ARES!!! God of War 3 - the review

So finally I had my chance to play God of War 3. I had put it off and put it off but I was able to get my hands of it and blew through the game in a couple days. I'm a gigantic fan of the whole series, absolutely in love with everything that's come out so far. So how does Kratos' first Playstation 3 outing hold up on my judgment? Read on and find out!

God of War 3 finds Kratos right where God of War 2 left him. Riding on the Titan Gaia as she climbs Mount Olympus with the rest of the Titans to finally end Zeus' reign and destroy the Gods once and for all.

GOW3 like all the other games in the series before it is an action hack and slash type of game. You control Kratos and move him from area to area leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake.

First off the graphics are just simply amazing. Everything is the world of Kratos is so detailed. From the basic mountain side to a whole horizon filled with war you can make out all the smallest details. I'd have to say this is in the running as the absolute best looking game on the PS3 with Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2. It takes these PS3 exclusive game to truly show off the power the console has, it's just stunning. I do have one issue with the look of the game. In most games when you can interact with something or it's a place you can climb it looks a little different from the rest of the world, this isn't the case in GOW3. The game just looks so good it's hard to make out places to climb or a part in the wall you can just barely slide through.

The controls as always are very tight. Kratos responds very fast and it is extremely easy to get him to do what you want him to. In this action genre I've always felt the GOW games have the tightest controls and in part three it is still the case. Some mechanics have been changed and it's probably up to everyone to figure out if it's a good thing or not. First off they added in an ranged grapple. You can now grab enemies from a great distance which either has Kratos pull them to him or pull himself to them. I really like this addition,as I am a very aerial player in GOW it helps keep him in the air and still engage new monsters. They have also given Kratos a new set of abilities, in the form of "items." Through out the game you'll find these items like a bow and arrow. These are used with the L2 button and one of the face buttons. You also have a new meter with these that runs out as you attack with whatever it is you're using. With this addition the use of magic is also changed. It use to be the magic was selected with the D-pad and the L2 button used the magic. Now all the the magic is handled with the R2 button and one spell is assigned to a weapon.

You select the various weapons with the D-pad like you did the magic before. One thing I've always noticed in GOW game are the Blades are the best weapon. They're the most fun to use and the most useful. I'm guessing the makers of this game thought the same thing as three out of the four weapons you get are all like the Blades. This makes them all more fun to use but the standard blades are still the best. You use to be able to play through a whole GOW game just using the Blades but you can't do this in GOW3. Some of the functionality of the Blades have been taken away and given to the other weapons. The most notable is the ability to break an enemy's shield. No longer does , square, square, triangle break shields, you must use another weapon. Something cool with this is the real time weapons switching. You can be in the middle of a combo and hit the d-pad to switch it up and then just keep going. I think it works really well and it's nice to be able to switch so fast.

Something I would of liked to see put into this game were the PSP style GOW controls. Using the shoulder buttons to toggle the analog nub to a dodge to me was brilliant. Once I did that it made using the right stick to dodge a real chore. I did end up using the dodge a lot more in this game than the others though. As GOW3 is overall a harder game than it's predecessors. It's not insane hard or anything like that it's just a tougher game. I guessing it just assumes you've played the other games in the series and you should know what's up but some of this challenge is a little tacked on. The basic checkpointing in this is a little busted at times. In a few places you'll solve a puzzle only to miss a jump and die or fight a monster and die. Instead of starting back up past the puzzle you have to redo the whole thing. This is really annoying to me, it's just padding the difficulty to me putting frustration where there shouldn't be any. Another gripe are the unskippable cutscenes. Many, many times in this game you'll get a cutscene before a boss or get one during a boss fight as it moves to the next stage of said fight. If you die you have to watch the scene again, it's usually only a few seconds but it really gets tiresome to have to see these over and over again.

The GOW series is something known for it's massive boss fights and GOW 3 is no exception. Some of the bosses you fight are gigantic and this game has two such fights that are two of the best the entire series has. The rest of them though, they go between just okay to down right annoying. Most of the bosses are just a pain to fight and aren't any fun at all. It's not always clear how to damage them and even when you're doing damage you can't tell. For me it really drug the game down and it was sad to see the end of the "trilogy" have so many weak boss entries in it.

This is probably the most violent game I've every played. Kratos rips people apart, disembowels things and just goes on being as ultra-violent as he can be. It's really cool to finish up with a group of monsters and see Kratos standing there covered in blood.

So finally the one thing I want to mention without giving anything away is the story. For the most part anyone who's played GOW 1 and 2 will know what's up but I really did not like the ending. Just the way they try to explain what happened in the series was really weak and I felt as though it took a complete turn from the feel of the past games. This may not be the way you feel but I just wanted to share my thought.

God of War 3 is a good game, it plays well and it is a lot of fun except for most of the boss fights. For what is suppose to be the end of the series (Yeah right) I think it went out on a low note. For me God of War 2 is the pinnacle of the series and as of right now it's safe in that spot.

God of War 3 - 7 out of 10

60 Dollar PC games

For the current generation of consoles the games on the 360 and PS3 have been 60 bucks. For the first part of this generation their PC counterparts have been 50 sometimes 40 bucks. We PC gamers were happy to be getting the better looking, sometimes mod-able versions of these games at a better rate.

In 2009 this was about to change. Activision thinking everyone wants to pay more for games decided to release the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 at a 60 dollar "premium" and lots of PC gamers were sad but they still bought it. Then EA decided to follow this up with a 60 dollar Medal of Honor which some people bought but not as many as Modern Warfare 2. These two games alone were proof enough for EA and Activision that PC people will pay 60 dollars for a game.

In the last few months we've seen Black Ops, Dead Space 2, Bulletstorm and Crysis 2 at this 60 dollar price. It's getting a little crazy. I know these companies sell these games to make money but some companies do the right thing and keep these PC games at a reasonable price. Capcom is one of these companies. They've released some of their big name titles on the PC for 40 bucks, Dead Rising 2 and Lost Planet 2 are two games that come to mind.

Recently I've decided that some of these games especially the PC version don't need to be bought the day they come out. I have a crazy backlog and will be busy for awhile. The solution to this is to simply wait for Steam to have a crazy sale and get these 60 dollar games for 30 or less. I love Steam!

Dark Souls

Today the follow up to From Software's Demon's Souls was given a real name and a release time frame. The game now known as Dark Souls will be coming to the PS3 and Xbox 360 late this year. As Demon's Souls is one of my all time favorite games ever I am so psyched for this to come out.

From what they're saying this is not so much a sequel to Demon's Souls as it's inspired by the former game. I believe since Sony had it's hand in publishing Demon's Souls they couldn't make a Demon's Souls 2 and have it go to both platforms so they did a name change. I like that they're doing it this way as I firmly believe Demon's Souls did not need a direct sequel.

While Demon's Souls had a hub world Dark Souls will not. The whole world will be connected. They're saying that everything you can see you will eventually be able to get too. So let's say you see a castle in the distance you will eventually be in that castle, that sounds really cool.

The other big change is the way your character is made. When you create your character you do not pick a class like in Demon's Souls. You're given more freedom on building your character. I really, really like this. In Demon's Souls you picked a class and eventually that class could do anything the others could do so starting with more of a blank slate is perfect for this type of game. I would love to see more RPG games take this route and not shoehorn you into what they think your should do.

Here's the trailer released today and it looks amazing. The art style and atmosphere in this game is like Demon's Souls but to me it looks like a bleaker, darker world. I cannot wait to play this.

I had a chance to play the Playstation Move

Yesterday I was inside a Fry's Electronics and they had a PS Move set up to try out. I figured it was a good of time as any to try it. They only had the "wand" part out and no controller attachment to use. I had to do the calibration which I felt worked really well and was very easy to do and I was ready to play. The game they had to try was the Move Sports Demo with only a few events unlocked to play. I decided to go with the already loaded table tennis.

I was able to play one full game. The control of the paddle with the wand felt nice but to me it didn't feel any different than the Wiimote and suffers from the same problems the Wiimote has had the entire thing has been out.

The game itself looks nice but I can't shake the feeling this is just a HD Wii Sports. My biggest issue with it was the AI woman you play against. She kind of cheats and then just rubs it in your face with her stupid little cheer when she scores. The whole time I was playing I was wishing it had a button to throw the paddle at her for being a jerk.

Here's where I had my biggest problem, while I was playing this random guy walked up to me, pouring sweat and basically told me I was doing it wrong and I should try an easier game. After that I decided I had had enough of Move and put the wand down, never to be touched again. It wasn't really hot in the store and it was really nice outside so I don't have any idea what he was doing to work up this amount of sweat. He wasn't just sweaty but it was just pouring off of him. It was really strange but whatever.

In the end I think Move works for what it's suppose to be. The paddle moved with my movements on screen and the tracking was great. But it doesn't change my opinion on motion control in general and I really think it's come out way to late to get on the motion craze, the craze I think is kind of dying and being replaced by the 3D craze.

Bastion

Another game shown at PAX was Bastion. It's an isometric hack and slash action RPG. The game has a very interesting mechanic, as you play the game the game is narrated. Yeah at first I thought it sounded annoying but after watching the videos of it in action I must admit it looks or should I say it sounds really cool.

I think the voice is Ron Pearlman actor and the voice of Fallout but I'm not sure. It is NOT Ron Pearlman. It is a friend of one of the sound guys working on the game. His name is Logan.

The game is scheduled to come out next year for the 360 and PS3 and maybe PC but I don't know 100 percent on that one.

Here's a video! Enjoy!

Demon's Souls

It's not often that I play a game that makes me feel completely differently about playing games in general. Yeah I play games I really enjoy and like to replay and tell people about them but that's not what I mean. I mean a game that is just so great you end up comparing all other games to it, games from different genres even generations. It's been a long time since I've played a game like this but late last year I played one and that game is called Demon's Souls. It came out last year on the PS3, published by Atlas and developed by From Software the makers of the Kings Field franchise. They had set out to make a "spiritual successor" to Kings Field and I think they pretty much nailed it but made this game a whole lot better. This isn't so much a review as it's just me talking about things in Demon's Souls I like and why I like them. In the end this is just a chance for me to talk about a game I just can't stop talking about, even now 9 months after beating it.




Demon's Souls tells the story of a land called Boletaria ruled by the aging mad King Allant the kingdom is dying. Allant has summoned the Old One from it's slumber and the kingdom has been trapped by a fog trapping all those inside. You play a hero from outside the fog who ventures into Boletaria to try and defeat the evil. You enter fight some monsters and one way or another you die. You awake in the Nexus as a spirit and then the game truly begins.

Demon's Souls is at it's heart a 3rd person action RPG. It moves at a slower pace than most action RPGS you need to time your combat, mixing attacks and blocks to survive. You are able to choose from many different classes at the beginning, ranging from Knights to Mages with everything in between. In the end it doesn't matter which you choose because and this is one of the big things I like about this game every class can do anything. Yeah a Mage will be better with magic at first but with the right leveling a Thief can cast just as many spells as their magic using friends. The starting class is just a template for how you want to fight at first if you don't like it you can make your character anyway you want. You level by killing monsters and getting souls. You spend the souls like currency to level and buy equipment. As you level each new level costs more souls but you can go back into any level and replay it to grind out souls but you only fight the bosses once.

You start the main game dead, on the form of your soul. In soul form you have half your life but do more damage. As you fight you will eventually get to a boss when you defeat the boss you are given your body back which grants you full health but you do less damage. One thing that's really cool is when you're a soul you do not make footstep sounds and your armor does not make noise as you dodge and run, this lets you sneak up on some enemies.

One of the best things about this game is the way multiplayer is handled. Even though you are in a single player world you are always online with other people. You can see messaged left by other players who were in the same place as you in their own game world. These messages can be tips to help or fake messages to make you come to your death. Now when you're in soul form you can go to other players games to help them on a particularly tough part when they lay down a summon stone. The player doing the summoning must be in body form to summon help but this also has a negative aspect to it. When you are alive another soul form player can invade your world and try to kill you for a chance to get their body back. This is just such an amazing way of putting multiplayer into a game. I can't count the times I would be running around in my body form and see the Black Phantom is Invading message and feel my stomach drop as I didn't know what to expect and where it would come from.

This adds to the game's already tough difficulty. I'm use to games now a days being a little to easy for my taste so I was excited to hear that Demon's Souls was suppose to be this brutally hard game and yeah it's difficult, well it is at first. The time it took me to get from the start to the first boss was about 6 hours but I was having a blast the whole time. The game is never difficult in a frustrating or cheap way. If you die you messed up it's always your fault. The hundreds of times I died over my experience playing this I never felt my deaths were cheap in anyway and I could look at what happened and know what I should of done to survive. While this game is hard at the start once you get into the flow of the combat and you end up just getting what this game is all about it becomes a whole lot easier to play it. The last two levels were very easy for me and some of the bosses in worlds 4 and 5 are down right pathetic to fight. Most of the bosses can be destroyed from range be it magic or what I used was a bow and I wasn't even trained high in using bows. The next couple lines are a quote from the lead designer I took from Wikipedia...

Miyazaki commented on the game's notorious considerable difficulty as "never the goal" but rather focus on creating a real sense of accomplishment. Difficulty was rather described as "one way to offer an intense sense of accomplishment through forming strategies, overcoming obstacles, and discovering new things." Other locations of the game were described as "places of evil intent" such as the Tower of Latria embodying man-made evil and the Valley of Defilement embodying natural evil, with the difficulty heightening their sense of dread and evil for both gameplay and atmosphere. The threat of death that also sees players potentially losing all their hard-earned souls was also created to emphasize this mood, that "if the Souls could be recovered anytime, there would be no suspense or sense of accomplishment". Boss battles were primarily designed to be "varied and exciting" to make sure "players didn’t get tired of the same fight" and like the rest of the game "encourage them to figure out different tactics, to think on their feet". Takeshi Kajii actually felt that the boss battles were not the hardest element; "You say boss, but it’s not just the boss. It’s everything including the road up to the boss that makes this game really hard. If you find patterns to destroy the boss, it’s not that hard. It’s how you get to the boss that makes this a difficult game."

What he's says sums up the whole boss battle experience and when I think about the boss fights like this then it makes sense the later ones are a little easier because the levels are harder while the bosses as I've said are easier. This is important because when you die either in body or soul form you start the level over. No mid level check points or saving in the middle. The worlds are broken up into hyphened worlds such as 1-1, 1-2, 1-3 etc. You you fight a boss at the end of each -# and can continue from there which is a little saving grace on the difficulty because I even think it would be brutal to have to do all of one world in one go but when you get to the point of being able to understand the game play you'll feel like you could beat a whole world in one go.

I really like the way the world is presented in this. Boletaria is a dying world and it's shown as such. All the worlds are dark with destroyed buildings and the signs of the former glory. The hub world the Nexus has only a few people trapped inside with you and their outlook is of despair with some hope you can succeed. In the worlds you run into just a few people that aren't the monsters but these people are crazed or on the way to total breakdown. The world design gives you the overwhelming feeling of being alone in your fight, this is one of the few games I've played that truly make you feel alone as you fight these insane crazy monsters.

I played Demon's Souls as a Knight. I was going to a melee build because in most RPGs that's what I do. In the end I was using my bow on all the bosses and mixing lots of magic into the attacks. For me the Knight had the good beginning melee strength and his magic was high enough to get into using spells early on. Others I've talked to about this used magic users at first and had a easier time at the beginning of the game. If I play through this again and not in a New Game + with my Knight I will try a magic user and see. I liked all the character design but I thought all the bosses were amazing. I love a game with giant bosses to fight this one has a lot of them. My absolutely favorite boss fight was in 5-3, I don't want to spoil it but the back story to it was just great and the aftermath just blew me away.

So to end this, if you like games you need to play Demon's Souls. It may not be your thing as some people I've talked to play it and just don't get it but I think it deserves to be played by everyone. It's just that good of a game. When I look back at all my years of gaming very few games will be up there as making me happy I play games because I was able to experience them and Demon's Souls is probably near the top if not at the top of this list. Just play it if you haven't, if you don't like I'm sorry but it is something special.