I spent 15 hours on God Of War (GoW) 1, 14 hours on GoW 2 and now,after just under 9 hours I have completed GoW3. 2010 was the first time I had ever played a GoW game on a console, I had played the demo of GoW on the PSP briefly so when I bought my USA imported I only had a rough idea of what the games were about.
The first two God Of War's played brilliant, and they looked and sounded pretty impressive in their upscaled glory on the God Of War Collection, so I had very high hopes for the third and final game. Little did I know that I was about to play a game that would totally blow my mind.
First thing that impressed me was the shear amount of things going on on the screen at one time. The first hour or so of the game is just a pleasure to play, and a pleasure to watch other people play. The scale of the game play is just mind-boggling. The camera moves in and out of the playing field giving you a sense of scale never before felt in a video game. You feel tiny in a world full of giants, simply awesome!
The combat is a refined version of GoW 1 & 2, and it is all the better for it. It does not feel like a button masher, you actually need to fight with different weapons and different tactics. The special weapons all work well too, and for the first time you can switch weapons on the fly. The game also includes the quick time events (QTEs), and I found them paced pretty well, only missing the events once or twice.
The game throws quite a few puzzles at you too, and to be fair I managed to work them all out quite easily (though some took longer than others). Thankfully though, it's all quite straight forward and I did not need to look up any cheats to help me through it. Each puzzle adds to the gameplay, and adds to the whole fun of the game.
Sound in the game is just brilliant! The orchestral soundtrack rocks and the sound effects are superb. The voice acting is also brilliant, probably up to Uncharted 2's level. Talking of Uncharted 2, GoW3 is probably up there with UC2 as one of the greatest games ever made.
So, my final say on the game. Game play is enjoyable to the n'th degree, graphics and sound are just mind blowing and it's a fitting end for the trilogy. The ending was a bit of a shock for me, but I think it was about right (the dream sequence just before the end is freaky and techically very impressive).
Overall then, up there with Uncharted 2 as my favourite game ever! If you don't play this you are missing out on a part of gaming history.
:) Mark
