God of War III for PS3: Final Review

Trial by fire - by which the guilt or innocence of the accused is determined by subjecting them to a painful task

God of War III for the PS3 was my trial by fire, quickly determining my guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. I've been found guilty of hating most things about video games and I'm guilty of being terrible at playing them. Ben, otherwise known as judge and jury in this trial, knew that I needed to face this game. He wanted me to encounter everything I fear and despise about video games head-on in the hopes that I'd learn a lot in the process. The good news in this trial is that I bravely faced my fear and loathing for 2 whole hours, 49 minutes and 22 long seconds and learned some important lessons about video games along the way... Bad news is, I never want to play this game ever, ever again.

In this final review of God of War III, I will enumerate the qualities I hate about video games and how this game made me face them. Then I will respond to each hated quality with a lesson learned because I faced them.

I hate to be scared. Ben doesn't think this game is scary, but it is. I actually threw the controller at him once and forced him to fight a horrifying snake woman. I played those nearly three hours in an almost constant panicked state. My shoulders probably felt like the tree-mountain-titan's shoulders looked – hard as stone. My fingers cramped they were so tense. I don't think I blinked once during game play. After each gaming session I felt like I'd just gotten off a treadmill, not a couch. I faced swarming zombie skeletons, dark fiery caves with giant lurking monsters, wavy arms that rose out of the rocky cave-bottom and tried to kill me. Everything I encountered was dark, angry, and murderous set to a soundtrack of timpani rolls and blaring brass. The scenery was unpleasant to look at and my character was an ugly dude. If I'm going to look at something for long periods of time, I'd prefer them to be a little more attractive. This game gives you no relief from doom and gloom, danger and violence - at least not in the first three hours.

Lesson Learned: I learned in College Fiction class to give the writer the benefit of the doubt. Assume he or she knew what they were doing and that everything in the story was there for a reason. Each comma placement, every word carefully chosen. Applying the same principal to video games, the God of War developers certainly successfully set a mood and created a world that creeped me out and made me feel like I really was in a long and seemingly endless battle. Congratulations, guys. I may not like that kind of "story," but you did make me feel something and that's more than I can say for other video games I've played.

I also learned that the hordes of enemies may look scary, but really aren't that bad. They may have scared me in their sudden and unexpected appearance, but they almost always surprised me in their quick and relatively painless deaths. I learned that if I just stay calm and keep hurling my whip at them,they'll all die eventually.




I hate fighting and killing games. Killing things gets boring. The mechanics of the fights seem tedious to me. I don't care how many times you change up what type of gross beast I have to fight next, I'm still just repeatedly pushing square and that just seems like a waste of my time.

Lesson Learned: I may still think fighting and killing in video games is tedious, but I don't think it's as difficult as I did before. This game made mekill lots of different things in lots of different ways. The game told me exactly what buttons I had to push to use certain weapons. Plus, I learned all about Quick Timer Events thanks to the fighting in this game. A quick timer event is a game mechanic where the player pushes certain buttons in a particular order to make a video show up. You have control of the game in that you have to push the buttons when the game tells you to, but you don't really have control of your character anymore once you've pushed the button correctly. In this game, quick timer events were used to kill big boss creatures. I would have to hit the bad guy many times with my whips or swords until a flaming circle appeared. I'd push the circle button and then Kratos would jump on the creature's back and cut off one of it's heads and then a flaming triangle would appear. I'd hit the triangle button and Kratos would stab the creature in the back and so on until the creature was dead. This gameplay mechanic allows for impressive fight scenes without me actually having to do the impressive fighting which, I suppose, is preferable although having to hit the buttons seemed stupid. Just show me a video of Kratos killing the thing if that's what you want to do. I don't need to push buttons to stay engaged. Which reminds me...

I hate when games make you do things just so you have something to do. This game was really guilty of that. I remember having a long conversation with Ben about my ideal video game. My idea was a Chipmunk Adventure-esque hot air balloon travel game in which the character would have to find important cultural icons on a global scavenger hunt. Ben's response was, “sure, but what's the game?” And I replied, “oh yeah.” I hate games that should really just be movies. God of War III would make a fine movie. It has a story I could probably get into if the game would just be a little more forthcoming with the plot. The character could be interesting if I could find some reason to care about him. The places and gods could be cool to see if they weren't so ugly. But no. The story is told really slowly and with cheesy, clunky dialogue. In the meantime you have to mash the circle button to make Kratos open a door, hold R1 a million times to open a million treasure chests, solve nearly impossible, convoluted puzzles for the sheer ability to proceed to yet another puzzle. I am fine with solving a puzzle, shooting a bow and arrow, moving a cart filled with rocks, flying to faraway platforms, and climbing never-ending tangled vines to unseen destinations if, in the end, it seemed like there was a reason for doing any of those things. In this game, and many games that I dislike, it seems like you just have to do stuff so that the game can function as a game instead of as a movie.

Lesson learned: By having to complete all these useless tasks I learned how to complete these useless tasks! I figure Ben has games planned for me in the future that will require me to be able to climb, run, push, fight, fly, jump, and solve puzzles. This one game contains just about every game mechanic possible and it makes you do each one a LOT. I got pretty good at double jumping up to a higher rock or navigating my way over tangled vines or along narrow ledges. I know it was hard for Ben to watch me learn. At one point he said, "oh my god, just go right." I was TRYING to go right! Kratos just wasn't going where I was telling him to go!

Not only did I practice making Kratos do what he needed to do, I started to understand how to get around in a 3D environment by following the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle motion) of the camera as it pans. I learned to look for out-of-place items in an environment because those would often tell me what I should do next. I learned to smash boxes to gain information or obtain magic or experience or strength. I started to find and follow what Ben refers to as “visual clues.” I learned that part of what makes me hate video games is that I don't know their secret language – the little things that gamers have learned to notice and respond to.



I hate not knowing where to go or what to do next and I like to have clear goals and definitive ending points.

Lesson learned: This game hit on both of those things in interesting ways. First of all, you never really know where you're going in this game or why. There are no maps showing you where you are. No stage maps to tell you what level you're on and what level you're trying to get to. Kratos is on a mission to overthrow the Gods of Olympus to free the people from the God's oppressive rule. That's about all you know, it seems. You just keep going and find new gods to fight and new places to fight in along the way which forced me to play longer because I was eager to discover where I was going to go next(and eager to get to a save point!) And although there was no map to tell you where to go, the game wouldn't let me stray far from Kratos' intended destination which made this game a good transition into other more exploratory 3D action-adventure games to come. I really have a hard time when a game is open-ended and I have the freedom to go anywhere I want. I get lost easily and have a bad sense of direction. I tend to wander aimlessly, getting more and more frustrated the more and more lost I become. I was relieved that this game wouldn't let me go where I shouldn't go. I usually had a path to follow. As long as I followed the blinky lights, I could generally tell where I should be even if I couldn't tell why I should be there.

I hate solving puzzles. I really do.I don't like to admit that I hate solving puzzles because not liking them makes me feel unintelligent and unintellectual. It seems like the smart, nerdy people I tend to love and befriend all like to solve puzzles. They think solving puzzles is a fun way to challenge themselves. To me, though, puzzles are torture devices meant to make me feel like an idiot. I'd rather avoid them. This game was full of them.

Lesson learned: God of War III forces you to figure out puzzles or you simply can't keep going. Since I had to progress in order to write about this game I had to solve at least a couple of these puzzles, though I had to have Ben's help with many of them. Even he admitted that the puzzles in this game were annoying. The puzzles went something like this: you figure out that you must free someone stuck behind a bunch of brambles. Then you run around the area for awhile, often jumping or vine-climbing looking for any sort of clues, usually in the form of blinking lights. The picture below is a good example. The R1 on the screen tells me that box has something in it I need. There's a wheel in the picture that I know I have to use in some way, probably to raise or lower a door somewhere else. The blinky light there alerted me to the wheel's presence. That cart with the rocks in it came from another room. I have to figure out where I need to push the cart so that I can use it, but I haven't figure out where that is yet. Luckily, that fire next to me is a save point (hurray!) so I can come right back here at another time since I am tired of trying to solve this puzzle now. Solving these puzzles takes a long time and, like I said before, there doesn't seem to be much of a reason for solving the puzzles other than to get me to the next annoying puzzle in this dark and dreary underworld. The lesson learned here, I guess, is that I can force myself to figure them out eventually, although I will still hate every minute of it. There is, I suppose, a modicum of satisfaction gained by solving them, even if I still wish the reward for my efforts was more than the ability to keep walking through Hades.




I hate when I require Ben's help to accomplish something. That goes for moving heavy furniture, fixing a broken toilet, or deciding which outfit to wear. It's not that I don't think of Ben as my partner, as someone there to help me through life's trials, big or small. It's just that I want to know that I can do things for myself. I want to be prepared for whatever life throws at me. In this case, life threw impossible-to-solve-puzzles and a snake monster at me and that was more than I could take. If I were to ever play this game again, I would have to have Ben by my side. And I suppose that's a good lesson learned, too. Some trials are just too difficult to face alone. I'm lucky to have an able-bodied and able-minded partner to turn to when I'm scared or in trouble, whether it's a clogged toilet I have to fight or a swarm of zombie skeletons.

Although I don't see myself playing this game again, at least not without Ben, I am glad he made me play it. I feel like a barrier has been lifted. I feel able to move on to just about any game with a little less fear and a little more controller practice. I think Ben feels bad for putting me through this difficult trial. The next game seems like the complete opposite of God of War III and I can't say I'm sorry about that. I could stand to play something relaxing and beautiful for a few days to make up for Kratos' ugly scar-face and his band of hideous titan friends.

God of War III, can I have a timpani roll please?

Game assignment number three: Flower on the PS3 (mission is to beat the game). If I can beat a spider-horse water monster, I'm pretty sure I can beat a game called Flower. I guess we'll see.