Glitchoris has yet to play a game with such an opposing dichotomy of storyline and gameplay. While the gameplay exemplifies exquisite honing of prior games in the series, the storyline leads to an amorphous dispersion of plot. Enough of our wordiness. By the end of the game, I felt like Rubin from Road Trip telling Kyle, “No, we’ve got it!”
Glitchoris BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)
The mechanics are stellar. The controls are amazingly easy to master (in a good way). The initial storyline lives up to the hype, but by the end of the game, we felt wanting for closure. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood finishes like the writers just didn’t know how to finish the story in a worthwhile way, so this is what we got. Worth playing – no doubt, but be cautious of how excited you get for the ending. Continue Reading
For the three of you out there that have somehow stumbled upon the Glitchoris, let me just state that this is the final post regarding Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Once you finish reading this second opinion review, we will have proverbially driven the last tetanus-infested nail into the pun-intended coffin, and laid this fucking game to rest. By no means am I saying it sucks; in a few seconds you’ll see it’s just the opposite. I just am sure you all are sick of seeing more posts on Lords of Shadow, and you know what, I’m kind of getting sick of writing them. So without further adoo, on to the BLUF.
God of War 3 taught me something that no other game has taught me: I can still love a game and hate the main character. Raffman was right when he said that the storyline is nothing new, but Kratos is less dimensional than a fucking piece of paper laying on the floor. But then again, I didn’t drop the dough to listen to Kratos talk. I played it to kill anything that moved.
Glitchoris BLUF
If God of War 3 is not the industry standard today, it will be tomorrow. Less puzzles, cranks, and levers, and more fun weapons and larger bosses highlight this third installment. You may not take the day off work to press through it, but you can schedule a solid hour or two a night after your daily cubicle time to release the stress.
Kratos, meet Jules
Remember when Pulp Fiction released? Everybody was reciting Ezekiel 25:17, and even Saturday Night Live acted a skit where Jules coached a teenage hockey team in all of his homicidal fury. Kratos always had this style, but he never had the panache of Sam Jackson. Well, he has it now. When Kratos face-stomps Poseidon, all I can hear is Sam Jackson stating, “Well allow me to retort.”
It took until the third installment to pull it off, but the devs found the way to match Kratos’ vengeance with superior camera angles. They do this so well that when the angle changes from third-person to Poseidon’s first-person point of view, I actually thought the game transferred me into Poseidon’s character because I lost the fight. Then I snapped to reality and crafted a quiet smile.
Boss Fights That Make Sense
For someone who has played endgame for each World of Warcraft installment, you get really used to having to research boss fights. Raid leaders might go so far as to require that you watch the video of it before you try it out yourself. Now, that may be all well and good for an MMO, but for a console game, that’s a little out there. And by a little out there I mean it’s pretentious. And by pretentious I mean the devs are being pricks.
I should be able to figure out a boss fight in about the first three seconds. Whether that is through visual or audio cues, I’m a fucking twenty-eight year old with an undergraduate degree from a tough university, almost thirty hours of post-grad work, and I run two businesses outside of my full time job. I get systems. I get problem solving. And I love God of War 3‘s boss fights. They make sense! After pummeling Hercules, I take his bear-faced boxing gloves from him. They are so hard they can punch through onyx. So an hour later, a giant scorpion descends upon me with onyx legs. I equip the gloves and punch him like Mike Tyson in his pre-fucked up era. Boss fight over. No running to the internet to read about how someone else figured it out.
It’s As Long As It Should Be
That’s what she said? You will be done with this game in a mere two weeks if you play sparingly. And that is just the first play through. Of course Santa Monica plugs a second playthrough with bonuses found the first time around. You familiarize yourself with the map fairly early, and many spots will be revisited upon later times, so you are constantly being drawn in to a second and third playthrough.
An example of a game that stretches this limit is Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. It’s fairly puzzle-heavy, and at times that can distract from the fluidity of the game. Not with God of War 3 though. Most of the time, when you get in a rhythm, you just keep plugging away and reap all the red orbs your body can muster.
God of War 4?
All the gods are dead, so I don’t know what the storyline would be. But I’m sure Kratos will find someone to headhunt. Rumors say 2012…
As a high school English teacher who teaches Mythology, when the students ask if Kratos is an epic hero or an antihero, my retort is not what they want to hear: What do you think? Most of the time they say he is an antihero, someone who we like for no other reason than he is particularly badass at what he does. Normally, that thing involves wholesale killings and unquenchable revenge.
I can’t argue that point. Kratos sure does love himself some decapitation. But it just does not fit for some reason. Sure, we love to watch him wail away at Hercules’ facial structure. What is incongruous is that if Kratos is an antihero, than the entire God of War series would better pair along with Homer’s Iliad rather than Homer’s Odyssey.
However, God of War resembles The Odyssey (or even Virgil’s Aeneid)inherently more than it does The Iliad. The Iliad is about the wrath of Achilles and how Achilles’ inhumanity ravaged the entire Trojan War. Achilles is featured, but his bloodletting does not even factor in essentially until about the 18th book. Diomedes essentially sends more shades to Hades than Achilles does. God of War concerns itself with Kratos’ journey from pissed off white guy to a really, really pissed off really, really white guy. More the man than the emotion.
Homer’s Odyssey, more of a romance than an epic, features Odysseus’ trials trying to get back home. I mean, he blinds a fucking giant, but he does not strip an immortal god’s life away. And he only blinds Polyphemus the giant to get the hell out of there in one piece.
So, Kratos aligns with Achilles savagery more so than Odysseus’ cunning. But his story is told more like a romance than an Homeric epic. Thus, Kratos would better be described as an epic hero rather than an antihero. He’s definitely not a fucking tragic hero. He’s not a virtuous man whose best intentions happened to bring him down to a mortal status. Two reasons: one, he is not a virtuous man, and two, he’s killing gods, so I’d say he’s not really a failing mortal…at all.
If Kratos is an epic hero, than he would have undergone a change in character. He definitely felt the heartbreak of murdering his wife and child, but this does not lead him to relenting his aggression. He actually uses it to fuel the fire to melt more faces. Also, Kratos only fights for himself. An epic hero fights for a cause, a people, or a land. Kratos just really hates everybody. And he tries to kill everybody.
If Kratos is an antihero, then he would possess more of the traits that his genre typically villifies. For the God of War series, Kratos would have been a weaker, less-efficient killing machine. Picture him with 30 pounds less muscle, twenty pounds more fat, and the Chains of Chaos would really have been badminton rackets. More Butch than Jules.
A college professor once said, “Sometimes men chose to be heroes because they could not choose to be a god.” Well, Kratos flicks this theory off his shoulder like Ray Lewis flicks turf off of his shoulder pads. Is he an epic hero? Or is he an antihero?
Either way you decide to answer that question, we all must agree on one thing: Kratos is one bad motherfucker. For me, I don’t really think he’s a hero at all. He murdered the sun god. He was so mad he actually killed the guy that gave sunlight. If that symbolism doesn’t smack you across the head, then maybe Kratos himself will.
For the three of you who follow Glitchoris regularly, you may have noticed how much I like quoting movies when I excrete prose through my fingertips. If you would be so kind, I want you to close those tired eyes of yours and think of Office Space. You smiled, didn’t you? I want you to go back to that scene with Jennifer Aniston (okay, you smiled again, didn’t you – hey, hands up!), where she’s getting counseled by her manager at Chotchsky’s regarding the serious lack of flair on her uniform. Do you remember what her manager said? Let me help you out, if you don’t recall: “Listen Joanna, our customers can get a burger anywhere. They come to Chotchsky’s, for the fun and the flair.” Now the final step I’d like you to do is replace “burger” with “guides”, and Chotchsky’s for Glitchoris, and bam, you have our philosophy on guides. Gamers can get guides for games everywhere, but they come to Glitchoris for the gaming lifestyle guides. And of course for the flair. Today’s guide: How to lose weight, fast, if you’re a gamer. Hit the link below for mo’.
“Load completed”. Usually when you see that, you put down your beer (unless you’re rocking the beer helmet, and if so, mad props), jack up the volume on your tv, and get ready to jump back into the most beautiful, craziest edition of God of War yet. And I say “yet” in completely baseless hope that there’s going to be a fourth. Please? So back to the “Load completed” screen. When you fire up Kratos’ third quest for revenge and select the saved game you want to load, the disc will spin and after a couple seconds you’ll see “Load completed”. Bam, you’re done now, right? So you slam your beer (there are sober kids in India, you know), wipe the Cheetos cheese of your fingers, preferably all over your mom’s couch, and get ready to start slaying bodies, only for yet another fucking loading screen to pop up, and with a wait that’s about five times as long as the first one. WTF? When you say “load complete”, don’t make me fucking wait another 30 seconds; I want to play the game! Outside of that, which ultimately is a pretty petty infraction, God of War tres continues to bring the wow factor. Double tap your mouse on that link below for more God of War mid-game thoughts.
“Beautiful. Holy shit! Fuck you, Poseidon! That was bad-ass! Eat me whore! (That was for my neighbor who was yelling at me to turn down my TV) Wtf – when did Gaia get boobs?”
You wanted my initial thoughts on God of War 3, well, there they are and in perfect chronological order.
