The violent culmination of the original series doesn't disappoint. God of War III builds off of all the things that have made this series entertaining and pumps it to the extreme, while mostly improving things that have always been so so with the series.
Kratos is back bby and things start off immediately where things left off in GoW 2 and it fits pretty perfectly with this series story. The God of War story has always been pretty good for a game that's so violent and action heavy and God of War 3 does a good job of wrapping things up for the most part.
It's maybe a bit too longwinded near the end where it feels like the final stretch goes on for a while and less focused than the bulk of the start. There's a decent chunk of backtracking as well so even from a location standpoint it just gets a little repetitive.
That being said, the set pieces in this game are pretty impressive. Very big, very epic, very bloody. After two of these games still pretty fresh in my head, both with large scale action parts to them, God of War 3 surpasses all of them easily.
This game definitely takes advantage of the system shift to PS3 with its scale and action. Climbing up Gaia, fending off enemies and all the insanity going on around you is easily the best of the franchise up to this point and might be one of my favorite set pieces for an action/adventure game. The remaster of this version to the PS4 just adds to the impressive scale, scope and look too.
Gameplay wise it's pretty much what you remember from this franchise but much tighter and improved on for the most part. More weapons, easier to transition between them all and enemies overall feel more designed where certain weapons are almost a requirement in order to get rid of them. It keeps the game play fresh, especially when the game starts to mix and match some of those bad guys together, making you swap between weapons on a dime to quickly stomp everyone out.
The weapons and tools you get to help you cause mass murder are all pretty fun to use and all feel quite different from one another. Whether it's your tried and true double blades, or two closer range weapons, or a more ride range weapon you get near the end of the game. All differentiate themselves not just on a range standpoint but just in a use and attack pattern setting.
These weapons will also change your secondary/magic attack, all with their own advantages depending on the situation. I did find myself drawing to a favorite amongst the weapons I had but when you have to swap to take advantage of an enemy weakness, they never feel bad to use or tough to figure out even if it had been a while since I used it. Since you can swap so fluidly and seamlessly, you're never far from your favorite once you want to go back to it, the control swap is very responsive
The controls overall are quite responsive, about the only consistent issue I ran into was the game not really recognizing the double jump if you waited a bit in your second jump press.
Since we are on the subject of negatives with this game, there were also some camera and aiming issues I ran into with some consistency.
The game does get a bit creative with how it uses the camera and for the most part, these shifts work quite well but because its a fixed camera where you can't move it around, there are a few times where the camera is just not placed well.
Sometimes the camera makes judging gaps and distance a bit of a pain. There were a handful of times when I was trying to make a jump where I thought I had cleared it but it turned out, I hadn't and I'd fall to my death.
There are times during battle too where enemies just felt a bit off camera and hard to find while taking damage.
Since the aiming with some of your tools auto aim, trying to take them down and stop taking arrows to the face would be a bit of a pain since sometimes you can't see if the aim circle is over them. Other times the game will auto aim you on other enemies and trying to move away from them and onto the target you are trying to specify can be really challenging. It even felt like at times like the game would only auto aim on the exact opposite range I was trying to get. If I needed to hit someone from far away, I'd only get guys right next to me, if I needed to hit some enemies from close range, I'd only get bad guys from far away showing up. This by no means happened every time but it did pop up a bit too much for my liking, enough for me to notice.
Some of the quick time events can be tough to follow as well. Though they are much more responsive than the previous two (though this could've easily been a streaming issue on my end), they've setup the QTE's to have the button you need to press appear on the screen where that button is in relation to the controller. The X button appears on the bottom part of the screen, the Triangle in the top part of the screen, so on and so forth. Because the screen can be quite busy at times, it's sometimes hard to tell when the button shows up because so many things are showing up in the various quadrants of the screen.
That's really the only major issues I had though with this game. It pretty much nails and improves on everything across the board which was already pretty solid from top to bottom to begin with. Tighter controls, better, more engaging gameplay, better set pieces, and somehow even more violent. With the bar already pretty high, it just makes everything that much more impressive.
Kratos is back bby and things start off immediately where things left off in GoW 2 and it fits pretty perfectly with this series story. The God of War story has always been pretty good for a game that's so violent and action heavy and God of War 3 does a good job of wrapping things up for the most part.
It's maybe a bit too longwinded near the end where it feels like the final stretch goes on for a while and less focused than the bulk of the start. There's a decent chunk of backtracking as well so even from a location standpoint it just gets a little repetitive.
That being said, the set pieces in this game are pretty impressive. Very big, very epic, very bloody. After two of these games still pretty fresh in my head, both with large scale action parts to them, God of War 3 surpasses all of them easily.
This game definitely takes advantage of the system shift to PS3 with its scale and action. Climbing up Gaia, fending off enemies and all the insanity going on around you is easily the best of the franchise up to this point and might be one of my favorite set pieces for an action/adventure game. The remaster of this version to the PS4 just adds to the impressive scale, scope and look too.
Gameplay wise it's pretty much what you remember from this franchise but much tighter and improved on for the most part. More weapons, easier to transition between them all and enemies overall feel more designed where certain weapons are almost a requirement in order to get rid of them. It keeps the game play fresh, especially when the game starts to mix and match some of those bad guys together, making you swap between weapons on a dime to quickly stomp everyone out.
The weapons and tools you get to help you cause mass murder are all pretty fun to use and all feel quite different from one another. Whether it's your tried and true double blades, or two closer range weapons, or a more ride range weapon you get near the end of the game. All differentiate themselves not just on a range standpoint but just in a use and attack pattern setting.
These weapons will also change your secondary/magic attack, all with their own advantages depending on the situation. I did find myself drawing to a favorite amongst the weapons I had but when you have to swap to take advantage of an enemy weakness, they never feel bad to use or tough to figure out even if it had been a while since I used it. Since you can swap so fluidly and seamlessly, you're never far from your favorite once you want to go back to it, the control swap is very responsive
The controls overall are quite responsive, about the only consistent issue I ran into was the game not really recognizing the double jump if you waited a bit in your second jump press.
Since we are on the subject of negatives with this game, there were also some camera and aiming issues I ran into with some consistency.
The game does get a bit creative with how it uses the camera and for the most part, these shifts work quite well but because its a fixed camera where you can't move it around, there are a few times where the camera is just not placed well.
Sometimes the camera makes judging gaps and distance a bit of a pain. There were a handful of times when I was trying to make a jump where I thought I had cleared it but it turned out, I hadn't and I'd fall to my death.
There are times during battle too where enemies just felt a bit off camera and hard to find while taking damage.
Since the aiming with some of your tools auto aim, trying to take them down and stop taking arrows to the face would be a bit of a pain since sometimes you can't see if the aim circle is over them. Other times the game will auto aim you on other enemies and trying to move away from them and onto the target you are trying to specify can be really challenging. It even felt like at times like the game would only auto aim on the exact opposite range I was trying to get. If I needed to hit someone from far away, I'd only get guys right next to me, if I needed to hit some enemies from close range, I'd only get bad guys from far away showing up. This by no means happened every time but it did pop up a bit too much for my liking, enough for me to notice.
Some of the quick time events can be tough to follow as well. Though they are much more responsive than the previous two (though this could've easily been a streaming issue on my end), they've setup the QTE's to have the button you need to press appear on the screen where that button is in relation to the controller. The X button appears on the bottom part of the screen, the Triangle in the top part of the screen, so on and so forth. Because the screen can be quite busy at times, it's sometimes hard to tell when the button shows up because so many things are showing up in the various quadrants of the screen.
That's really the only major issues I had though with this game. It pretty much nails and improves on everything across the board which was already pretty solid from top to bottom to begin with. Tighter controls, better, more engaging gameplay, better set pieces, and somehow even more violent. With the bar already pretty high, it just makes everything that much more impressive.