God of War III Review
Played on PlayStation 4 (base)
Developed by Santa Monica Studio
Released 16th March 2010 (Remastered on the 14th July 2015)
It outsold its predecessor by nearly 400k copies. It was praised for its immaculate PS3 graphics. It was the winner of several awards. I'm of course talking about God of War III and its hyped-up conclusion to one of the most popular trilogies in the gaming community, teased back in 2007. Oh boy, does it exceed the hype in every way.
Story
The story is a great, conclusive narrative to what is already a fantastic trilogy. It once again follows Kratos, picking up right where GOW2 left off - climbing up Mount Olympus with the Titans, to finish Zeus off. This crazy, action-packed opening reeks of brilliance as it's straight to the point and doesn't waste the player's time, instead, it introduces epic and enjoyable moments. The whole game's revenge story is basic, but since when has simplicity been bad? You essentially go around Mount Olympus, ending the lives of oh so many gods, all in the name of retribution. The narrative was truly built for a joyride instead of a heartfelt experience as the story took a backseat in many instances and gave the action the necessary spotlight when needed. The only problematic moment in this 8-hour narrative is the ending. It feels like it is unnecessarily exposition-heavy, ruining the flow that the epic final encounter had, but still sticks the landing in being a satisfactory conclusion with a cliffhanger that provoked an 8-year-long wait, thankfully with a great payoff.
Gameplay
The gameplay is extremely violent, yet extremely fun. It has not changed from the previous two titles in the trilogy. However, this definitely does not mean it's bad, as it sticks to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" saying quite heavily. Long story short, don't expect this game to reinvent any formulae but do expect it to deliver one enjoyable experience. Starting with the positives: the swinging is back, still awesome, and now it's incorporated into the combat via combos since you can now grapple enemies towards you. The parrying and dodging are once again improved, so they feel much more responsive and gratifying to use. The new arsenal of weapons that Kratos gains access to is a little underwhelming, lacking diversity as they can be boiled down to slightly altered versions of the Blades of Chaos. Despite that, they were all such a blast to use and so much more thrilling than the classic Blades, that I prioritised all my upgrading into them instead. The only other problem with the weapons is that they felt incredibly weightless and light, not delivering as much of an 'oomph' as I wanted them to when hacking and slashing enemies to bits and pieces. Each weapon also has a specific ability tied to it, making space for a larger variety in combo potential. For example, the Claws of Hades could summon damned souls to help in the fight while the Nemean Cestus had the power to create shockwaves - this doesn't even include the various items like the Bow of Apollo or the Boots of Hermes.
There is also a grander list of enemies for you to battle, all of which are not shitty clones of one another, and the scale of the action set pieces are stellar. From the little moments like chasing Hermes before giving him leg stumps, to outrageous fights like sprawling the titan Cronos' guts out. There are so many of these badass and exciting moments that I could dedicate a whole review to talking about them (but I won't because I'm lazy).
The puzzles and platforming return with no noteworthy changes, remaining in the same mediocre state it's been in since 2005. The QTEs (Quick Time Events) have been severely upgraded though, with the button prompts not obscuring the action and being easier to input, as they are found in their respective positions (i.e., the triangle is at the top of the screen while the square is on the left, etc). One of the few and final issues I had with the gameplay is more of a nit-pick preference than anything else. At the beginning of every God of War game, Kratos' inhuman powers and strength are depleted and while that's fine normally, it feels like wasted potential to not build upon Kratos' godly strength from GOW2. But of course, they needed a reason to nerf Kratos so he would have to fight through all of Olympus to kill Zeus, otherwise, the game would've been 30 minutes at most.
Bossfights
The boss fights are god-slaughtering fun. There is an overload of how much action and chaos is present in these fights and it's well-suited to be like this because intense and anarchic is the blandest a brawl between two gods should be. Poseidon, Hades, Hermes, Cronos, Hercules and more, offer stimulating battles that are perfectly accompanied by this game's hair-raising soundtrack and magnificent visuals. The best boss of this game had to be Zeus, as the camera shifts, challenge, and overall ingenuity in gameplay were a breath of fresh air in this adrenaline ride. Meanwhile, the worst, Skorpius, was still relatively fun to deal with even though it didn't awe me as much.
Characters
There isn't much to say about the characters because their presence wasn't the focal point of the game. Kratos does return as a PTSD-ridden maniac who is a little bit harder to root for as the player hasn’t remained in Kratos' shoes and experienced the same kind of loss, and so is unable to dismiss Kratos’ actions. Pandora came across as more of a brat that I wanted to backhand slap, rather than Kratos' second wholesome chance at fathering. Other than those two negatives, every god was as cocky and arrogant as was expected of gods and they were interpreted fantastically; either being mythos-accurate or creative in their new adaptations.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere is great. The composers of this game should be proud of themselves, as the music returns to another orchestral battle hymn that helped blend every element of the game together. The variety of these detailed environments is also superb: from travelling around the pits of the Underworld to comprehending the illusions in the Olympus Gardens. Certain sections had some odd level design that did break fragments off the immersion as they felt heavily 'videogame-y'. Such places included The Labyrinth, for starters. The individual design of characters, weapons, enemies, and more was also amazing and showed off the best of Santa Monica Studio, artistically speaking. Hades' deformed, devilish design, the electrifying, vicious Nemesis Whip and more are by far the most unique looking to me. Finally, there is no problem with this game on a technical scale, except for the fact that even with the max setting, the game was displayed with black borders all around, as if it couldn't be run in 1920x1080.
Story - 8/10
Gameplay - 8.5/10
Bossfights - 9/10
Characters - 7/10
Atmosphere - 8.5/10
Great
An ecstatic, final chapter to a breathtaking trilogy, barely lacking in a few departments.
