Here is a summary of how I played and destroyed God Of War 3 on PS3 in 5 days.
I needed to give Heavy Rain back to Dan so I stopped over there on 05/11 and in exchange he let me borrow God Of War 3 since he just platinumed it. It was his first and he was excited to break that curse of having none. We grew up gaming together so I understand his feelings as I was in a similar position before I went out and got my first Platinum. They come easier after that first one. It's the hardest.
I went home that night and after roadmapping my 'Path to Platinum' I figured the best thing to do was jump right in on Titan difficulty (hard). I must have been tired because I couldn't even beat those water horse/spiders dudes leading up to Poseidon (god #1). They were destroying me so I quit and went to bed. I was kind of bummed. Was it going to be that hard? Will I even be able to beat this on this difficulty? Fortunately the next day I did a lot better although I did face many challenges.
Since I was playing it on the hardest difficulty I was going to need all the help I could get. Since a few of the silver trophies were to collect all the gorgon eyes and stuff I might as well do that during this playthru so I got a printout to help me get them as I went thru. I hate to do that on my own and end up missing one which screws the whole deal.
I love how the God Of War games don't start out with stupid tutorials and lame ramp ups like almost every other game on the market does. They throw you into the fire from the get go. The only problem with that is that when you get past that part the still have to find a way to strip of you of your powers so you have new stuff to acquire. I laughed as a bunch of stupid souls ripped all my powers from me when I fell off Mount Olympus into the River Styx. That wasn't the greatest idea but whatever. Right after that was the cut scene of Athena's ghost telling you what to do. So when u kill a god now they turn into ghost? :|
This is the realm of Hades. None of these boards seem too difficult. It's just the path between killing each god. Hades was a cool fight. I'm not sure why you ripped patches of his flesh out but it was cool that they were still alive and tried to squirm back to him. Why didn't he go for the helmet first thing? Oh and he jumps out of the river for one final round. Now what happened to me when I fell in there should happen to him. 2 gods dead.
Helios is next but one of the titans already roughed him up for me. All I have to do is get up to where he is and rip his head off. Now I have a cool lantern. 3 gods dead.
The next part gives you a little preview of the labyrinth but you don't know what it is at this point. You're just riding around on a couple of huge boxes. Up the chain (you go up and down this thing several times) and into the Flame of Olympus room but can't do anything while the judges hold the chain down. Hermes is here and he mocks Kratos a little. Time to chase him down. He doesn't seem all that fast. Isn't he paying attention to what is happening to his brothers? Look how puny he is. I'd go and hide if I were him. Sure enough when Kratos catches up to him he beats the crap out of him and cut his legs off to get his boots. 4 gods dead.
There's a cool area proceeding thru the next part. There is a music game inspired giant harp puzzle. First you have to adjust the strings at the top and then stand in the middle by the switch that looks like the Playstation controller buttons, then the different shapes of the buttons scroll across and you have to hit the right buttons to pass this part. Reminded me of Guitar Hero a bit. It was kind of weird and it didn't feel like it fit with the rest of everything but it was cool to have something different in there I guess.
I really liked the next battle with Hercules. It wasn't anything too fancy out out there just a fist fight basically. He does send lots of minions at you at first but as you proceed it gets down to just you and him. This is where you get the Nemean Cestus. Hercules puts them on before he jumps down to fight you but as you brawl Kratos rips them off him and uses them against their owner. At the end Hercules tries to upend the whole arena with his strength but with these gauntlets Kratos turns the tide and then just pounds on Hercules' face until there is nothing left. 5 gods dead.
The next god is one you don't kill amazingly enough but it does showcase one of the draws that have been in every God Of War game so far, the sex mini-game. Of course it's the god of love I'm talking about, Aphrodite. Not only do you get a ton of red orbs for 'doing' this but there is a trophy reward as well.
Kratos fights and kills Cronos next. He's a titan though and not a god. It's still a worthy multi-tiered battle that is a stage of it's own as you jump around on his body avoiding his grasp while you whittle away at him waiting to deliver the death blow. It was your buddy Hephaestus that sends you on this quest because he says he can make you a good weapon if you get this stone from Chronos. Unfortunately when you retrieve it and give it to him he booby traps the Nemesis Whip it in an attempt to kill you. Needless to say it doesn't work and instead Kratos turns the tables and murders him instead.
The next part in Hera's Garden was fairly interesting and it a weird way it reminded me of Echochrome. It was a mini maze with a few enemies but high above was a statue with a green jeweled eye. After killing Hera (6 gods dead) Kratos ripped it's twin from Hera's chalice and could use it to 'see thru' this eye. It gave you an unique view of the garden which created a crazy way to do some perspective puzzles. The weight of water filling a giant cup would cause a platform to stick out but in the actual 3D game world it looked like it was off by itself not attached to anything. Switching to this other vision mode however would show from a different perspective that it did indeed attach to another platform allowing Kratos to go where he previously could not. Another area that was kind of short but it being different was a nice change of pace from the usual.
It's time to go back to the Labyrinth and raise it so Pandora can extinguish the Flame of Olympus so Kratos can get to the box to use its contents to kill Zeus. This is where it started to get really hard on Titan. This is what I call the beginning of the end. The first thing you have to do is fight a huge scorpion. It contains a key you need to get thru the Labyrinth. It wasn't that hard but it did take a couple tries to beat him. Now I move on to the Labyrinth proper. One of the trophies was the whole way thru without dying. That was kind of rough. I could easily make it to the spiky floor part but I died a lot there. Right after that was a save. There was a lot of fighting after that. One room enemies must have spawned for 20-30 minutes. Insane. Again it took a while and started to become mildly frustrating but I managed to succeed.
Now I could bust up that chain and take care of those 3 judges. Unfortunately here is where the frustration factor went up by 10. As soon as you get to the bottom of the chain Kratos is confronted with a fire Cerberus which is hard but by itself you could handle it but every head you cut off spawn satyrs which makes this fight extremely difficult. This fight had to take me a good hour or two and a good bout of swearing. I don't think the ending part fighting Zeus was as bad as this part was. Which, by the way, is exactly who you will fighting next after you bust those crystals off the judges heads and then go back up the chain.
FINAL BATTLE:
This whole ending part was very satisfying. Zeus and Kratos get fired up real quick and start fighting on this narrow column which is cool because it makes this part of the fight like an old school fighting game brawl like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. You can only go forward or backward. If you want to get behind Zeus you'll have to jump over him. The main thing here is block. I don't remember this part being too hard but I know it took me a while to get thru it. Most of the things Zeus throws out at you can be blocked then just counter. If he hits you, you lose a lot of energy. There is a second round here once you take enough energy off but it's the same, Zeus just gains one other attack method which is easily avoidable.
Now you take the fight outside to an area you may remember seeing before. Beat Zeus down a little more and an old friend will show up. Gaia tries to kill you both but you end up back in the huge whole in her fighting right next to her heart. This was another rough part. Zeus will sometimes fly around and make 5 copies of himself. If they get you right you can be killed almost instantly. Just pound Zeus with the gauntlets endlessly. Do not even try to recharge at the heart just don't let him get over to it and soon you should get to the final QTE where you take the Blade of Olympus and impale both Zeus and Gaia at the same time. Kratos' revenge is at hand!!
Of course just like those teen camp counselors killing Jason Vorhees, no matter how bad he gets beat, he's never quite dead yet. You have to beat him down a bit more before he finally gives up the ghost. That's what happens remember? Gods die and turn into ghosts. What is not good news for you is that Zeus' ghost messes up Kratos pretty bad and send him on some kind of strange flashback in his mind. I wasn't sure what to do int his weird part but as long as you just keep going you should be alright. Eventually you forgive yourself for all the evils you have done and you snap out of it and kill Zeus' ghost. (7 gods dead)
The gist of the end was that when Kratos opened Pandora's Box in the first GoW yeah he acquired the power to kill Aries but he also released the evils that Zeus had sealed in there and that is eventually what weakened the gods enough for Kratos to prevail. Athena on the other hand used her powers to put Hope into the box to counter those evils. When the evils got free and went to the gods, it was the hope that went to Kratos that kept him going. I find that very 'The Matrix-y'. Choice is what kept Neo going right? Now that the gods are dead though she wants her hope back to rebuild their legacy but seeing his vengeance is over Kratos now impales himself with the Blade of Olympus killing himself and releasing hope for all of mankind instead. This explains why the gods are no more. Kratos took them out and gave their powers to us. Not too shabby. I guess I can live with that explanation.
The End
Kratos ain't lying there dead anymore. There's a trail of blood from his body that leads over to the side of the cliff......
I beat the game and got all the ending and difficulty trophies early Sunday morning 05/16. I know there were a few spots on Titan that were frustrating but having to play the Challenge of the Gods just added to that. I guess it didn't take me long to do, a few hours but it was tough. The challenge where you have to take all those guys out with no weapons was the worst. I could always get it down to one big guy with the circle over his head or 2-3 of the little guys left but I would always run out of time. I needed like 5 more secs to do this. MAN. How did I finally do it? I killed everyone but the cyclops and with like 1 sec left he lunges me and falls off the side. Pure luck. The 'turn yourself to stone 10X' was another hard one but besides though the rest weren't that bad. Once I got that trophy in the early afternoon there were only 3 easy ones left I needed but enough for now. I need a break to do some real life things.
I started over on easy later in the evening to get these few final trophies. Burn 100 enemies with the arrows. This time as soon as I got the Bow I started doing this. I got it before I even got to Helios which was the next one I needed, Blind 100 enemies with his stare. Just did this to everybody as I went until I got it. I needed one last trophy now, Kick 50 hounds. Well I've been doing it since I started this over so I should be to 50 soon. Best place to do this? Posiedens Palace. There is a part where you have to kick these mutts thru a portal to weigh down a platform. If you kick them in the water by mistake they die so they have to constantly respawn so you can't get stuck here. Boom there's 50, there's my trophy. BOOM There's my Platinum. That was the quickest one I got so far.
I think I should go back and get the God of War Collection now. GoW1 & GoW2 on the same disc redone in HD and with trophy support. I can get 2 Platinums on one disc!!
All in all a fine game worthy of the hype it got. Kratos is a fun videogame and I can't wait to see what they do with the series going forward.
