Awesome. Entirely as great as I hope it would be.
Unfortunately school has dominated my life since spring break as well as the play I’m in.
I’ve started my review but I’ve yet to finish it; and I want to do the game justice. I should be posting it soon but it’s definitely pretty late for a review so I want it to be pretty conclusive and thought-out well.
In the meantime, I may make some random posts; game related or not.
-Ben
It feels like Christmas Eve. I’m going to need to heavily sedate myself in order to get to sleep tonight.
Tomorrow I wake up early, eat breakfast and head to Gamestop when it opens. Then I’m going to play it for several hours, possibly all day and I’ll be updating every hour or so with some spoiler-free impressions.
Sometime after I finish I’ll post some final impressions before putting a full review together.
Also my friend Mike may be updating as well or just sending me some final impressions to post alongside mine.
I will do my best to update pretty consistently and not get sucked into the game indefinitely.
The average play-through time is probably 10-15 hours and although I’ll be playing it almost non-stop I will be savoring every moment; so who knows how long it will take.
-Ben
I just ran into this video interview with Adam Puhl, Combat Designer on the game, who you may remember from one of the interviews in my first God of War entry. In this video he just goes more into some of the details involved in the combat design and how it turned out, very cool.
6 More Days!
-Ben
Before you get too much of a hard on let me start by saying there is NO GOD OF WAR MOVIE. There are some rip-offs, such as Dawn of War which for some reason recently changed it’s name to that from it’s original “War of Gods.” What’s it about, you ask? Well, it’s plot description on IMDB is:
“Greek warrior Theseus battles against imprisoned titans.”
When I first heard about it it was described as,
“Greek warrior Theseus battles against Gods.”
Interesting… There’s also Clash of the Titans which is respectably a remake so there’s no “ripping-off” going on but I just found it funny that it’s release was pushed back from the week after God Of War:III comes out, to a week later. Funny, is that their official reason was “to accommodate the addition of 3D to the film.” I’m sure it had nothing to do with the highest selling Greek Myth-based media in history coming out around the same time.
Anyway enough of that, I also wanted to share a humorous hypothetical about the possibility of a God of War movie. G4 did this short segment about casting a God of War movie that isn’t very serious, but pretty funny to imagine:
I am pretty curious as to how serious they were by suggesting Vin Diesel…that’s a horrible, terrible, repulsive idea. Kratos may not have the broadest of emotional spectrums (pretty much just angry, and really fucking angry.) but if a movie was made they would need a great actor to not only be badass and angry, but nail his voice and play out that whole anger part really damn well. I know who my only acceptable choice for an actor to play Kratos is, the same one David Jaffe suggested when the God of War movie was actually in the works and fully scripted back in 2003: Djimon Hounsou, a man who not only looks the part, but is also a pretty exceptional actor from what I’ve seen. Seriously, can you name a better resemblance to Kratos than Djimon?
If you can, please share, I’d be interested to know.
Now I’m actually going to get back to that whole school thing, I’ll update again over the weekend.
-Ben
With God of War:III one week away I thought I should make an update. Last night when I got home from my miserable Astronomy mid-term, I was greeted by my newest edition of Playstation Magazine featuring a God of War:III review. It took all of my strength to not peek at it…for about ten minutes and then I did. Luckily, it’s very short and spoils very little, which makes sense since it’s still a week from release. Not surprisingly it got 5 stars. Currently Metaritic.com has it listed as 94 with a lowest score of 80; pretty awesome. There’s nothing that could stop me from being completely enamored with this game anyway, but it’s good to see the reviews are indicating the game is everything I hoped for.
I’ve been particularly careful to avoid certain GOW:III news recently, hoping not to cross over any major spoilers but I have been keeping up best I can. Two Commercials, beginning to air next week at release, are the first things that come to mind. One is just some clips and review blurbs and the other is the inevitable GOW commercial I’ve been waiting for, with Kevin Butler. If you don’t recognize that name you’ll surely recognize him when you see the commercial.
That first one exemplifies how God Of War:III will affect my social life. If I currently had a girlfriend I would choose Kratos over her in a heartbeat.
Next up is a brief interview with Stig Asmussen (Game Director) with Adam Sessler on X play.
That’s pretty much my dream job.
Next up—and most interesting I think—is Adam Sessler again giving his thoughts on the game. Of all the pieces of God of War news floating by in the past few days, this video revamped my excitement the most. Probably because Adam was admittedly very excited to play the game and clearly had a great time with it. He talks about how great the controls feel, not only for the Blades but the other three weapons as well, how great the pacing is and how badly, upon completion, he wanted to play it again. All great things, as expected.
Did anyone else find it a horrible tease to see the XMB in the background with God Of War:III in the PS3 just begging to be played? Or how badass the games background wallpaper is? Ah, the anxiousness with which I await to play this game is downright painful.
Well I have a big paper due and a good 80 pages of reading to do before Thursday so I’m going to get to that. I’ll try to make at least one more update over the weekend and I’ll plan to document My first days with the game as much as possible before posting a review..whenever I stop playing the game.
-Ben
Man oh man, I have not been so overwhelmingly excited for a game in a very long time.
From the masterfully done quick-time sequences to the epic story of Greek mythos to the overall gameplay that makes you feel god-like while still feeling challenging'; what isn’t there to love about this series? Now the final conclusion to the trilogy is on it’s way and fans of the series are steeping in anticipation.
I haven’t kept up with this blog in a long time either and this is the game giving me enough momentum to do it. I’ll be ranting and raving (hopefully in a more eloquent sense than what that phrase conjures) about it until it’s release and then documenting very closely (day by day, possibly even hour by hour) my experiences with the game from day one. Incidentally, and this is about as close to a proof of God I’ve ever seen, I have spring break that same week so I’ll be living God of War III day-in, day-out with the exception two rehearsal nights and possibly some homework if I find the time.
Before I get into the third game too much let’s recap. I’m assuming that if you’re reading this you’ve played I & II and possibly Chains of Olympus on PSP (a totally legitimate prequel in the storyline, in case you didn’t know) but just in case you haven’t (for shame) and even you if you have and need a refresher, here’s a great video summing those three up quite well.
Now that we’re all on the same (awesome) page, let’s get into the fast approaching conclusion to the trilogy. That does a decent job of summarizing some of the main plot points but if you were to map out the series’ in terms of badassness it would go something like:
If you’re anything like me, you’ve been dying to get your hands on God of War III ever since that beautifully CGI rendered cut scene that GOW:II ends with, which is rubbish compared to how mere gameplay looks in the third iteration.
If you’ve played the demo (and if you haven’t, seriously, what’s your deal. Go download it now!) then you’ve seen what I mean BUT as noted in the first of the three interviews from developers working on the game; the graphics and overall visual appeal has improved massively, even from that seen in the E3 demo.
Ok, ok, I’m losing focus. Let’s start with these three interviews I just mentioned and then I’ll work out what else to add as I find more information from now until it’s release. I also plan on doing my best to steer clear from spoilers—I want to go into the game as fresh as possible so this blog will likely reflect that by remaining spoiler free. If I happen to come across one that I know, I will very clearly mark it as such, but I’ll definitely be trying to avoid them at all costs.
This interview mentions some interesting details, most eye-catching of which to me were the difference in graphics in the final game—even compared to the E3 demo just released on the PSN. Hight mentions some of the different effects added since the demo such as HDR lighting and things like motion blur and depth of field,
“… for some people it will probably feel like splitting hairs, but, you know, the depth of field that we have, motion blur, high dynamic range lighting. Just, in general, higher texture in fidelity of the models. Kratos himself, we get a lot tighter in close-ups. Overall, it just looks great. If you were to look side by side, you would see the difference. If you play the demo first and are like, "Wow, this is intense. I love it." Then, when you actually get the game, it is going to be, I think, a very positive experience, like, "Man, they made a lot of improvements in six months time."
You can find the full interview here, at joystiq,com
You know all of those outrageously badass moves you’ve seen in the demo such as using enemies as battering rams or ripping their heads off their shoulders as one would shoo a fly in annoyance? Yeah, this is probably the guy to thank. In this interview he talks about how the combat has evolved in the new game and some of the changes they’ve made (while remaining frustratingly/thankfully mostly vague) and also touches on those graphical changes Hight mentioned in the last interview, and how they affect the combat. He mentions the first boss battle—we all know GOW games start with a boss battle in a unique set piece, epic in scale—is against Poseidon who not surprisingly, you kill. If that was a spoiler sorry, but that one’s hard to miss. The journalist doing this interview, Kevin Kelly, actually links to his article about his first play through of the game’s opening scene that you can find here. Personally, I’ve avoided it and refuse to check it out, but I’m sure it’s interesting if you’re ok with hearing about the game’s opening scene.
Puhl goes on to talk about some of the dynamics of boss fights in the game, the variety in the them throughout and also about Dante’s Inferno and Darksiders. I agree mostly with what he said, “about those two games but my two cents on the GOW look-a-likes are: Dante’s Inferno did almost nothing unique and is merely a pencil tracing of God of War done by someone with Parkinson’s; it’s very similar but not better or anywhere near as good. I personally didn’t get too into Darksiders but I could tell right away from the demo that it combined things like World of Warcraft, Legend of Zelda, God of War and Portal to make a game that although borrowing many concepts pretty clearly, made them it’s own enough for the game to be unique as a whole. It’s a much better game in many ways than Dante’s Inferno
Anyway, here is that interview.
This final interview is with Design Director, Todd Pappy during the God of War:III event in Hollywood yesterday. It’s comprised of pretty varied questions from the interviewer and some lowly fans like us which makes it a bit more brief but also a nice change of pace from the last two. It hits on everything from the “wow” moments of the game to some specifics of the design and development process. Definitely worth checking out, and spoiler free!
We’ll I have a mid-term to work on so I should probably end it here for now, but I think I’ve made a decent start thus far. I haven’t even told many people about this yet but if I have linked you hear it’s almost definitely because I’d like some feedback from you—and of course for you to just plain read it as well. So if there’s anything anywhere in between praise and criticism that jumps to mind, please comment on here or feel free to email me ( valosomnio@gmail.com ).
I’ll make another update when I’ve gathered up some news but I’ll try to plan on updating again early next week either way.
Stay strong, it’s only 12 days away,
-Ben
Heavy Rain was a great experience. I think “Interactive Drama” sums it up quite well. If the sound of that is even a bit enticing, you would probably enjoy Heavy Rain. By the end, especially by the second play through, you’ll notice some pretty big plot holes; that said, it’s a pretty riveting story with a satisfying twist and some pretty innovative gameplay sequences. It is so much more immersive than a “long quick time event” as it’s often been dubbed by those with no taste. It’s an amazing game, I know I promised a full review but I can’t do that right now, I’m too wrapped up in another game entirely… I’ll be focusing on God of War:III from now until…a while from now. Starting with as much preview information as I can get my hands on and then I’ll be documenting my experience with it from day 1. I will likely struggle immensely to pull myself away to update this, but I’ll try my best.
