It’s no secret that the name of the game these days is franchise. Every publisher in the industry is looking for that one magical game that they can turn into a multiple-release, money-printing powerhouse. This seems to happen so much in fact that developers are even starting to conceptualize their games as multiple-release epics before the first entry even hits store shelves. When this happens, the game’s story often remains extremely open-ended until the last entry. This does nothing but leave gamers with an unsatisfying play experience and a two year case of anxiety as they wait for the next entry that they hope is coming. I’m here to tell those developers who are playing this mean trick on us one thing. Cut the shit! The video game industry is a fickle mistress, and you never really know which games are going to get sequels and which will be a one-and-done. Therefore, from a narrative standpoint, give players a complete enough narrative so that they feel justified for having just spent $60 on your game.

If you think I’m being overly harsh here, I’m pretty sure I only need to utter one word, and you’ll see my point: Shenmue. Originally billed as a multi-chapter, multi-game opus from famed creator Yu Suzuki, Shenmue’s tale of Ryo Hazuki and his search for the man who murdered his father never got to come to an end. While two installments were released, the second ends in a cliffhanger that has caused the game to always rank high on fanboy wish lists. However, due to its huge budget and lukewarm sales, the third game has only ever seen the earliest stages of development and currently has no steam behind it at all.

This is highly unfair, and potentially unethical, of developers and publishers to do to players. While I can respect the ambition to create games of this size and scope, I don’t respect any developer that can’t deliver on their promise of completing the series. We don’t accept this from other types of narrative media so why would we accept it from games. You wouldn’t go pay for a movie ticket knowing that you were only going to be shown the first two thirds of the film. So why are we expected to shell out six times that amount to play a game that has no intention of giving us a decent ending?

Now before you jump down my throat about The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and other film franchises that have planned sequels, let’s look at how those projects were and are being carried out. Each movie in those franchises have been adapted from existing works, and those existing works are already written in ways that adhere to successful formulas for dramatic structure. So anyone paying to see those films knows what they are getting into. The established fan base maintains a demand for these films, thereby giving viewers a sense of security that all the parts will be released.

Looking at this release strategy from strictly monetary terms, a developer that has no intention of giving you a complete story/experience until the last title is charging you $180 for their complete product, assuming it’s a trilogy. $180?! Have you ever thought it was a good idea to pay $180 to play any game, watch any movie or hear any story? I didn’t think so. But even assuming that you are ok with the practice, let’s say the last game, like Shenmue 3, never comes out. Now you’re down over a hundred bucks with nothing to show for it.

All the best trilogies in history stem from a solid first entry that was then built upon for later sequels. It’s pretentious to assume that your game/movie/story is so great that it will hold an audience’s attention, not to mention their money, for two more entries. So all the best ones don’t make this assumption. Look at the first entries in the greatest trilogies of all time and how they ended on a note that gives fans enough closure so that if there were never going to be another installment, they can walk away happy. Luke blows up the Death Star. Neo kills Agent Smith. Ripley kills the alien. Sure each one left plenty of room for sequels, but they also gave the audience a cathartic enough ending that they felt satisfied with what they had seen and didn’t require more movies to feel like they had gotten their fill.

So are there any games that have done this whole trilogy thing properly? Yes, and it took the power of a god to make it happen. The God of War trilogy is a shining example of how to execute a proper trilogy in the game industry. The first God of War gives players a story that is epic unto itself and an ending that put a stamp on the story, all the while leaving just enough room for a sequel should fans have wanted one. It even got the second game’s story right by employing the trilogy tool of leaving the second a little more open ended than the first, but it still gave players a feeling of completion and success at the end. And of course, the recently released God of War 3 puts the bow on top of the whole narrative package. Each game tells a complete three-act dramatic story keeping in line with the story of the trilogy. It’s the only fair way for developers to do it.

Developers are only recently figuring out how to put a satisfying story into a single game. It seems like assuming they can stretch one out for multiple games that we are all expected to pay $60 each for is definitely putting the cart before the horse. And even then, those great single narrative games are still few and far between. I know that on Pixelosophy we often plead with developers to take their game narratives as far as they can, and that remains true. But there is a right way to do it and a wrong way. Getting players to shell out their hard earned money for an incomplete experience is absolutely the wrong way. Give us a reason to play another entry by making the first one the total package. The trick is to leave players wanting more based on the experience you gave them; not needing more because of the experience you didn’t give them.

Simply put; God of War 3 is a technical marvel that just bleeds style. Picking up right where God of War 2 left off, The Ghost of Sparta has returned to finish his quest for vengeance that started nearly five years ago with the original God of War. While this newest installment was still created by Sony’s Santa Monica Studio, once again a new director is at the helm. Let’s see whether the team managed to give Kratos a send-off fit for a god.

The game begins moments after the conclusion of the second game with Kratos and the Titans scaling Mt. Olympus to exact revenge on Zeus and the rest of the gods. With their final destination a mere fingertip away, it’s here that the game has one of its only missteps. Obviously it would have been an extremely short game had Kratos and Zeus squared off within the first five minutes, so Kratos has to be knocked back a few notches. This will give players of the previous games a brief moment of “This again?” as they will recognize the game’s narrative structure immediately. However, once they get over that, they are in for quite a ride.

While the game can certainly be enjoyed by players that are new to the franchise, players who are familiar with the first two games will find a lot to love about this particular adventure. The game is filled with little callbacks to both of the previous entries and even the PSP prequel. Thematically, Kratos’ journey is brimming with cathartic pay-offs that come one right after the after. The game does an incredible job of showing the ripple effect that Kratos’ actions throughout the series have had on the world around him and the people he’s encountered. It’s easy to let the heavy themes of grief, forgiveness, betrayal and hope get lost under the buckets of blood spilled at Kratos’ hands, but fortunately they are more than apparent here without beating you over the head with them. Rest easy knowing that a worthy final act awaits you.

Moments before Kratos gets all stabby...

The franchise is well known for pushing the graphical limitations of the PS2, and this trend continues on the PS3 as God of War 3 makes itself right at home on the high-def hardware. Like I said above, this game really is a marvel to behold. It truly has to be seen in motion to be believed. Lighting, depth-of-focus and texture work that other developers have tried to get right for years are at their absolute best here. There is an incredible mix of stylized aesthetics combined with an unrivaled attention to all the little details in animation, facial expressions and surface textures that make this game “feel” real. This game just gets it all right. It is proof positive that you don’t need photorealism to create a sense of reality. On the technical side, there is no apparent texture load or pop-in to be found. Everything is silky smooth.

The only graphical problem comes from the fact that it’s obvious how much more time was spent on the Kratos model than some of the other character models. His skin actually looks rough and porous, and every movement he makes is fluid. On the other hand, secondary characters sometimes show just a little less polish than our hero, sometimes displaying slightly rubbery skin textures. It’s not to say that they look anywhere near the vicinity of bad, just noticeably not as good as Kratos.

It’s impossible to bring up God of War without talking about the combat and Kratos’ toolkit of death. The combo-system at work here is still the best in the industry, only now it runs faster and smoother than you’ve ever experienced. Controls are tight and fluid leaving Kratos as responsive and mobile as he’s ever been. The range of fights, from grunt to boss, comes at you fast and furious. The game wastes no time pitting you against huge foes in satisfying battles that most games would keep in the reserve tank for later.

You will get to know your new awesome gauntlet friends the cestus very well.

Previous entries often gave players a variety of weapons to wield as they progressed through the game. The problem was that none of them were ever as fun or effective as Kratos’ default blades, giving players little reason to use anything else. God of War 3 obliterates that problem. The extra weapons are the best set yet. Each one feels unique in the way it moves and in the way they connect with enemies. There is a different weight and heft to each weapon, from the bone-crushingly powerful Nemean Cestus, a pair of oversized metal gauntlets, to the lighting-fast Nemesis Whip, a set of chained blades that emit electricity. This game finally gives you a reason to switch it up a bit in terms of weapons.

Each weapon also adheres to the same leveling-up system that the previous games have used, which brings me to my next problem. When it comes to Kratos’ move-set, the need for Kratos to re-learn some of this stuff just doesn’t make any sense. Sure he technically has a new set of blades, but they are essentially the same ones he’s been using the whole series with a new skin and new name. Suddenly he doesn’t know how to use them? Even swimming is a skill that gets re-learned in this game. Just because it’s a different body of water doesn’t mean it requires swimming lessons.

The quick time events have also gotten a slight tweak. Instead of placing the prompts right on top of the action, as they were in the previous games, the buttons appear on the side of the screen that correlates to their positions on the controller. For example, this means that “X” always appears at the bottom and “Circle” always on the right. This minor change creates a huge advantage to the player because now they can react to the on-screen commands without ever really having to focus on them. This means no more missing out on all the gory goodness because you were busy looking for the pop-ups.

Kratos would rather not have to ask you twice to play his game. Seriously, he’ll cut ya.

Kratos will also acquire various items to aid him on his quest. Some work better than others. The bow for example will likely become a staple in your battle repertoire, but Hermes’ Boots will only make the briefest of appearances during specific puzzles.

Speaking of puzzles, God of War 3 has its share. They range from a fantastic perspective-bending mind-tease, that fans of the PSN game Echochrome will instantly love, to a downright stupid music rhythm game that actually places the Dualshock 3’s face-buttons in the environment. Talk about an immersion breaker.

The design team has always prided itself on creating unique levels with a sense of full-circle continuity in them, as players often need to explore the whole level to solve its puzzles. This resulted in the levels themselves being the puzzles. God of War 3 takes that idea one step further by making the entire game feel like one unified space that will have you traversing the different areas multiple times as you gain the necessary knowledge and tools to complete your mission. It’s not unlike Metroid or the recent Batman: Arkham Asylum, only I dare say it’s even more seamless in its portrayal of the world as an organic and connected universe.

It’s an easy and popular design method to apply the “crank it up to 11” philosophy when it comes to sequels, especially for a game like this. However, anyone who’s ever listened to music through a set of crappy speakers with the volume up that high  knows that making it louder doesn’t necessarily make it better. Just as we saw with Dante’s Inferno, this type of game in the hands of anything less than one of the best studios around has the potential to end up with nothing but the same type of muddled results that the aforementioned crappy speakers produce. I am here to tell you that God of War 3 is indeed cranked to 11, but under the care of the seasoned Santa Monica Studio team, all the fine details and clarity come through with shining colors. There is so much style here that this review can’t possibly give it justice. From the painterly, 2D cinematics to the awesomely crazy “ass-whipping POV” shots, this game has a stylistic stamp on it that gamers have never seen before.  Stalwart fans will find everything they have loved about the series and more while newcomers will be absolutely blown away. Both parties will need to remove their jaws from the floor a few times. A game of this sort comes along only once in a while. It’s a game that embodies the closest thing to perfection that can be attained within its respective genre. In short, it has all the makings of a Classic.

Pros:

-Smooth, responsive combat with fun weapons that just always feels right

-Gorgeous use of lighting and textures create a nearly-tangible world

-Amazing cinematic shot choices give players a few never before seen perspectives

-A nice collection of making-of videos and extras

-A satisfying narrative conclusion to Kratos’ journey

Cons:

-Some things can feel a bit too familiar

-A few logic flaws in the leveling up system