puzzle solving like for the case of Hercules you need to bash him up enough to initiate this sequence where you will attempt to charge him into a wall of spikes to further break down his armor. The button-pressing finales will initiate when the bosses have taken enough damage, symbolizing the near-end of the battle, giving the players a sense of relief. All they have to do now is to follow the buttons that appear on the screen to finish off the unlucky bastard. Some times the finales are gruesome for no good reason, other times they are just plain funny. Probably this was done intentionally to show Kratos' lust for blood. I recall at the very beginning where players defeat Poseiden, the very last button move was to actually press the L3 and R3 buttons simultaneously to poke his eyes... Hilarious!
As for the most part, some puzzles may tend to get quite boring, especially when one gets lost but it's forgivable. What they lack in puzzle-solving, they give back with quality and technically spectacular visual designs, sufficiently utilizing the capabilities of the gaming consoles. The overall use of the different shades of red gives a good sense of the rage burnt deep within Kratos' soul... If he had a soul that is. Music was appropriate and exciting when it comes to battles. But there was this music puzzle I just could not get my head around. The machine in-game have the exact same buttons as your controller, colors and all and the gameplay was a cross between FF VIII Squall's Renzokuken and a rhythm game... Weird...
Generally, God of War III is a great game, a definite must-have for hack-and-slash fans. So if you're a fan of Devil May Cry & Bayonetta, get it NOW!
