God of War Collection and God of War III review

Yes Game were doing both the collection and GoWIII at a reduced price which was cheaper than the 'trilogy' offering of exactly the same games in a cardboard sleeve; so I bought them both.



So God of War and God of War II on the same disc, there's a wrapper front-end that allows you to choose which game you want to play and takes you to the initial menu screen of each. It's at this point you realise that the games are exact copies, because there's no addition to take you back to the wrapper. If you start GoW and want to play a bit of GoWII you need to quit from the disc and restart it. Not a hardship, but it emphasises that you're just getting the two games as they were.

Well not quite, my TV kicked into 1080p and the in-game graphics are pin-sharp with no judder. Shame about the cinematics for GoW though as they're still at SD resolution and the jump between them is quite jarring. Doubly odd as the GoWII cinematics seem to be have been re-rendered in HD.

Are these games still good or is it through the wistful eyes of nostalgia that we think of them that way? Well they are showing their ages, the odd bit of ground you can get stuck on, the camera angles that don't allow you to see where you're heading, the sporadic save points. What remains true are the big fights, the free-flowing combo-system and the sheer fun of taking on a mob of enemies and reducing them to their component parts.

Then the puzzles kick in and you start to curse. Some require precognition, the water dash in Pandora's temple that requires you to duck into the gaps; the spike and block puzzle that you have to know how far and hard to kick the block. Some leave you lost; pull this lever and you pull back to show a door opening, finish off a couple of enemies and where was it again?

Yet despite that at times the puzzles in all three display a touch of true delight in their multi-stage parts. Position a weight on a trigger and a door opens,walk through and you stand on another trigger which opens another door. Yet it closes to quickly for you to reach in time. The solution - kick the weight over the first trigger, roll through the first door as it opens next to the still moving weight and you now have the weight with you to position onto the second trigger to keep the next door open. Better yet ignore that and push the weight down the corridor and you can use it to reach a hidden ledge before returning it.

Sadly the replication of the games mean that Quick-Time-Events remain  in both GoW and GoWII and it's still flashing a symbol to match in the middle of the screen blocking the action. Take heart though for GoWIII moves the symbols to the appropriate areas of the screen, you no longer need to register that it's a Triangle just that it's the top one. Still uses R1 and L1 though and still mixes the odd joystick twirl with the Circle thumping.

Thus onto the last in the trilogy and here's where things get interesting; we get the same Santa Monica blood twirl intro, yet at the start of the Collection the controller throbs in time with the heartbeat; for III it doesn't; seems they didn't realise rumble was coming back. Textures have improved, but it seems to have gone a little overboard on the 'ink' style. Most particularly with wall textures it's the equivalent of drawing in every wrinkle in a portrait in the same shade and width - it overwhelms. Also worth noting that the default is 720p rather than the 1080p the originals appear at so it seems we're paying a price for that continuous frame rate.

Yet for all three the scale is gigantic, on simple straight runs the camera will pan back, and back, and back emphasizing, for instance, that each of the links of the chain you're running across are larger than yourself; and the developers need to be given several rounds of drinks for doing this without dropping a beat. As part of the same round applause is necessary because once again the entire game is seamless with each section streaming in as you reach it with only one blip in GoW as "Loading..." appeared bottom right and the game stuttered (interestingly at exactly the same point the PS2 version stutters).

It's big and it's bold. The puzzles are complex enough to make you figure them out without being FAQ necessary and for those less dexterous simple button mashing will get you through with the combo patterns being a reward for those who can pull them off.

The bosses though, ah they are a pain with their homing attacks that highlights the lack of the Batman: Arkham Asylum abilty of breaking out of a combo to block or evade. As such you tend to jab at them and fail to unleash any of the true devastating attacks for fear of getting caught as they pull off a multi-pronged attack. Makes the battles seem to last a lot longer than they normally would and at times you do wonder if you're doing the right thing - my second round with Lahkesis and the mirrors I just kept hitting her with nothing apparently happening. Turns out I hadn't quite broken one of the mirrors that her sister was using, but I couldn't see that from the camera angle.

Despite knowing the solutions to the puzzles and the attack patterns of the enemies, it's still worth a revisit at the different difficulty levels as well as to collect any bits and bobs you missed on the first run.

So applause for the QTE positioning, applause for the streaming levels, and applause for just how damn spectacular it is. Going cheap, go and buy them.