March is God of War month as far as I’m concerned, with nearly every title in the near-decade old series releasing during it. Late March of 2010 saw Santa Monica Studios’ God of War III released, and I absolutely loved it. In fact, it’s the only game I ever pre-ordered and I bought the Ultimate Edition at that, with the cool Pandora’s Box statue still adorning my game room. After being enthralled by the previous games, III was a slam dunk for me, and thankfully it turned out to be superb. It was the culmination of an incredibly powerful story of revenge, and, eventually, of hope. If this is your first foray into the franchise, be sure to play the other ones first, GoW III is best appreciated after playing those. Fortunately, you can turn to PlayStation Now to rent the first two God of War games, and the PSP ones were HD-ified and brought to the PS3 a good while back, too.
When I heard about GoW III Remastered I was very curious about what SCEA were going to do with it beyond a (minor?) graphical upgrade. My reasoning was that, because GoW III looked so amazing on the PS3 five years ago (arguably the best-looking game for that generation), bringing it to PS4 would have to bring with it some other changes or goodies. As I look back at my old review, the word I used to describe the PS3 version’s presentation was “unbelievable,” both technically and from an art direction standpoint. It did run in 720p/1080i and I’m not sure that it ever hit 60fps, but amazing nonetheless. With Remastered, the PS4 takes this up to 1080p, and, as far as I can tell, the game runs at 60fps most of the time. Officially, the documents I have received say that the gameplay “targets” 60fps. Regardless, I did not have any graphical issues or framerate troubles, although the cutscenes (in Remastered) are still in 720p 30fps if I’m not mistaken. That said, I’ll admit I am not blown away by the graphical differences, specifically in-game where it counts, between Remastered and the original.
I did some non-scientific comparisons on my own, firing up my old original copy on my PS3. I looked at the start of a New Game on both versions, and, I had old save games in The Caverns and the room where you fight Zeus’ first phase. The graphical difference is noticeable — appreciable even — but it’s not Olympus-shattering awesome. I’m not a videophile or super picky about graphics, though (hell I just played through Kirby’s Dreamland on a Gameboy Color last night), but in doing side-by-side comparisons, the Remastered version is consistently and clearly sharper and more visceral with better bloom and dynamic lighting effects than the PS3 version. So while it’s not a sweeping, knock-your-socks off difference, it’s definitely noticeable and makes the PS3 version look decidedly older and outdated.
Remastered also includes a Photo Mode to aid you in capturing and sharing the beauty, or the carnage, or even the beauty of the carnage, that is always on screen. It’s a nice addition, although I did not take but a few pics throughout my playthrough, one of which I have inserted below. I’ll breakdown this new mode in some detail as it’s basically the lone new feature, other than graphics, that Remastered offers. First, to access Photo Mode, simply press the left side of the Touchpad. You can also disable Photo Mode from the pause menu, accessed by pressing the right side of the Touchpad.
Within Photo Mode, you have four main controls: Camera, Frame, Filter, and Bloom. Within Camera, you can Zoom and Pan. Frame controls provide twelve themed frames from which you can choose to, well, frame your picture. These include Cinematic (letterbox), God of War III (places the game’s logo in the bottom center), Bloodlust (wavy/non-uniform red border around the screen), Olympic Light (places a Greek-themed border around the top and bottom of the image), and several more. Next up is Filter which again there are twelve of these that you can apply. Filters include Sepia (of course, haha), Blood Moon, Emerald, Sunrise, Black and White, and so forth. Finally Bloom lets you adjust the brightness or the Bloom intensity from 0% up to 400%. This will mainly affect the brightness or whiteness of things like fire and it also controls the intensity of the glow of the symbols on the orb chests.
Taken/Edited with Photo Mode
The Remastered version also includes all previously released DLC or Ultimate Edition pre-order items, which include several costumes and Challenge Arenas. These are available to you after you complete the game. The Costumes give you an instant visual change to the appearance of Kratos, but they also have game-altering effects too, with all of them disabling Trophies by the way. For example, the Fear Kratos costume does quadruple attack damage, but the enemies also do quadruple attack damage. The Phantom of Chaos costume makes red orbs worth five times their value, and the Deimos one makes health, magic, and yellow orbs worth quadruple, while red orbs are worth nothing. There are a few other costumes, but, none of these are new.
Carried over from the Ultimate Edition are also the Challenge of Olympus and Challenge of Exile content. There are seven Challenge of Olympus tests, including Population Control (goal is to keep less than fifty enemies on screen at once), and Knockout (score 1000 points by knocking enemies out of the arena). Completing these challenges unlocks the Combat Arena. The seven Challenge of Exile events are tougher, including a fight against Fear Kratos that is quite challenging and a challenge based upon the ability to jump between Harpies. And finally, you also get all fifteen or so behind the scenes / making of videos with topics ranging from Combat to Programming to UI. These provide a great view into Santa Monica Studios’ offices during the development of GoW III.
Thus far I have spent most of the time talking about the Remastered version as opposed to the game itself, but that’s for obvious reasons. The core game is unchanged from what it was five years ago, which you might call a textbook example of ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.’ That’s not to say that GoW III was perfect — as I said in my launch review five years ago, there are some flaws to the gameplay but nothing so bad that it is not overwhelmed by the game’s other merits. Indeed, the most annoying part to me is the platforming, which is not all that common, but the platforming, Harpie-hopping, Icarus-wing floating, Labyrinth-timed moments walk a fine line between being thrilling and pace-crushing. There’s nothing lamer in a God of War game to kick ass in combat, only to fail a jump in the next scene because you did not properly double-jump or the Icarus Wings ran out of umph right before you got to the next platform. The music stops, the screen fades to black, you get that annoying You Died message, it’s honestly poorly handled. A better method would be to have used what the Arkham games or Darksiders do — sure, dock the player some health, but keep the pace going. Don’t insta-kill the player because of a single mis-timed jump.
In-game puzzles are also mostly meant to slow the player down it seems. Arbitrary push/pull boxes and big cranks to turn make the game-world seem far less sophisticated and amazing than the visuals and atmosphere would have you believe. I’m all for massive sense of scale and big chains and gears and complex ancient mythological mechanics that only a geniuses like Daedalus, Archimedes, or Hephaestus could have contrived, but having some flip switch control all of these dampens the sense of presence and believability. These issues are a little harder to swallow five years removed from their first appearance, but the fact remains: God of War III is an excellent game.
To the summary…
