God of War 3 News & GoW3 Reviews

Finally, John Hight has some great news for God of War fans. The Director of Product Development revealed that the God of War III E3 Demo will now be included with the God of War Collection. Remember, that SCEA didn’t want to include the Demo as it wasn’t up-to-standards yet.

They seem to have done a rethink, based on the general response of fans. You can download the Demo over the PSN, however there is a catch. It will be available only for those who purchase the God of War Collection through a voucher code.

Still, its a pretty good incentive for those who were on the fence, in deciding to buy the God of War Collection. To remind you, the Collection has both God of War games at 720p and 60fps.

News Source

Our previous post reported speculation brewing about GoW1 and GoW2 on PS3 Bluray disks. Sony has now confirmed that both game titles will be now available on the Playstation 3. Fans can replay both God of War 1 & 2 in the awesomeness of PS3 at a price of $39.99.

Sony had once said Backward Compatibility on PS3 will no longer be supported, so these titles seem to have been ported onto the PS3. It all started when SCEA asked fans to fill in  a survey of what they would like in the Collector’s Edition and a lot of fans wanted GoW1 & 2. Porting a game to a different console is no easy work and its commendable that they were able to do it so quickly. The games are remastered, with trophies and run at 720p

However, as speculated God of War 3 demo wont come with the God of War Collection. Product Development Director for the SCEA, John Hight said to IGN in an interview that the God of War 3 Demo will take time and didn’t want it to hinder  the release of the God of War Collection.

The other bummer is that the God of War Collection wont release in Europe this year. No further information was revealed by SCEE on the delay.

Gamescom came and went away without any new news about God of War 3. It seemed that all was quiet in Santa Monica, but surprising news has come from Mexico. A person by the name of Marco Delgado who is supposedly the Product Manager for Sony Mexico let it out on his Twitter page, that a special God of War 3 pack is being released this December.

The God of War 3 special package will contain God of War, God of War II and God of War III Demo. If true, this will be awesome Christmas gift for all God of War 3 fans.

UPDATE: The tweet if it was there, has now been removed from MarkPlaystation’s page. More information about this can be found here.

This news snippet contains speculation. It is advised to take it with a fistful of salt.

This is a review of the God of War 3 (GoW3) Demo, first displayed at E3 2009. We will be looking at different aspects of GoW3 like Graphics, Audio, Gameplay, Story, Replayability, etc.

GAMEPLAY:
God of War 3 (GoW3) starts off with Kratos on a mountain-side path. The city of Olympia shows up in the distance. Olympia is a fortified city at the base of Mount Olympus. Kratos is shown using his trademark Blades of Athena against the enemies. Kratos also has new Grab moves up his sleeve (or should I say Fleece). Grab an enemy using CIRCLE and then you have the option to use the enemy as a battering ram, throw it at other soldiers, rip it apart, etc.

You can switch weapons in the middle of a move. The SQUARE-SQUARE-TRIANGLE move is available both for the Blades as well as for the Cestus. So also, we do have Special Moves with the Cestus i.e. L1 + any of the buttons when using the Cestus.

Additionally, a new element has been introduced in GoW3, wherein the magic meter fills up automatically after some time. This was displayed with the Fire Bow (similar to Typhon’s Bane in GoW2) with which you can attack distant enemies. You can make around 6 hits at enemies before the Bow meter empties. It takes another 5 seconds for the meter to regenerate fully. This is better than previous God of War games where in you had to conserve your magic, especially for boss fights. Interestingly, there were three meters on the top left of the screen; one for health, the second completely empty and the third for the Fire Bow. It isn’t really clear whether the Fire Bow has replaced the Amulet of Fates, and the second meter will still be the magic meter.

It seems that the makers of God of War are in tune with fan feelings. It comes to light when you hear Stig Asmussen speak about why sub-weapons like the Barbarian Hammer, Spear of Destiny, Blade of Artemis, etc weren’t favored by gaming enthusiasts. The stock weapon of choice being the Blades of Athena for its all-round (literally!) usefulness. Most Playstation games have the weapons-switch option on the D-pad; God of War was an exception. God of War 1 & 2 had the sub-weapons by pressing the L and R buttons or two buttons simultaneously. This has been fixed in GoW3. Kratos has a sub-weapon called Cestus which are a pair of Lion-headed gauntlets. The Cestus is great for close hand-combat type melee situations, whereas the Blades of Athena are good for general fighting.

A good improvement has been with the Quick-Time Event buttons. In GoW1 & GoW2, the button prompts used to come in the center of the screen. In GoW3, SQUARE comes on the left side, TRIANGLE button prompt comes on top, CIRCLE comes on the right side and X comes at the bottom of the screen. The L1 and R1 buttons come on the top-left and top-right corners respectively. CIRCLE button mashing comes at the bottom-right corner. This does help during the boss-fights as dont have to squint to see which button prompt comes on screen; rather just by seeing the side of the screen on which the prompt comes up, we can mash the corresponding buttons. This will surely slash off precious fractions of seconds during the boss-battles and make it a touch easy.

GRAPHICS:
The framerate in GoW3 is variable like GoW1 & GoW2. The framerate will vary between 30 to 60 frames per second, and never drop below 30 frames. David Jaffe had a philosophy, which said that if a puzzle, fight or a scene needs to be in a game; then he made sure it was in the game, irrespective of the framerate. This philosophy had been adopted by Cory Barlog and now Stig.

The art direction is vividly implanted in your mind, as you see Kratos traversing mountainsides, fighting the Army of Olympus soldiers like the undead, Harpies, Centaurs and Cyclops with brutal realism. Each move has been carefully calibrated; worked out in minute detail. This can be understood, when you realize that each of Kratos’ teeth are modelled separately.

The number of soldiers at a time have been ramped up to 50 from a maximum of 15 in GoW2. Kratos is now made up of 20,000 polygons of moving flesh and muscle; and we haven’t even started talking about the big daddy of them all: the Titans. The Fire Titan shows up in the background as massive living body made of rock and molten lava. Stig revealed that he is Perses, the Titan of Destruction. Aptly named, he smashes through the Greek architecture with ease. The fight between Helios vs Fire Titan Perses makes up for an interesting backdrop as Kratos goes around the area smashing up Zeus’ minions.

The Demo processes graphics at 720p; Stig has mentioned that the resolution will go up to 1080p and 1080i before the final game is released.

AUDIO:
As we have come to expect from a God of War game, the score is of the highest quality. The opera based music really peps you up. The background score varies based on what is happening in the game and meshes perfectly with the overall feel of the game. The score is quiet when you are alone, and drums up in a foreboding manner whenever, you are about to face enemies.

STORY:
Though not much of the story is shown in the game, we could still pick up some clues from Stig Asmussen. The Demo is set 3 hours in the actual game. Stig has confirmed that the Demo is a specific part of the story, and not a separate element. Kratos will NOT have Sex with women. He will get to fight between 5-10 Gods which include the Gods we saw on the balcony at the end of GoW2. The Titan Gaia will be a key character in the story and the Blade of Olympus missing in the demo and video trailers will make a comeback at some point in the game.

OVERALL IMPRESSION:
Considering that Stig Asmussen has gone on to say that “We want this game to show what the Playstation 3 is capable of.”, the SCEA Santa Monica team still has a long way to go. It is a good thing that the release date is in March 2010. The music is what we were impressed with most. The Fire Bow is a good add-on for the gameplay. The graphics still need to be a notch better, though the environmental realism is excellent. Nothing much, happens storywise, expect that we get to brutally behead Helios and obtain his Head. It seems that the Head may also be used to find secret chests. The demo is good to play a couple of times, just to go through the environments and get a hang of the Cestus and the Harpy Rides.
The final ‘as is’ impression of the demo tells us that the possibilities and potential in God of War 3 are great. Not very unlike a magic chest full of orbs waiting to be opened!

This article is brought to you by www.gow4.com . Are you aware of the current List of God of War 3 Controls? Want to show your knowledge about Kratos’ moves, then click here.

SCEA today told an eagerly waiting audience at the E3 Sony Press Conference that God of War 3 (GOW3) will be releasing on March 2010! Kratos will climb Mount Olympus on the rising expectations of thousands of fans on this day to ensure that everything comes to an end, once and for all. Fans and media had been speculating for months whether the game would be releasing in December 2009 or in March 2010, however, all speculation has been laid to rest through this confirmed news by Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) themselves. A demo was also shown.

God of War 2 had ended on an intriguing note with Kratos scaling Mount Olympus and assisting Gaia and the Titans to fight the Great War 2 with Zeus and the Gods.

Additionally SCEA CEO Jack Tretton said that 364 Playstation Platform games will be released this year. Wow! That’s a game every day!

Playstation 2 outsold next-generation consoles in April. Even though this is its 9th year in existence.  Jack has announced that 100 new PS2 titles will be coming up this year.

PSP Go, the worst kept secret during E3 2009 was officially shown and will be publicly releasing on Oct 1 2009. The price of PSP Go will be $249.99 in US and 249.99 Euros in EU.

One of the really amazing things of the conference was the display of a motion control for PS3 called EyeTool, which seems to be a good answer to Project Natal.

If you want to watch the complete HD version of the uncensored God of War 3 Demo thats 20 min long, you can watch it here.

Oh! and if this is your first visit to gow4.com, check out our fanfictional God of War 4 story