Craig Gordey

It’s been a month since my last blog post and I thought I’d just come around and say “Hi” again. I’ve been busy with my Unreal project and I should have something to show fairly soon, so I’ll definitely post that when the time comes.

As for E3, well it just wrapped up yesterday and there was some pretty cool stuff shown. The 3DS had to have been the main attraction of the show, and as much as I want to talk about it like I know what it’s actually like, I can’t because I wasn’t at E3. This is the downside to 3D gaming. You can’t just look at a 3D game screenshot/gameplay video and know what it’s going to look like the way you can with non-3D games. If you’re interested in 3D games, of course you’re going to want to know what the effect is going to be before buying it, so developers are going to have to release demos so people can play and see for themselves. Otherwise, it would be ridiculous to buy a game and just trust that it’s going to look good in 3D. The fact that the 3DS can pop out 3D without having to wear glasses leaves me a little skeptical about the quality, though I have heard numerous people that were at E3 saying good things, so that’s somewhat promising. 3D gaming is something I’m extremely excited for, and the hugely popular Avatar proves that people do care about 3D. I just can’t wait for the added immersion, especially in first person shooters. Just the thought of projectiles flying past my head in the middle of a heated battle makes me drool a little. It’ll be interesting to see the tricks developers come up with in order to give players the best possible 3D experience. The obviously-huge drawback is the necessary, significant cost of a new 3D TV. It kind of stinks for the people that recently bought a nice HDTV and now they suddenly have to buy a new 3D TV to get the new, best experience, but if most people don’t yet have an HDTV then this could be the perfect time for them to finally upgrade. If people go with that path then it might not take as long as people think for 3D gaming to really take off. The one annoying thing I can see happening is with better 3D TVs coming out at least every year. If you buy one in the early stages, like around now for example, you know for a fact that there are going to be TVs coming out advertising a better 3D experience and different companies saying their 3D experience is the best and a whole bunch of other things that’ll make everyone’s heads explode. So, for the people who can’t just drop a couple grand every year on a new TV, as in the huge majority, when is it going to be the time for them to make the purchase and be satisfied with the quality of the 3D their TV is giving them? That part, I’m not looking forward to.

The other main focus of the show was Microsoft’s Kinect and Sony’s Move motion controls. While they’re two different technologies, they’re objective is similar: To steal some of the Wii’s audience and get you more involved in the game while eliminating/reducing controller complexity. I didn’t think Microsoft did a very good job with their conference in demonstrating Kinect’s versatility, since all they showed were super-simplistic, casual games. They could have at least shown an FPS with head tracking for peeking around corners whenever you lean your head left or right, just to get that huge audience excited even a little bit, instead of totally ignoring them and just showing a bunch of arm-waving, coin-collecting and dancing stuff. That is why I think Sony’s Move is more for me. It serves a similar purpose as Kinect, but doesn’t seem nearly as limited due to the fact that it has a similar remote-like controller like the Wii. Sony did a good job in demonstrating Move with a more complex, Harry Potter-like game. That gave me confidence that Move will be able to handle both simplistic and complex controls, while I’m still pretty unsure about what Kinect is really capable of.

So, those are some of my thoughts about E3. You’ll hear from me again when I have something of my own to show.

I took a few fun screenshots throughout my time with the beta:

Have you ever had one of those moments where you get bored and pretend to squish someone's head with your fingers? Well, that's what this is. The Halo community seems to enjoy it, with 1700+ downloads.

A mid-air, plasma grenade kill.

A deceased Spartan ragdolls down a set of stairs and his own sword decides to turn on him on the way down.

Next up, the newly-added Generator Defense – a 3 vs. 3 Spartans vs. Elites team-based attack & defend mode similar to Invasion –on a new map called Outlook.

A game of Generator Defense consists of 2 rounds – 1 on offence and the other on defence. There are 3 generators for the Elites to attack and for the Spartans to defend – 2 outside on the sides and 1 in the middle inside at the end of the map in close-quarters. The goal for the attacking Elites is to damage all 3 generators until they explode within the 5 minutes given. Once they’re all destroyed, the Elites win and the next round starts up with the teams swapped.
For the Spartans, the goal is to protect the generators. Of course, they’re going to fire their weapons at the Elites as per usual, but they can also lock down the generators and protect them with a 30-second blast shield. While a generator is locked down it cannot take any damage, but once its timer is up the generator is exposed again and it takes a couple seconds to cool down until its shield can be reactivated. If there are any generators left at the end of the 5 minutes, the Spartans win.
One other thing to note are the weapon pods. At the start of each round, numerous pods drop from the sky in different sections of the map. Each pod contains a powerful weapon, giving an advantage to the team that claims them.

Conclusion
I couldn’t get a true feel for the amount of fun that Generator Defense offers, due to the constant lag from Bungie doing network tests with this mode, but I think I was having fun. When I first played on defence, my initial thoughts on the 30-second blast shield was slightly negative, since I didn’t think it gave the Elites much of a chance to succeed, especially being able to reactivate them almost instantly, but my opinion quickly changed. Once you realize how little time it takes to destroy a generator, you’ll probably come to the same conclusion as me and think it’s pretty-well balanced. It comes down to whether or not a Spartan is around to defend the generator that’s being attacked. If there is, then the blast shield is probably activated and the Elite doesn’t deserve to damage the generator until the Spartan is killed. If a Spartan isn’t around, then they don’t deserve to have that generator and the Elites will most likely jump all over it and quickly destroy it.
I have nothing but good things to say about Generator Defense. The only sad part is it looks like this is the last of the additions to the beta and it should be coming to an unfortunate close soon.

Since this is a beta test, I have some feedback for Bungie to help improve Halo: Reach. There have been a couple things that have been bugging me:
I would like to see the Armor Lock balanced out a bit more, and I expect that it will be for the actual game. Currently, it seems to be too powerful by helping players out too much who lack confidence in their skill. I think most of this problem is related to the amount of time the Armor Lock can stay active for and protect the player. If its length was reduced by 25%-50%, this wouldn’t allow the player’s shield to regenerate as much and also wouldn’t allow as much time for teammates to come to the rescue. If you compare Armor Lock to the other Armor Abilities, the rest don’t nearly give the player as much of an advantage. I watched a developer interview on Bungie.net not too long ago and they said something along the lines of “2 players enter battle… 1 respawns and the better player survives. That’s Halo.” Well, that’s not always true with the current Armor Lock.
The other thing I want to point out is what I believe to be a flaw in the new rating system for the Arena. The way it works, is a player who has a good amount of kills and/or assists is going to get a good rating for the round. But, the only problem is, the rating system doesn’t take deaths into account. So, a player who has more kills/assists and has a negative kill spread, meaning they did more dying than killing, is going to have a better rating than a player with a few less kills/assists but has a positive kill/death spread. A perfect example: I recently played a game of Team Slayer and did quite well…

Me: 17 kills, 3 assists, and a +10 kill spread for a rating of 1554.
A player on the other team: 12 kills, 11 assists, and a kill spread of -5 for a rating of 1603.

Now, let’s do the math here: my 17 kills + 3 assists = 20 kills that I was involved in. That other guy, he had 12 kills + 11 assists = 23 kills that he was involved in. That part makes sense for him to have a better rating than me, until you factor in the kill spread. Since I went +10, let’s add that onto my kills/assists to make my total = 30. And for that other guy, he went -5 so let’s turn his total into 18. This shows that I was, by far, the more valuable player yet I got a lower rating because Bungie doesn’t factor in deaths or they just don’t as much as they should. In my books, this is a flawed system if Bungie wants to truly achieve their goal in giving players accurate ratings based on their performance.

Well, I guess that’s it. The Halo: Reach beta has served me some good times and I’m definitely looking forward to this Fall to play the real thing.

On the 7^th, Bungie gave us a new playlist called Invasion – a 6-on-6 team-based war between the Spartans and Elites set on a new map called Boneyard– where the teams are broken up into 3 pairs of 2 to allow players to spawn on their teammate’s location. Each mode contains multiple phases that unlock new loadouts and vehicles on the fly. Within the playlist are 2 modes:

Invasion
Invasion is an attack & defend mode, as the Spartans do their best to hold the Elites from attacking and completing objectives that lead them to their goal – the data core. The Elites must overpower the Spartans and complete 3 objectives within each phase’s 4-minute time limit. If the Spartans hold the Elites to the time limit at any point, the Spartans win. If the Elites manage to carry the core to the Phantom, the Elites win.

Phase 1
The first phase’s objectives are made up of 2 generators. One of them must be powered down in order to unlock the laser doors blocking off the rest of the map, containing Phase 2. To do so, the Elites must sneak their way inside the generator zones and take time off the 20-second timers attached to each one. For each second an Elite sits in a zone, 1 second comes off the timer. When an Elite takes time off a timer and then exits the zone, the timer freezes at that value until attacked again, with one exception. If a generator is being attacked and then saved while the timer is at less than 7 seconds, it is then restored back to 7 seconds. Once the timer hits 0 seconds, the generator is shut down, the laser doors disappear, and the next phase begins.

Phase 2
With a fresh, new 4-minute timer to complete the objectives within, there are now 3 new generators to attack/defend. The same rules apply to these generators, and if the Elites manage to complete the objective they can get their hands on the data core.

Phase 3
With the data core exposed inside a large room, the Elites have 4-minutes to resist the Spartans’ attacks and carry it to the zone outside at the top of a staircase, underneath the hovering Phantom. This phase might sound like being on offence in CTF, but it’s a little different. The core is very heavy, so as the core-carrier you’re limited to walking speed and it’s too heavy to attack with. You really need your team of Elites to defend you from the swarms of Spartans trying to stop you, but if you need to fire your weapon you can always drop the core and handle your business.

Invasion Slayer
Invasion Slayer is regular Slayer with a twist. While killing enemies as usual, you can take control of a neutral territory and spawn vehicles to assist you and your team in running over the opposition. But, just because they are your team’s vehicles doesn’t mean the other team can’t steal them. The team to get 100 kills wins.

This is just the basic information for these 2 modes. More information on things such as vehicle types and loadouts can be found here.

Conclusion
Invasion
While fun, I’m a little disappointed that there’s no side-swap – you only get one round as either a Spartan or Elite and that’s the end of the game. Usually in an attack/defend objective-based mode like this, the teams swap sides and play the opposite role, but since Invasion can potentially last 12-minutes per game, swapping sides could make it last 24 minutes. That’s pretty long for a game full of 12 people and you would then consequently have players drop out of the middle of the game, suddenly unbalancing it.
Well, let’s ignore the negatives for now. What would make this mode awesome would be to have a point system per phase. To make it simple, let’s say the Elites get 1 point per phase completion and the Spartans get 1 point per phase the Elites don’t complete. So, if the Elites manage to get to Phase 3 but are unable to get the core to its drop-off location, they get 2 points for completing 2 phases and the Spartans get 1 point for holding 1 phase. The teams would then swap sides and the new Elite team would have to complete all 3 phases to win, or complete 2 to tie. And, since ties are pretty lame, the team with the more kills when the score is tied gets the victory. But, this would potentially take almost half-an-hour, so I don’t expect to see this format for Invasion in Matchmaking for the full release of Halo: Reach. Just imagine if you could gather up a group of buddies for a custom game to ensure that there wouldn’t be any quitters. It would make for a fun time.

Invasion Slayer
Before knowing anything about Invasion Slayer, I thought it was just going to be regular Slayer but with Elites versus Spartans. Just that would have been fine with me, but the surprise addition of an optional objective added on gave it more cool points. The vehicle-spawning territory adds an area of interest, luring the 2 teams to one location where you’ll always find some enemies to shoot at. This takes away those moments in regular Slayer where you might go minutes without seeing a single enemy. I don’t have a big problem with that, but Invasion Slayer ensures constant action.

All-in-all, I like the Invasion playlist. I just wish there was a way to play 2 rounds of the Invasion mode per game without it being too long. Oh well, I think I’ll survive.

I’m excited to play Generator Defense on the 14^th, and I’ll have more to say around that time.

As of a couple days ago, the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta launched and is accessible to those with a copy of Halo: ODST. Although it got off to a rocky start on launch day, with overloaded/busted servers for a good chunk of Monday, Bungie acted quickly to solve the issues in time for forgiveness and unleashed its new hype machine on the world.
Bungie has decided to release parts of the beta in intervals, instead of giving us all of the playlists and maps right off the bat:

• Playlists
  • Grab Bag – Available
  • Free For All – Available
  • Arena – Available
  • Invasion – May 7^th
  • Generator Defense – May 14^th
• Maps
  • Sword Base – Available
  • Powerhouse – Available
  • Boneyard – May 7^th
  • Overlook – May 14^th

As the new playlists and maps get added, I will have an update on them and let you know what I think.

In case you haven’t had a chance to play the beta yet, allow me to start you off with what it has to offer:

• Grab Bag
  A mix of 4v4 Slayer and objective game modes:
  • 1 Flag CTF
  • Stockpile
  • Oddball
  • Team Crazy King
  • 3 Plots
  • Team Slayer
  • Team SWAT
  • Covy Team Slayer

• Free For All
  8-man free for all, with a mix of Slayer and objective game modes:
  • Slayer
  • Slayer Pro Round
  • Classic Slayer
  • Oddball
  • Crazy King
  • Juggernaut
  • Headhunter

• Arena
  4v4 Team Slayer for the competitive players. Play enough of these games and get Daily and Season Ratings based on your performance.
  • Team Slayer
  • Team Slayer Pro
  • Classic Slayer

I haven’t spent too much time with Free For All, as I prefer to play team-based games, and aside from Slayer my favourite modes are Stockpile, Oddball, and Team SWAT.
Stockpile is brand new to Halo. A handful of neutral flags are placed around the map and both teams have their own flag-return zone. The teams have to grab and return the flags back to their zone and guard them until each 60-second timer expires, as each flag counts as 1 point. The team to either score 10 points first or have more points at the end of the round wins.
Oddball is a classic and is still a lot of fun. There’s one ball that’s placed in the middle of the map and both teams fight for possession. 1 second of possession time equals 1 point. The team to either score 150 points first or have more points at the end of the round wins.
And finally, Team SWAT, another older Halo gametype. With no shields, it only takes 1 headshot to kill. This brings me back to the good ol’ days of the Rainbow Six tactical shooters. Like Slayer, the first team to 50 kills or the one that has the most kills at the end of the round wins.

I would like to spend most of my time discussing the rest of the game, outside of playlists, so for more, in-depth info for that you can go here.

Alright, so there are a few changes to Halo: Reach that differentiates it from the previous Halo games:

Loadouts

At the start of a round and after each time you die, you get to pick an Armor Ability + primary/secondary weapons combo to go into battle with, called Loadouts. With the current playlists that are available, there aren’t many differences in weaponry, so most of the time it all comes down to your strategy preference that the Armor Abilities have to offer. As seen in the image above, the different weapon Loadouts will start to become available on May 7^th for Invasion.

Armor Abilities:

Bungie says it best: “Armor Abilities are multi-use armor augmentations that can alter any engagement on the fly.” So, at any time while the Armor Ability meter is filled, you can turn on whichever ability you chose for your Loadout until it runs out or you turn it off, switching you back to your original state. This gives you various options to choose from to suit your play style:

• Sprint – Run approximately 3-times as fast while not being able to shoot.
• Active Camouflage – Allows for near-invisibility and scrambles radar, but sound is disabled.
• Jet Pack – Soar vertically to get a height advantage on enemies or to get to a location quickly while being greatly exposed to near-enemies.
• Armor Lock – Become invincible to all attacks, but immobile.

While I like them and their usefulness, I have one slight issue with the Armor Lock. While activated, you’re immune to all attacks, which allows time for your shield to regenerate. The questionable part is after the Armor Lock disables, giving an additional second of immunity and allowing you to move around and attack within that second. This seems to be a little unbalanced, because if an opposing player gets behind you when your Armor Lock turns off, a melee to the back, you would think, would kill you. But, it doesn’t always if that player doesn’t wait for that extra second of immunity to wear off. I just think it’s a little unfair because the Armor Lock’s purpose is to shield you while it’s activated, and it doesn’t make sense to me as to why it lasts longer than the time it’s activated for.

Weapons
There are some brand new weapons, along with classics that have been restored from the previous Halo games. You can scroll through the full list here for a detailed look.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with the weapons except for the overpowered grenades. They’re so powerful that they almost act like the primary weapon. You start off with 2, with the ability to pick up 2 more along the way. It’s almost rare to be in a battle without grenades being thrown, so when you use yours up you’re at a huge disadvantage unless you go pick up some more. I would like to see their damage decreased a bit so when I win a 1-on-1 battle and take a little damage, the other guy, just before dying, can’t desperately throw one aimlessly and kill me with it as often when he doesn’t deserve the kill.

Health Packs
After taking damage and having your shields fail, your health starts taking hits. If your health is lower than 100%, the only way to restore full health is to find a health pack located on walls in various locations around a map. It’s in your best interest to have full health as much as possible because you’ll have a better chance at surviving battles and those powerful grenade explosions.

Take Downs

When you see an enemy’s back turned to you, you can sneak up and assassinate him with a humiliating execution. Once a Take Down is initiated, the camera for both players goes into 3^rd person so you can see the animation play out. While this sounds like a lot of fun and all, and it is, each Take Down takes a few seconds to complete, giving other players on the victim’s team to save him. It’s a risk that you just sometimes have to take for a chance at bragging rights.

Conclusion
So far, so good, and lots of fun. With only 2 maps currently available and a limited amount of game modes, it is repetitive, but there’s enough variety to keep it enjoyable. Ever since playing LAN-multiplayer with the very first Halo, it’s always had that special formula that makes it such a fun and addicting game to me, and Halo: Reach is no exception.
I can’t wait for the new playlists and maps to be released in the coming days, so be sure to check back soon for updates on my Halo: Reach multiplayer beta Game Design Dissection!

This final Game Design Dissection for God of War is to look back on all 3 games in the series to see how it evolved from the beginning to present. This is just based on my own personal curiosity because as a game designer I think it’s important to study a great franchise like God of War to see how it succeeded and where it went wrong to avoid the same mistakes.
This looks further beyond the previous dissections and summarizes everything for what is hopefully an easy-to-read breakdown.

Story
As an effective method of storytelling, we see Kratos at the edge of a cliff, ready to jump to end his life for what was then an unknown reason. To unravel the story, the game starts 3 weeks prior to that and as progression is made through the game we see Kratos going from a normal warrior to giving up his life to serve Ares, the then-God of War, out of an act of desperation for survival. Kratos’ offer was accepted and Ares gave him superhuman powers with the Blades of Chaos permanently chained to his forearms and went on to serve him. During Kratos’ final duty under Ares, he and his army raid a village and Kratos ends up unknowingly slaying his wife and daughter and is stricken with terror when it’s too late. Now, while tortured by permanent, painful images stuck in his mind, Kratos is led to believe that defeating Ares will rid him of his poisoned mind, but he’ll need the legendary power of Pandora’s Box to do so, located within Pandora’s Temple. This creates Kratos’ journey. After reaching the Box, Ares finds out about Kratos’ success and impales him with a long-distance throw of a pillar, killing him and sending him to the underworld – Hades. But, as determined as Kratos is, he fights his way back out of Hades, once again reaches the Box and opens it. Once he finally defeats Ares, Kratos asks for his tainted memories to be removed, but Athena declines. Kratos gives up all hope and this is where we meet him at the edge of the cliff again, but Athena convinces him that Olympus needs him and a new God of War.

While living the life of a God at the start of God of War 2, Athena warns Kratos that his desire for power has angered the other gods. While attacking the island of Rhodes, a giant eagle swoops down onto Kratos, strips him of his powers, and brings the Colossus of Rhodes to life with it. Zeus then appears in the sky and sends the Blade of Olympus down, which is the only weapon that can defeat the Colossus. In order to use the Blade, Kratos must sacrifice his godhood, leaving him mortal. While Kratos is trapped underneath the rubble-hand of the Colossus after its defeat, Zeus reveals himself as the eagle and offers Kratos one last chance at being a God, but only if he forever served him. Not wanting to go through that again, Kratos declines and Zeus impales him with the Blade, sending him, once again, to Hades. On his way down, Kratos is saved by Gaia and asks for his help in killing Zeus as an act of revenge for the humiliation of the Titans. To do so, Kratos must meet the Sisters of Fate to go back in time and change his past, just before Zeus impales him and uses the Blade against Zeus. The two clash, flying up in the sky, and Kratos eventually gets the upper hand by returning the favour and impaling Zeus with the Blade. Before Kratos can kill Zeus, Athena gets involved and gets Kratos to stop, stating that killing him would destroy Olympus. Zeus then tries to flee, but Kratos attempts to stab him again and Athena sacrifices herself. While impaled, she reveals to Kratos that he is the son of Zeus. With Zeus no longer in sight, Kratos returns to the present and gets a ride from Gaia as they begin to climb Mt. Olympus to seek their revenge.

God of War 3 starts immediately where its prequel ended, with Kratos riding Gaia while she leads the rest of the Titans up Mt. Olympus. Aware of their efforts, Poseidon dives from the top of the mountain and attacks Gaia and Kratos. After killing Poseidon, they reach Zeus, but only to be knocked off the mountain by him. Kratos falls all the way down and lands in the River Styx, where the souls of the underworld take his powers. Along the journey to yet again reach Zeus, Kratos learns that Pandora’s Box still exists, but protected by the Flame of Olympus. Opening the Box is Kratos’ key to defeating Zeus, but he needs Pandora to put out the Flame. Once reaching the Labyrinth where Pandora and the Box are located, they encounter Zeus. This is where the battle between father and son begins, while Pandora sacrifices herself and jumps in the flame, leaving Pandora’s Box to be opened. Kratos then opens the box, only to find it empty. Upon the disappointing discovery, Zeus taunts Kratos, enraging him, and they get back to their battle. While outside on a balcony, an angered Gaia shows up, grabs the balcony and the 2 of them fall inside her. Continuing the battle, Kratos ends up stabbing the Blade of Olympus through Zeus and into Gaia’s heart, killing her and leaving Zeus seemingly dead. After Kratos wakes up outside, Zeus’ spirit attempts to kill him, but he dives into his own psyche where he forgives himself for his past wrongdoings and learns that hope was what was actually inside Pandora’s Box when it appeared empty. Kratos then comes to and kills Zeus. Athena then appears and demands Kratos to give her the power of hope, but Kratos refuses and stabs himself with the Blade of Olympus, releasing hope to all of mankind and leaving him in a pool of his own blood. After the credits, however, Kratos is gone with a trail of blood leading over the edge of a cliff.

In conclusion, I enjoyed the story from the first God of War the most by far, mostly because that’s where you learn of the character Kratos and he’s a pretty interesting guy. Getting a glimpse into the future and then learning about the events in his past that got him to his suicidal state while playing through the game to generate the story was very effective and I found the story to be well put together and interesting. I thought the story in God of War 2 was a little dull but it had its moment at the end when Kratos finds out that he’s the son of Zeus, which sets up God of War 3 to be a personal war. I also liked how God of War 3 started right where its prequel left off and throughout the game elevated the story quality again, much like the first game’s, and ended with quite the unexpected twist, especially after Kratos forgives himself for his past sins. But, I guess he can always climb out of Hades again, right?
It’ll definitely be interesting to see what kind of a journey God of War 4 takes us on next.

Level Design
The contrast between the levels in God of War 1 & 2 (PS2) and the God of War 3 (PS3) is a huge difference. Perhaps it’s a little unfair of a comparison with such a big performance difference between the two consoles, but it’s part of the evolution. The creativity and excitement added to God of War 3 is far greater than its prequels. When you’re fighting on a gigantic Titan and it starts waving its arm around and you go from fighting on your feet to all of a sudden hanging from your blades, it’s a pretty neat feeling. The sense of scale is impressive, too. When Cronos is trying to squish you, Kratos is about the size of an ant in comparison to him. And, since he’s so huge, while you’re climbing around on him he’s in a daze of confusion while looking around for you. This is just one example of the many significant improvements that were made to the God of War 3 levels instead of just sticking to average, bland levels in order to get the game’s quality up to that of a top action-adventure of today.

Bosses
God of War started out with 5 bosses, and God of War 2 & 3 had about twice as many. It makes sense from a story standpoint, as you should have to go through more obstacles/bosses when going after Zeus compared to Ares, as Zeus is the more important God and deserves more protection.
The first God of War’s bosses were the player’s introduction to the series’ epicness, with huge, challenging bosses and quite a difficult final battle. God of War 2 had more bosses but a weak final battle, which was used as a lead-up for its sequel. God of War 3 has about as many bosses as its prequel but at the highest level of intensity. The battles feel meaner, especially Hades, and Zeus gives a good fight at the end to finish the father versus son feud. Or at least the game wants us to think it’s finished.

Puzzles
The first two games had significantly more puzzles than God of War 3. The first had a little over 10, the second had about 15, and I counted 6 for the third. The term “puzzle” is a rather broad term and may not exactly mean the same thing to everyone, but to me a puzzle is a scenario that tests the player’s logic in order for them to be rewarded. The first 2 had the more difficult puzzles and more of them. The third only has 1 or 2 that test your logic and feel like a true puzzle. I think the absence of the puzzles in the third was to make it appeal to a broader audience instead of a more hardcore, puzzle-solving audience and substituted with more combat.

The Evolution of Kratos’ Mechanics
Throughout the series, Kratos goes through several makeovers to enhance his abilities:

• Kratos’ Rage
  • Rage of the Gods (God of War)
    • This is the first taste of Kratos’ rage, where the player enters in a near-invincible state and attacks with higher-damaging attacks for about 10 seconds.
  • Rage of the Titans (God of War 2)
    • This is the same as Rage of the Gods with the addition of being able to cancel the Rage when you don’t need it so you can preserve what’s left of the bar in the meter.
  • Rage of Sparta (God of War 3)
    • Rage of Sparta is also like the other rages except this time around a noir effect takes place and fills the screen with a contrast of black, white, and red to highlight the bloodshed.
• Magic
  • In God of War 1 & 2, all magic powers were accessible at all times.
  • In God of War 3, magic is dependent on which weapon you have equipped at the time, as each weapon has its own magic power attached to it.
• Items
  • Replacing the way magic was used in the first 2 games, items are brand new to the series and have an automatic-refill bar that replenishes after each use. One of the items, the Bow of Apollo, allows for a new way to attack that wasn’t present in the first 2 games – you can rapidly fire off arrows at a distance when it might be too risky for close-combat.
• Icarus Wings
  • This gliding ability was introduced in God of War 2, giving the ability for gliding to distant areas and you can also rise with the assistance of smoke to push you upward.
• Golden Fleece
  • Before God of War 2, you could block an enemy attack and not take damage, but why not reward the player a little more for a perfectly-timed block? That’s where the Golden Fleece comes in, transferring an enemy attack into an attack of your own back at them.
• Amulet of the Fates
  • As an exclusive ability to God of War 2, Amulet of the Fates causes time to slow down to a temporary-near standstill to help give puzzles more complexity. There was only one occurrence of this effect in God of War 3 with the perspective puzzle, but isn’t an actual ability.
• Grappling
  • Starting in God of War 2, you can hook onto an object with your blades, swing across a gap and land back onto the ground, or swing from grapple-to-grapple. God of War 3 takes it a little further with the addition of grappling onto Harpies, which you can fly around for a brief period of time.
• Creature Riding
  • One of the more interesting new additions to God of War 3 is the ability to ride a select few enemies. Once you damage them enough, you can jump onto them and control their attacks to take out a bunch of enemies and solve puzzles.
• First Person Kills
  • God of War 3 gives a brand new perspective to witnessing the rage of Kratos from. In one instance, you view death from the witness’ eyes, and in the other it’s looking down onto Zeus as his blood covers the camera/Kratos’ eyes.
• Puzzles
  A couple new abilities for puzzle-solving were added to God of War 3:
  • Rotating Objects: Instead of having to place an object on a platform and use a crank to rotate the object, you can now just use the left stick to rotate in 90-degree turns.
  • Faster Movement While Pushing Objects: It didn’t make sense before how you could push an object at the same speed in every direction. Now, the pushing speed increases when pushing an object forward.

It’s a little ironic that these useful additions that could have been in the previous games get added to the one that has the least amount of puzzles. Oh well, it’s better than nothing.

Combat
The core combat throughout the series retained the button-mashing style, while using combos is often rewarding. It makes sense in the way how Kratos is so hatred-filled, you could just imagine him going nuts and hacking and slashing his way through an army, so the button-mash combat style suits him. However, in God of War 3, your combat strategy can change and you can fight in a way you couldn’t with the other games. Instead of always having to be close to enemies in order to attack, the new addition of items and their infinite usage allows for long-range attacks with the Bow of Apollo. Sure, there was Typhon’s Bane in the first game, but that was a magic power and had limited use. With the Bow of Apollo, the player can step back and fire infinite amounts of arrows if the boss is spazzing out or whatever when they don’t want to be near it. Another new addition to combat is combat grapples. This allows you to link your attacks by hooking onto enemies with your blades from long-range and pull yourself to their location.

Difference in Controls
The controls throughout the series remained mostly the same, except for a few changes:

• Interact
  • In God of War, in order to open a door, you had to initiate the action by pressing R2 and then rapidly tap it until the door opened.
  • In God of War 2 & 3, you have to press R1 to initiate the action and then tap the circle button until the door opens. This is a much friendlier way as it’s easier to rapidly tap with your thumb than it is with your finger.
• Weapon Select
  • In God of War 1 & 2, you had to equip yourself with a secondary weapon in the menu and then press (whichever button) to switch between the primary and secondary weapon.
  • In God of War 3, all of the weapons are easily accessibility with the D-Pad. Each direction on the D-Pad is designated to a weapon, just like how weapon switching worked with God of War 1 & 2.
• Magic Select
  • In God of War 1 & 2, the magic powers were selectable with the D-Pad, as each direction selected a different magic ability.
  • In God of War 3, each magic power is attached to a weapon. This means that you must have a specific weapon selected if you want to use a specific magic power.

Major Improvements
Although the first God of War is a solid game, there were a few things that needed improvements…

In God of War 2:

• Diagonal Wall Climbing Attacks
  • I was slightly annoying while wall climbing when you came across some enemies that were positioned diagonally from you when you tried to attack. Unfortunately, there’s only 4-way attacks – up, down, left, right – and you had to move to make sure that you were aligned perfectly – vertically or horizontally – to the enemy to attack it. Well, this issue was fixed in God of War 2 by making the weapon-attack animations cover the diagonals with every swing of the Blades.
• Slight Control Layout Changes
  • In the first God of War, the interact button for opening doors and such was R2, but this has been changed in God of War 2 to R1. As an example, to open a door in the first one, you walk up to a door, press R2, and then rapidly press it until the door opened. In the second game, you walk up to a door, press R1, and then tap the circle button until it opens. This newer way is much easier as the circle button is far more rapidly-tap-friendly than R2.
• Quicker Upgrades
  • When upgrading magic powers or weapons, it doesn’t take nearly as long to spend your red orbs than it used to.

In God of War 3:

• Quick Time Events
  • As one of my favourite improvements made to the series, the button-prompt locations went from popping up in the same area in the first 2 games to being positioned based on the face-button locations on the PS3 controller. This means that instead of staring at the same spot waiting to see the next button-prompt, whenever you see a button-prompt at the top of the screen you instantly know that it’s the top-most face button, being triangle. If the prompt pops up on the right-hand side, you press the right-most button, circle. It’s a much more practical way of doing QTEs as you’re no longer staring at the same location and keeping your eyes on the action.
  • I also noticed that the QTE initiation has been greatly improved in God of War 3, as it doesn’t seem to matter which angle you initiate the QTE from, it just auto-corrects Kratos and snaps him in front of the enemy and starts the animation from there, instead of forcing you to make sure you have Kratos in the proper spot.

In conclusion, the above-mentioned are what I believe to be the main forms of evolution throughout the series that shaped it to become a solid trilogy. The story and fun combat was what made me really care about the series. While wanting to keep playing to see the story evolve, there’s just something about tearing through enemies with the quickness of the Blades that’s so satisfying. Mix that with the epic bosses and fun puzzles and you have yourself quite the adventure, with the addition of new mechanics in God of War 2 & 3 which broadened Kratos’ abilities and the challenges he faced.
I can’t wait to see what’s next for God of War 4. It’ll definitely be interesting to see where the story goes from the last time we saw Kratos, or at least his blood trail over the cliff. I would like to see the return of more puzzles like there were in God of War 1 & 2, because as good as God of War 3’s adventure is, the one thing that could have made it even better would have been to include more puzzles.
I can’t wait to see what Sony Santa Monica has up their sleeves for God of War 4, which has been announced, so I assume it’ll be about a 2-year wait to drag Kratos out of Hades, again.

So, I’ve now played God of War 3 after beating it in pretty much a single 9-hour-ish session, and the thoughts “Wow, this game looks amazing” instantly came to mind and it doesn’t play too badly, either. With improvements made to almost every category, including new mechanics, dynamic levels, and more brutality, I just couldn’t put the controller down even when the hunger pains hit after missing a meal because I was too busy being a huge, pale-skinned badass.
If you haven’t played the game yet and don’t want any spoilers, don’t continue reading because the following is full of them:

The Good

Story – Continuing the Adventure
God of War 3 starts off where God of War 2 ended – Kratos, still equipped with Icarus’ Wings and the Golden Fleece, catching a ride on Gaia while her and the other Titans climb Mount Olympus in pursuit of Zeus. While still climbing up the mountain, Kratos and Gaia get struck by Zeus’ lightning bolt and Kratos falls all the way down, landing in the River Styx. While Zeus thinks he’s killed his son, a determined Kratos fights through a number of gods to get to Zeus. While fighting Zeus, Kratos opens Pandora’s Box and finds it empty. The battle continues inside Gaia and Kratos stabs through Zeus with the Blade of Olympus and into Gaia’s heart, killing them both. After waking up outside in a pile of rubble, Zeus’ spirit attacks Kratos, where he then finds it in him to forgive himself for his past wrongdoings in some sort of nightmare-ish state, but then snaps out of it with the power of hope that was inside Pandora’s Box after all and kills Zeus again. Athena then appears and demands Kratos to hand over the power of hope, but Kratos refuses and stabs himself with the Blade of Olympus, killing himself and releasing the hope to the world.
After the credits, a trail of blood is left behind leading over the edge of a cliff and ultimately leaving us to question the future of God of War.

Better Graphics = More Believable Brutality
I know graphics/art isn’t exactly game design, but it does help to communicate it. For example, if you try to communicate a sense of brutality with old graphics like on the PS2, it’s just not effective in comparison to what we can do with today’s quality of game art. The better the graphics, the more you as the player will be able to feel from the gameplay. Since God of War is so brutality-focused, it needs to look great to be able to communicate how brutal Kratos actually is, and God of War 3 does indeed look great and Kratos has never felt this badass before.

Dynamic Levels
The levels are a lot more creative this time around. With them being a lot more dynamic and at such a huge scale, they can really captivate you, keeping you interested in what’s going on and making you want more to see what the next level could possibly be.
A couple of the more interesting levels were on Gaia and Cronos, both humungous Titans that make Kratos look like an ant in scale. While on them, you could be fighting enemies on solid ground at one point and then all of a sudden the Titan’s hand will move, flipping you around like you’re on an amusement park ride or something.
Another intense level was flying up and down the chain tunnel that connects the Labyrinth to the Underworld. With Icarus’ Wings, you through the tunnel, dodging obstacles with split-second reactions and even fireballs fall toward you at times.

Upgrades

• Magic

• Army of Sparta (Blades of Exile): While changing the contrast to a noir colour scheme – black, white, and red – spears and shields drop from above and stab nearby enemies.
• Soul Summon (Claws of Hades): You can summon souls to go after enemies to do some attacking for you.
• Nemesis Rage (Nemesis Whip): Creates balls of electricity.
• Nemean Roar (Nemean Cestus): Creates waves of energy by punching the ground.
• Items
  • Bow of Apollo: A bow and arrow to shoot at enemies and objects that becomes engulfed in flames when charged.
  • Head of Helios: Acts as a lantern; its own light source that can reveal secret areas, represented by gold dust particles, and, when charged, gives off a blinding solar flare.
  • Boots of Hermes: Gives a burst of speed, which can not only harm enemies when ran into but also allows for running up and along walls.
  • Weapons
    • Claws of Hades: You can summon souls to go after enemies to do some attacking for you.
    • Nemesis Whip: another weapon and is used to charge certain objects
    • Nemean Cesta: Big, powerful gloves for punching and is used to break Onyx that covers objects, shields, and are at times weak points on enemies.

The selection of weapons is a bit different, similar to the changes made to Magic. Now, you select the different weapons with the D-Pad, which replaces magic selection.

• Collectables: collect 3 of each to…
  • Gorgon Eye: increase Health Meter
  • Phoenix Feathers: increase Magic Meter
  • Minotaur Horns: increase Item Meter

Another slight change made to collectables is not only is there an additional category for the Item Meter, but you have to find 3 for each type instead of 5 like before.

New Mechanics

• Weapon-Specific Magic
  • Magic in this game is different than before, as it’s weapon-based. This is unlike the previous games where all of the magic powers were always available to use as you could switch between them with the D-Pad, no matter what.  But, this time around, there’s a magic power attached to each weapon, so you have to have a certain weapon equipped in order to use the magic power you want.
• Items
  • Items, like how magic was before, are always available to use and there are 3 different types. It comes with an Item Bar that automatically refills itself for infinite usage.
• Different Controls
  • Use Magic
    • R2 instead of L2.
  • Weapon Select
    • D-pad switches between weapons instead of magic like the previous 2 games
• Combat

• Combat Grapple
  • Press the combat grapple button to throw your blades at enemies and either ram them or use the Harpies to take flight.
• Enemy Ramming
  • You can grab an enemy and use him as a shield to run over other enemies with.
  • First Person Kills
    • First person kills are brand new to the series. It’s a rare occurrence, but there’s at least one scenario where you beat a helpless enemy through their eyes while you pummel on them and observe Kratos’ rage. The other instance of this is at the end of the Zeus fight where you’re looking through Kratos’ eyes and witness the mess you make of Zeus.
    • Creature Riding
      • For a select few enemies, you can complete a QTE, hop on their backs, and control their attacks.
      • Rage of Sparta
        • Like the previous rages, Rage of Sparta turns into an even more powerful beast with stronger attacks and takes little damage. This time around, Kratos busts out the Blade of Olympus and the screen fills with a noir contrast – black, white, and red – to highlight the bloodshed.
      • Grappling Harpies
        • Grappling Harpies is similar to grappling objects with the white orbs, except you have to shoot a Harpy with an arrow to agitate it, grapple onto its feet and fly around.

Improvements

• Quick Time Events

• Button Prompt Location
  • The QTEs have gone through a nice little makeover. Instead of every button prompt displaying in the same location as before, they now show up based on their location on the controller. For example, since the X button is located at the bottom of the 4 face buttons, the X-button prompt shows up at the bottom of the screen. If it’s a square-button prompt, it shows up on the left-side of the screen, and so on. This new way is a lot easier to react to as you don’t necessarily even have to know the buttons on the controller. Personally, my primary console to play on has been Xbox since 2002, so it’s not uncommon for my brain to see X and my finger to press square by mistake. I know all of the buttons on the PlayStation controller, but when you have to make split-second button-press decisions, you don’t exactly have time to think.
• Improved Initiation
  • Every now and then with the other 2 God of War games I had trouble initiating the QTE to finish off an enemy, because I had to be directly in front of them for it to work. Now, it seems like it doesn’t even matter what angle you’re at in relation to the enemy, once you attempt to start the QTE it’ll auto-correct your alignment with the enemy so you’re in front and carry on.
  • Puzzles
    • Rotating Objects
      • Instead of having to use a spinning platform, you can now spin objects around using the right stick.

• • Faster Movement While Pushing Objects
    • You can now push objects faster when pushing forward instead of it always being the same speed no matter which direction you’re going (sideways, backwards), like it was before.

Variety of Epic Bosses

• Leviathan
  • While crawling all over Gaia, you meet up with a big horse made out of water with huge claw-legs a couple times by the name of Leviathan.
  • Leviathan spews a water spout out of its mouth and stabs with its claw-legs.
    • Phase 1: During the first encounter and located on Gaia’s arm, she squirms in pain a few times and turns over her arm, making you go from fighting on your feet to dangling by your blades stuck into her. Once you hack away and do enough damage, a QTE rips off its bottom jaw.
    • Phase 2: You meet up with Leviathan again and this time it’s on Gaia’s chest. Once you slash enough damage into the water-horse, you cut off one of its claws, which you’ll use later on. Do enough damage again and you get to rip open its chest and then impale it with its severed claw.
• Poseidon
  • The God of the Seas, Poseidon, also shows up on Gaia, wielding a Trident and riding on a multi-headed Leviathan.
  • During the first phase, the Leviathan strikes with its claws and Poseidon zaps energy at you with his Trident.
    • Phase 1: While on top of Gaia’s head, hack away at the 2 Leviathan claws holding onto Gaia and then she’ll grab Poseidon with her huge hand.
    • Phase 2: While stuck in Gaia’s grip, Poseidon tries to stab with his energy-charged Trident and impales it into Gaia’s hand, creating a small floor of electricity. Once you do enough damage to him, you can climb up Gaia’s hand and complete a QTE to stab Poseidon in chest multiple times until a Leviathan claw grabs Gaia’s head again and you relocate back there.
    • Phase 3: Identical to Phase 1, there are 2 claws holding onto Gaia’s head. Once you fight them off, Gaia tries to punch Poseidon, but a Leviathan claw catches it, which then you use grapple points to swing over to Poseidon and throw him off his horse.
    • Phase 4: With the both of you on an isolated cliff and Poseidon injured, all that’s left to do is walk up to him and complete a QTE to beat the life out of him with a first person view through his eyes staring into Kratos’.
• Hades
  • Upon entering an oval-shaped room in Hades’ palace, the God of the Underworld himself emerges from darkness and attempts to steal Kratos’ soul.
  • Hades uses his Claws of Hades to perform whip-attacks which give off a spectacular-looking blue shine with every attack. He can also swing up to the ceiling and drop back down, giving off a wave of energy.
    Starting with the second phase, Hades starts summoning dead souls and can also fill the room with chains, which has one hole where you can fly to in order to dodge the attack. The third phase has Hades shooting his claws up from the ground that emerge one-by-one for a few seconds.
    • Phase 1 & 2: Dodge Hades’ attacks and damage him enough until you cut him open and rip out an organ of his and kill it before it crawls back to him.
    • Phase 3: After dealing him a good amount of damage, you stab him in the head and then wrap his chains up with your blades, sending you into a tug of war.
    • Phase 4: In the tug of war, a large gap fills the middle, that was previously created by Hades’ claws, with you on one side and Hades on the other. While Hades tries to pull you and attack you, inching you closer to the hole, you have to attack back to go the other way. Once he weakens, you get to stick your blades in his helmet, bash his head on the ceiling until he falls into the gap, and steal his Claws of Hades.
    • Phase 5: While fighting off a handful of enemies, Hades emerges from the gap, helmetless, revealing his ugly face. While towering over you, he swipes and pounds with his arms and can also shoot out a blue beam of light out of his mouth. On both sides of him are 2 areas to grapple, which you can use and swing to the other side and catch him with his back turned to you. Once you damage him enough you can then rip his soul out of him and absorb it and its powers for yourself, giving you the ability to swim the River Styx without harm.

• Hermes
  • Hermes is both quick and annoying, as he runs away with his blurring speed and taunts you along the way.
  • The only ability Hermes has is his agility from the Boots of Hermes.
    • You chase Hermes, testing your agility and what seemed to be all ways of getting around to get you past the obstacles Hermes throws your way, most notably:
      • Collapsing bridges that engulf in flames and you have to climb up the bridge while the flames chase you up.
      • Another collapsing bridge that leaves grapple points behind for your to swing across with.
      • You have to launch yourself to a statue by using a cadapult to throw a rock while you latch onto it to go along for the ride.
  • Once the statue collapses, Hermes gets tired of running and starts sprinting into you as an attack. Once you damage him enough you then cut off Hermes’ legs to gain the Boots of Hermes.
• Hercules
  • Hercules is Kratos’ 3-foot-taller brother and also the son of Zeus. In his mythical lifetime, Hercules was ordered to complete 12 labors and killing Kratos would be number 13 as he tries to complete the task in an outdoor, oval arena.
  • He is equipped with the gloves of Nemean Cestus and throws powerful punches. Throughout Phase 1 there are weak, skeleton enemies that try to help Hercules out but they disappear in Phase 2. In Phase 3, without the Nemean Cesta, Hercules picks up pieces of statue and throws them, along with grab-attacks, such as bear hugs and choking attacks.
    • Phase 1: There are a number of spiked areas along the walls of the arena and every time Hercules charges, you can turn it into a grapple and run him into the spikes. Once you do that twice he loses his helmet and it becomes a 1 on 1 battle.
    • Phase 2: After wearing Hercules down, he loses his composure. With his back turned, you attack him and steal his Nemean Cesta gloves and use them against him while he only has his bare hands left.
    • Phase 3: While dodging statues being thrown at you and getting out of his grab-attacks, Hercules eventually grabs and tilts the entire floor over on you. With the floor above his head you run up the ramp it has formed and drop it on him, followed by turning his face into mush with punches thrown from the Nemean Cestus.
• Cronos
  • With Pandora’s Temple chained to his back, Cronos finds Kratos and is not happy about what he did to Gaia. Thinking that Kratos killed her, he tries to squish him.
    • Phase 1: While you appear to be the size of an ant on Cronos’ arm, he tries to flatten you with his hand. When his hand lands, you have to take out his fingernail on his middle finger. This inflicts a lot of pain and gets Cronos to put his hand down so you can climb onto it, blind him with a solar flare using the Head of Helios and fall onto his stomach.
    • Phase 2: You climb up his stomach and fight enemies along the way and onto his belt. Behind his belt is a large, blue crystal of Onyx. After damaging that with the Nemean Cestus, Cronos grabs you and the battle resumes on his palm.
    • Phase 3: While fighting enemies on his hand and then grappling your way up his arm, Cronos has enough, grabs you again, and swallows you.
    • Phase 4: While scraping your way down his throat with your blades, you have to make your way past lumps of slime before the slime ball falling above you catches up. Once you make your way down to his stomach, you slice it open and jump back outside onto his hand, where he’s holding his wound, with the Omphalos Stone you just acquired.
    • Phase 5: You then make your way back up to the Onyx, smash it into 2 pieces, and jam 1 piece through his chin. With the piece sticking through, you smash it and crawl up his face, stabbing him in the forehead with the Sword of Olympus and killing Cronos.
• Skorpius
  • Skorpius is a massive scorpion with 4 Onyx-covered legs on each side and an Onyx-covered body and the battle takes place on large box.
  • It has a variety of attacks, such as bashing you and turning you into an icicle with its stinger, stabbing with its legs, swiping you up and trying to eat you, and hatching baby scorpions. Skorpius can also run down the box and vanish, appearing on a random side soon after.
    • Phase 1: The blue legs means you are to take them out with the Nemean Cestus. Once you take out one side it’ll stun Skorpius so you can attack its face and rip a piece of its mouth off. Do this twice to hit both you and Skorpius off the box.
    • Phase 2: While falling, Skorpius grabs onto a chain and you fall a little farther down. To get back up, you fly up and dodge falling Onyx crystals until you reach Skorpius and stab it with its own stinger through its body, turning it into a big icicle and you can bash it to pieces to finish Skorpius off.
• Zeus
  • Once reaching and unlocking the Flame of Olympus with Pandora’s Box inside, Zeus stops Pandora from running into the flame.
  • Zeus’s attacks range throughout the different phases:
    Phase 1 & 2: Zeus can throw and punch lightning and also send it through the ground.
    Phase 3: While inside Gaia, Zeus can multiply himself into numerous clones to help him attack you.
    • Phase 1: After Zeus tosses Pandora aside, Kratos and Zeus collide and land on a beam for a Street Fighter-like fight. After ramming Zeus into a couple columns and having them crumble on top of him, Pandora runs toward the flame but Kratos is there to stop her. Zeus then gets up and starts taunting Kratos and he can’t take it anymore, so he lets go of Pandora’s hand and sacrifices her for Pandora’s Box.
    • Phase 2: After Kratos opens Pandora’s Box only to find it empty, Zeus laughs at him and teleports to outside to a temple. Kratos finds him and they battle until an angered Gaia shows up, breaks the temple out of the ground and crumbles it, forcing Kratos and Zeus to jump into her chest.
    • Phase 3: Once inside Gaia, you have to destroy the Onyx crystals around Gaia’s heart. The heart is exposed and, while lit up, it gives off health orbs whenever it’s attacked. Zeus then shows up and you have to fight him and his clones while keeping him away from Gaia’s heart by attacking it yourself so he can’t refill his health. After dealing Zeus enough damage, you can then complete a QTE to stab through him and into Gaia’s heart with the Sword of Olympus. Once Gaia crumbles, it leaves Kratos and Zeus lying within rubble. Kratos wakes up to Zeus with the sword still lodged in his chest and pulls it out, releasing Zeus’ soul.
    • Phase 4: Zeus’ soul emerges from Zeus and knocks Kratos out with a lightning bolt, stripping him of all of his weapons and items. Zeus’s soul then grabs him by the throat and sends him into a pitch black nightmare with a blood trail to follow, similar to that of a level in Max Payne. Pandora gives Kratos a flame of forgiveness and freedom, which he engulfs his wife, daughter, and Athena with to help heal his mental wounds. After that, he jumps into a river, and swims to a blue light that turns out to be the location of Pandora’s Box, which gives him the power to kill a God – hope – and he snaps out of his nightmare and you kill Zeus’ soul from a first person camera view. After that, all that’s left is to beat Zeus’ face in with your bare hands until the camera fills with blood.
    • In the end, as a surprise twist, you kill yourself when it looked like you were going to kill Athena, as you lie in a pool of your own blood.

I enjoyed these boss battles a lot, as there was quite a bit of variety throughout them all. Some towered in scale, and others not so much. Some didn’t require you to move around all too much, but others did. Certain bosses got you to use certain weapons to defeat them, while others left it up to you. I always felt entertained and there wasn’t one boss that let me down.

Fewer Puzzles, But at Least There Are Some Good Ones

• • Objective: Use 3-headed dog thing to set fire to helpless guy trapped behind branches to acquire the Bow of Apollo.
    • There’s a lever located up high locked behind a gate. Drop a flammable pot down onto the main area below, drag it to the 3-headed dog locked behind a gate and let him breathe fire onto it to catch it on fire. This will emit smoke out of the pot so you can use your wings to float to the area up top with the lever. Run back to where you started from and there’s a weight-sensitive platform that raises the gate to the lever, run back over to the pot, use the smoke to get you to the lever, and use it to break the dog out. Beat the dog up until you can mount it and take control of it and ride it over to the guy and set him on fire to get the Bow of Apollo
  • Objective: Jam wheels lock door and the Arms of Hades statue from moving back.
    • This puzzle is split into 2 rooms, both with 2 floors to them.
    • On the first floor in the first room, you have to drag over a pile of rocks to a wheel, use the wheel to unlock a door on the top floor, and then slide the rocks under an arm of the wheel to make it stay in place so the door stays open. Climb a tree to get up top, through the gate and into the room which leads to the second room.
    • The second room features the Arms of Hades statue with its arms locked in handcuffs and also a coffin that you later swing into the statue. On the bottom floor is a crank that unlocks the handcuffs for a short amount of time before moving back, and on both sides on the top floor are more wheels that you have to turn to move the arms of the statue into the handcuffs. Before you can make any progress in the second room, you have to climb to the top-left floor, take an elevator down which leads to the bottom of the first room, retrieve the pile of rocks that you previously used, and then bring them back up to the top of the second room and move them by the wheel. Hop back down to the bottom floor, use the crank, get back up to the top floor, use the wheel and slide the rocks underneath. This locks the left arm of the statue in place for when you use the crank a second time so the arm doesn’t move when you unlock the handcuffs. All that’s left to do is go up to the top-right room, use the wheel, and then swing the coffin into the statue to initiate the boss battle with Hades.
  • Objective: Use Cyclopse to bash shielded enemies to get to Helios.
    • There are a bunch of enemies protecting Helios by surrounding him with their shields. With the weapons you have at the time there’s no way you can destroy the shields, since they can only be destroyed by weapons that have a large amount of smashing power, so a Cyclopse spawns to help you out. Just like the 3-headed dog, you must beat up the Cyclopse until you damage him enough to ride him and take control of his attacks, bashing all of the enemies away from Helios.
  • Objective: Properly tune instrument and then play the notes to raise Flame of Olympus platform.
    • There are 4 cranks located up high that you can get up to and look down on a disfigured sword image that you have to fix and line up with the cranks to tune the instrument. Once that’s done you then have to follow button prompts, like Guitar Hero, to play music, which raises the Flame of Olympus platform.
  • Objective: Apply enough weight to platform to lower it in line with portal.
    • There are 3 portals that you need to use in order to progress. At the start of the puzzle is a portal that sends you through its exit portal on top of a weight-sensitive platform, and underneath that is the portal you need to get to. The problem is, the platform starts out too high and you need more weight to lower the platform enough to reach your target portal. So, back where you started from, infinite amounts of dog enemies attack you and you need to send them through the portal that leads to the platform. With each dog added on top of it the more the platform lowers. Once you get 4 on there, all that’s left is for you to hop on it and let it lower so you can go through the bottom portal.
  • Objective: Use an altered perspective to line up various objects in order to create a path for yourself.
    • This puzzle is separated in 3 different sections, all of which require separate uses of a staircase that you have to drag around to lead water into weight-sensitive bird baths and such.
    • The first section is very simple, as you just have to line up the staircase with a waterfall so it leads water into the bird bath which lowers a platform and keeps a door open.
    • With the second section, you have to drag the staircase just a little ways so it lines up with another bird bath on the other side of a fence. But, this time that’s not all you have to do, as you have to press a button, which activates the altered perspective to create an optical illusion, and lines up the platform you earlier lowered so water flows off of that and into the bird bath. This lines up more platforms.
      Note: Without altering the perspective, the platform and bird bath would not line up.
    • In the third section, you have to drag the staircase down a little ways to a new section and line it up with other stairs that will soon become usable stairs. Pick up the dead body lying on the ground, press the button to alter the perspective, and then walk up the newly-made stairs and place the body in the bird bath. This lines up the last piece of platform to complete your path to progress with. All that’s left to do is drag the staircase onto the perspective-altering button so you have enough time to use your new path with the altered perspective.

Other than the above listed, there aren’t too many other puzzles worth mentioning. Near the end of the game there are a few timed challenges, which aren’t exactly puzzles, where you get Pandora to climb in a little room to push a button, which locks her in and then you have to race to save her from spikes or whatever that’s about to kill her. But, those aren’t exactly puzzles since you just need to follow a path to get to where you need to get to in order to save her.
The Bad

Chest Colour
Depending on the lighting, it’s hard at times to determine the colour of the chests. This is usually an issue in brighter environments rather than darker ones where the chest colour is one of the only light sources. The green ones sometimes appear to be white, just like the chests that contain Rage of Sparta orbs. The player should be able to tell the colours apart without having to guess. This could really screw up your strategy because if you think a chest is one colour when it’s actually not, you could waste a bunch of orbs on a bar that was already filled.

Hey, Let Me Go Back!
There’s a puzzle like the game Portal that requires you to go through blue (entry) and orange (exit) portals to reach chests locked behind gates. Unfortunately, I was unlucky enough to choose a path that dropped me down and didn’t let me go back up, making me miss the puzzle completely. It made me sad because I was excited to try it and write good things about it, but now it ends up in the Bad section! I’m sure it’s a fine puzzle, though.
Something similar happened at around where that altered-perspective puzzle is located. I saw chests on the other side of some fences but couldn’t reach them because I didn’t go the correct way in the maze in order to reach them, I guess. So when I tried to go back, I couldn’t and never got another chance to get the chests.
I should be allowed to go in whichever order I want and not lose to a guessing game and get blocked off. If I end up missing a couple chests, fine, no big deal (but still a little annoying), but when I miss an entire puzzle because of it that’s when it starts to get depressing.

Lack of Puzzles
It seems like this game was made to be more of a pure-combat game rather than having as much of a problem-solving mix as the rest of the series. This would make sense if all you were doing was trying to get to Zeus, but you’re again after Pandora’s Box so I can’t see a reason why there couldn’t be as many puzzles as before. I’m a big fan of puzzles in God of War 1 and 2, so the few amounts of them in this one disappointed me a little.

Conclusion

From the very start to the last, God of War 3 is completely packed with jaw-dropping intensity the way God of War was meant to be. The power of the PS3 shows off the true in-game brutality that just wasn’t possible with the PS2, introducing us to the real Kratos. With the lack of puzzles to disappoint me a little, the rest of the game makes up for it and is still my favourite of the series.
If you compare the puzzles in God of War 3 to Uncharted 2, they’re pretty much equal in terms of quantity and quality. They’re both amazing games and share a lot of similarities of adventure, but both seemed like they were a little hesitant on making the player think too much, skipping out on allowing puzzles to have more of an impact on Kratos’ and Nate Drake’s quests. And, just in case you’re wondering which game I think is better – God of War 3 or Uncharted 2 – I enjoyed Kratos’ adventure quite a bit more. There’s just more thrills that Kratos encounters than what Drake did, making God of War 3 the better action-adventure game.

In the next Game Design Dissection I will compare and give a summary of all the 3 games in the series to analyze the evolution, which will be up shortly.

After playing the first in the series, I was super excited to play God of War 2. Since the first one was so good I had big expectations. Luckily, I wasn’t too disappointed. While both sticking to the core of what makes the game good and also giving it some extras to evolve, God of War 2 is a solid sequel and I’m going to compare the two a bit to see where it went right and wrong from the first to the second game.
There are parts of the game that aren’t going to change too much from the first, such as the camera, level design, core game mechanics etc., so I won’t bother talking about them again unless there are significant, unexpected changes.

The Good

Great Cliffhanger Ending
To start the game off, Kratos, the new God of War after defeating Ares in the first game, is quickly drained of his powers. This starts you off from scratch again, just like the beginning of the first game, and you have to put some work in to build Kratos back up.
I didn’t find the story in God of War 2 to be quite as entertaining as the first game’s, but it had its moments, especially at the end:

• While battling the Colossus of Rhodes throughout the first level, Zeus makes an appearance and offers Kratos the only weapon to defeat it, the Sword of Olympus, in exchange for his godhood, leaving him mortal. After Kratos becomes weak and vulnerable, Zeus reveals himself as the eagle and kills Kratos, sending him to Hades again.
• Near the end, Kratos comes close to killing Zeus in the final battle, only to be saved by Athena sacrificing her life, as she reveals to Kratos that he is the son of Zeus.
• After the Zeus battle, Kratos convinces Gaia to go after Zeus, which ends the game with the visual of Gaia, Kratos, and the rest of the Titans climbing Mount Olympus to go after Zeus, giving a starting point for God of War 3.

Upgrades

• 4 Magic Powers
  • Typhon’s Bane: A bow and arrow weapon to shoot objects and enemies from long range. Shootable objects/enemies are highlighted in blue while aiming.
  • Crono’s Rage: You can place up to 3 electrocuting orbs at a time to zap enemies within range.
  • Head of Euryale: Just like Medusa’s Gaze, Head of Euryale turns enemies into stone when you use it on them for long enough.
  • Atlus Quake: Creates a powerful, quick earthquake that knocks enemies off their feet.
• 3 Weapons
  • Barbarian Hammer
  • Spear of Destiny
  • Sword of Olympus

New Mechanics
Here is a list of game mechanics that weren’t present in the first God of War. These are what give the second game in the series a sense of evolution by allowing you to play the game in a whole new way:

• Rage of the Titans
  • Like Rage of the Gods in the first God of War, Rage of the Titans, when activated, produces stronger attacks and you take very little damage. The only major difference is that you don’t have to wait until the meter is completely filled to activate it and it can be turned off at any time to save the remainder left in the meter. The Rage of the Titans meter can be refilled by collecting orange orbs that either can be found in chests or by killing enemies.
    The only problem I have with Rage of the Titans is that once your meter is down to a certain small amount you can’t activate it anymore and there’s no indication of that, so you end up guessing when you think it’s filled up enough and eventually it’ll activate. A solution to this could be to just fade the meter while you don’t have enough of it filled up and then brighten it up when it becomes available to activate.

• Amulet of the Fates
  • While near and facing a Fates Statue holding a green, glowing orb, you can activate Amulet of the Fates. When used, a green overlay fills the screen and greatly slows down time to a near-standstill for everything except Kratos’ movement for about 10 seconds. Once the time runs out, the Amulet of the Fates bar replenishes itself right away.
• Golden Fleece
  • This allows you to deflect attacks back at enemies. If an enemy shoots a projectile at you, you can throw it back at them. If it’s a melee attack, you can perform a powerful, single attack.
• Icarus’ Wings
  • Icarus’ Wings allows you to instantly grow wings and glide while airborne.
• Grappling
  • You can grapple onto certain objects, highlighted by a glowing white orb, by throwing your blades at the orb and swing over large gaps like Spider-Man would.
• Ceiling Climbing
  • To add to wall climbing there is now the addition of ceiling climbing. And, just like wall climbing, there are battles included. It’s a nice little variation for getting around.

Improvements
Another way to evolve a game is to fix issues that were present in the first game, although none of these were huge issues in God of War 1:

• Wall Climbing Diagonal Attacks
  • As one of my complaints about the first God of War, you couldn’t attack at diagonal angles while climbing. This is now fixed as the animations cover the diagonals.
• Slight Control Layout Changes
  • In the first God of War, R2 was the interact button for opening doors and such, but this has been changed in God of War 2 to R1. As an example, to open a door in the first one, you walk up to a door, press R2, and then rapidly press it until the door opened. In the second game, you walk up to a door, press R1, and then tap the circle button until it opens. This newer way is much easier as the circle button is far more rapidly-tap-friendly than R2.
• Improved Red Orbs Counter
  • The first game features a counter that keeps track of how many times you fill your red orbs bar, but doesn’t actually tell you how many you have until you press start and check it out. In the second game, however, this is improved with the exact amount always displayed so you know when you’ve reached that certain amount in order to upgrade a weapon or magic power without having to press the start button to look.
• Quicker Upgrades
  • When upgrading magic powers or weapons, it doesn’t take nearly as long to spend your red orbs than it used to.

Boss Battles
This game has about twice as many boss battles than in the first game. Here are some descriptions of them:

• Colossus of Rhodes
  • This first boss is brought to life by Zeus, while in his eagle form, by stripping Kratos of some of his power and giving it to the Colossus. Kratos fights the possessed Colossus several times throughout the level:
  • Throughout each phase, he attacks by using his arms to swipe and crush you.
    • Phase 1: The Colossus slams his hand down and you have to hack away at it until he gets dazed and then catapult onto him using the launcher, beating the phase with a QTE.
    • Phase 2: When the Colossus gets up close, use magic and damage him enough until he allows you to do a QTE on him. Do this twice to defeat this phase.
    • Phase 3: Zeus drops you the Sword of Olympus and the Colossus tries to keep you from getting it. He slams his hand down while you try to grab the sword, so you have to attack him until he gets dazed. The first time you try to get the sword you sacrifice all of your red orbs and the second time you sacrifice all of your magic. The third attempt actually gets you the sword, which then allows you to cut into his stomach and jump inside.
    • Phase 4: Now you’re inside the Colossus and you have to make your way to the top while taking out his vital spots with your new Sword of Olympus. Once that’s done, you defeat the Colossus of Rhodes.
• The Dark Rider
  • While flying the Pegasus through the sky to the next level and already having your hands full with keeping enemies away, the Dark Rider shows up.
  • He attacks you with his Spear of Destiny, by shooting at you from long range and getting up close for melee attacks. He also attacks with his bird, or Griffin, that he rides by quickly ramming it into you.
    • After fending off his attacks, he hits you off the Pegasus and you land on his Griffin and kill him and his bird with a QTE.
• Theseus
  • Kratos runs into Theseus at the door he wants to go through next but Theseus has the only key. Kratos asks him nicely to hand it over without any need to get violent, but instead Theseus challenges Kratos to see who the greatest warrior is in all of Greece.
  • He attacks by using his spear for both close combat and shoots projectiles at long range.
    • Phase 1: Theseus swipes at you with his spear on the ground until you damage him enough for him to jump on top of the roof of the building you need to get into next with that key he’s holding on to.
    • Phase 2:  While on the roof, he starts shooting at you with projectiles from his spear and summons other enemies to go after you, with groups of large, retractable spikes quickly emerging out of the ground all around. You have to fight off the summoned enemies on the ground and shoot back at Theseus with Typhon’s Bane.
      After damaging him enough he falls off the roof and all that’s left to do is steal his key, open the door, and repeatedly smash his head with it until Kratos figures he’s dead enough.
• Barbarian King
  • Kratos’ old friend makes a revengeful return. In past events, Kratos killed the Barbarian King when Kratos gained his Blades of Chaos. After that, the Barbarian King battled his way out of Hades and is back to kill Kratos.
  • The Barbarian King can smash you with his hammer and use magical projectiles against you for his attacks. He can also summon enemies from the dead.
    • Phase 1: The Barbarian King comes from behind, riding on his horse, and misses while taking a swipe at Kratos with his hammer. Kratos throws his blades at the horse and you get dragged through a forest with a QTE to complete.
    • Phase 2: Now that you’re no longer being dragged, you get to fight him and his horse. While dodging his hammer and magic, once you do enough damage to him you kill his horse.
    • Phase 3: With his horse dead, the Barbarian King starts summoning other enemies from the dead to attack you. After you hurt him enough, he grows into a giant.
    • Phase 4: Now he and his hammer are gigantic. Once you do enough damage he shrinks back down.
    • Phase 5: He’s back to normal size and all that’s left is to hit him enough times to steal his hammer and finish him off with a QTE and send him back to Hades. You get to keep his hammer, too.
• Euryale
  • Medusa’s sister, Euryale, is a bigger and uglier version of Medusa. Like Medusa, Kratos is after Euryale’s head.
  • Her attacks are similar to Medusa’s, as she can turn you into stone with her gaze. She can also hit you by whipping her tail around and shoots magical projectiles.
    • Phase 1: She starts on the ground. Beat her up until she heads toward the columns.
    • Phase 2: She wraps herself around one of 2 pillars. Once you cause enough damage you can then break the pillar off and hit her with it. The same is done with the other pillar.
    • Phase 3: Now she’s really mad and goes back to attacking you on the ground. After doing enough damage you can finish her off with a QTE and decapitate her, acquiring the Head of Euryale.
• Perseus
  • On a similar journey to reach the Sisters of Fate, Perseus is Kratos’ next major battle and this time it’s in a pool of water.
  • Perseus has a helmet that allows him to turn invisible and he uses a sword, a sling, and a shield with blinding power to attack with.
    • Phase 1: Perseus starts out invisible and you can only tell where he is by the ripples he creates in the water and where he shoots projectiles from. He can also teleport, and you can tell it happens when there’s a large splash and he all of a sudden starts shooting at you from another location. To get him out of his invisibility, you have to beat him up enough and be near him at the time the circle button prompt appears, as you only have about a second to react.
    • Phase 2: Now that he’s visible the fight becomes a little easier, but now he can blind you. Every time he blinds you, you get dazed and he tries to attack you right after. Once you hurt him enough, you have to get through a QTE to smash his head into a wall, drown him, throw him through a wall, and collect his shield to use in a puzzle.
• Titan Minotaur
  • While hopping on a platform surrounded by a pool of lava, you come across what seems to be a big pile of rocks at first, but it turns out to be a Titan Minotaur after awakening him.
  • The Minotaur attacks by slamming and spinning his fists around and he can also throw large boulders.
    • Phase 1: Battle him on the platform until he sinks it and reveals a climbable area on the wall for you to grab onto.
    • Phase 2: While you’re on the wall, dodging boulders he throws at you, the platform resurfaces for another battle.
    • Phase 3: This is just like the first phase, except this time when you cause enough he dies and gives you a stone to reach a high passage.
• Kraken
  • The Kraken is a large, ugly monster. It hangs over a platform ledge, covering a lever, and holds onto 2 pillars.
  • It has huge tentacle arms, which it uses to attack by slamming them on the ground. It can also spit slime from its mouth.
    • Phase 1: You have a dead body, a button, and a vent to use against the Kraken. Attack its right tentacle arm until it raises it enough for you to place the body on the button. When the button is pressed it activates air flow from the vent and you can then use your Icarus’ Wings to glide to the Kraken’s head and attack it. Once you attack its face enough it slams a tentacle into the vent to stop the air flow, which allows you to climb the tentacle and attack it at the joint. After attacking it enough, you cut it off. You have to repeat the same steps for its left tentacle and they’ve both been destroyed, the Kraken eats the dead body.
    • Phase 2: Now that both tentacles are destroyed, all that’s left is to attack the Kraken’s head. The more you attack it the more it slips off the ledge, uncovering a lever that you can pull to drive a bridge through it its head to kill it, also giving you your next path.
• Sisters of Fate
  • The Sisters of Fate are made up of 3 sisters: Lahkesis, Atropos, and Clotho. These sisters are in the way of Kratos changing his past so he can travel back in time just before being killed by Zeus.
  • The first two sisters you fight, Lahkesis and Atropos, fly around and use a variety of magic powers, shooting out projectiles and beams. The third sister, Clotho, is rather the opposite as she is totally immobile and only attacks by swinging her arms around.
    • Lahkesis
      • Phase 1: Inside the Temple of the Fates, Kratos and Lahkesis square off. The first phase of this battle is on the ground, where she uses her staff to hit you and shoot magic out of. Once you hit her enough times she starts hovering in the air.
      • Phase 2: While in the air, you have to dodge attacks by grappling from object-to-object, which are placed around the perimeter of the room. The only way to attack her is by using these grapples, jump towards her and attack. After she takes enough damage, you stab through her sister, Atropos, captures and flies you through a mirror.
    • Atropos
      • Atropos brings you to The Temple of the Oracle and drops you on the Blade of the Gods, with a backdrop of Kratos fighting Ares from the first God of War. You must fight off enemies that attack you on the sword and also keep Atropos from destroying it by deflecting her attacks with the Golden Fleece and sending them back at her. Once you do enough damage to her you must complete a QTE and stab her through her face.
    • Lahkesis and Atropos
      • Now you get sent back to the Temple of the Fates and battle Lahkesis again while Atropos pokes her head through the mirrors from outside. Once you do enough damage to Lahkesis, she will get dazed and a glowing green orb will appear for you to use Amulet of the Fates to slow down time and run over to Atropos and attack her. Every time you do this the mirror Atropos was at will crack and you can smash it to pieces. You have to do this again for one more mirror. For the final mirror, though, once you do enough damage to Lahkesis, you have to complete a QTE to stab through her head, send her though the mirror, and smash it to pieces, which then leads to your next room.
    • Clotho
      • The battle with Clotho is made up of 2 main floors, starting with the middle, consisting of levers and cranks to be used in order to defeat her.
      • On the middle floor, Clotho has 3 arms that swipe at you. For the first 2 arms, attack them to temporarily disable them and then use a lever to get one stuck in a door in the ground and use another lever to drive a spike into the other hand. For the last arm, you have to drag a device with another spike attached to it, disable the arm, drag the spike in line so it overhangs the arm, and then attack the arm so it jolts up into the spike and stabs itself. Now that all 3 arms are stuck, you can proceed up top to the final floor.
      • At the top, you have to use Amulet of the Fates to slow down time, attack Clotho’s last 2 arms to temporarily disable them, and pull a couple of cranks until you line up a large blade and drive it through Clotho’s head with a QTE.
        Now that she’s dead, it’s time to fight Zeus!
• Zeus
  • Near the end of the game, Kratos goes back in time to return to the past just before Zeus killed him and snatches the Blade of Olympus for himself. The two then clash, flying up into the sky and landing on a platform where the final battle begins.
  • Most of Zeus’ attacks are powered by lightening, whether it’s throwing projectiles or some of his more powerful melee attacks.
    • Phase 1: Zeus starts out in a huge, God-like state, around the perimeter of the platform and uses a variety of attacks such as throwing lightning bolts, throwing punches, and summoning Siren Widows from the ground. To defeat this phase of Zeus, you must squeeze the life out of the Sirens, which temporarily stuns him. Every time Zeus gets stunned, he puts his hand down for you to attack. After you do that enough times, you stab him in the hand, scaling him down to his human size.
    • Phase 2: Now that Zeus is on the platform and is the same size as Kratos, it’s back to normal combat. Once you damage him enough he steals your Sword of Olympus. Possession of the sword trades off numerous times throughout the battle, and once you do enough damage you can start throwing pieces of columns onto him. Once you hit him with 2 pieces he grows and towers over you, once again.
    • Phase 3: After Zeus grows again, Kratos pretends to give up and stabs the sword into the ground, turns around, and kneels down for Zeus to come down and kill him. Once Zeus is about to slice his head off, you must complete a QTE and eventually stab him, only ending the battle as you don’t actually kill him.

After the battle, Kratos finds out that he is the son of Zeus, which is a great cliffhanger ending and leads up to what should be a great adventure for God of War 3.

And now for my thoughts on the bosses:
I thought the final Zeus battle didn’t quite have the same epic feel to it as the first God of War’s final boss fight with Ares. There just wasn’t as much intensity with Zeus and it was a lot easier. This could be due to the fact that you don’t actually kill Zeus, but he’s still supposed to be this powerful King of Olympus, so the battle should have been more difficult than it was.
To spice things up a bit, while in his giant state during the first phase, instead of just standing in one spot firing off attacks, it would have been more interesting if he ducked underneath and popped back up at random spots around the platform.
But, overall, I enjoyed the battles and appreciated the ones that used the new mechanics. I found the difficulty progression of the order of bosses to be pretty spot on, but I hope for more intensity in God of War 3.

My Favourite Puzzles
Since I had 10 puzzles to talk about for my Game Design Dissection for God of War 1, I’m going to talk about 10 again for this one, even though I took notes on about 15.
Here are my top 10, in no specific order:

• Objective: Get past the Colossus of Rhodes’ beams and cross the rope to the other side.
  • To get past the beams, use a lever to lower a pendulum, drop down and attack it to get it swinging, climb back up top, use the lever again to raise the pendulum back up and follow it along the rope as it swings past the 2 beams and blocks them for you.
• Objective: Throw enemies in fire to melt ice off chests.
  • There’s a fire and infinite amounts of enemies attacking you. You have to throw their bodies into the fire to make it grow and eventually it melts the ice off of the chests, which are placed around the perimeter of the fire.
• Objective: Drag 2 statues to line up with beams to reflect them back to unlock path.
  • The path you have to get to next is locked until you reflect two beams. To do this, you have 2 statues to work with.
    • Simply drag over one statue across a bridge so it’s in line with one of the 2 beams.
    • The second statue is a little trickier. There’s a ledge blocking you from being able to just drag the statue over, so you need to put it on an elevator, go up with it, kick it so it lands on the higher ground, and drag it in line with the beam to unlock the path.
• Objective: Find a way to press 2 buttons at once to open a door and run through before it closes.
  • There’s a door that needs to be opened and you have to use 2 buttons, each of them opening the gate halfway while they’re pressed. A part of the door closes shortly after a button becomes un-pressed.
    • This area is made up of 3 rooms: a middle room and 2 other side rooms. 1 button is in the middle room and the other is in the left room. The room on the right has a dead body in it. The left room has spikes sticking up from the ground so you can’t just jump over while carrying the body.
    • Each side room has an additional room that you have to smash through to, both with a river flowing that wraps around. You have to dump the body in the river in the room on the right, let it drift around to the left room, and then drop the body on the button once it makes its way around. After that, just stand on the other button in the middle room, wait for the door to open and run through before it closes.
• Objective: Rotate each platform closer to the next one to get across deadly swamp water.
  • Use a crank to spin 2 platforms closer to the next one while fighting enemies.
    • There are 2 identical platforms with cranks in the middle floating on deadly swamp water. You have to turn them to spin the platforms closer to the next one. For the first platform, you get attacked by infinite enemies, but only 1 at a time. You have to let go of the crank, as it spins back slowly, putting the platform into a slow-reverse, and fight off the enemy before using the crank again. Once the platform gets close enough to the next one you can jump onto it. The second platform is the exact same except it’s a little more difficult with 2 enemies attacking you at once. Once you get the second platform close enough to a last stationary platform, you can jump onto it and continue along a path.
• Objective: Create a set of stairs with 2 statues and an elevator to reach a high area.
  • There’s a ledge way up high that you have to reach and you have to use an elevator and 2 statues to create some stairs for yourself.
    • Place a statue on the elevator, use a crank to get the elevator to the top, let it fall, rush back over to it and slip the other statue underneath before the elevator reaches the bottom to create a set of steps that you can climb up and reach the top with.
• Objective: Lure Siren Widows and fry them to open door.
  • There are 2 levers on the sides of a room and a door you have to open. You are told sacrifice of blood is needed.
    • Siren Widows spawn 1 by 1 and you have to lure them to the sides where the levers are located, damage them enough to daze them, get over to the other side and use that lever to fry the Siren before it snaps out of the daze.
    • Do this 3 times to get enough blood to open the door.
• Objective: Rewind time and catch the Translator before he jumps in order to open door.
  • While dragging a Fates Statue, you approach a closed gate and a Translator freaks out and jumps to his death so you can’t use him to translate a page from a book.
    • After you open the gate there’s a portal you have to use to rewind time, which also warps you back to the gate. Once you go through, slow down the time using Amulet of the Fates and grab the Translator before he jumps again to get him to sacrifice his blood to open a door.
• Objective: Push statue through Phoenix fire waves to reach urn.
  • You have to reach an urn full of ashes located at the end of a room where a Phoenix statue shoots waves of fire at you.
    • You have to push a statue to shield yourself from the fire waves. There are also enemies attacking you at the same time.
    • Get the statue about ¾ the way across the room and use a lever to bring down a barrier, revealing 2 buttons.
    • Push the statue on one button and stand on the other, revealing an area to grapple to and get to the urn.
• Objective: Wedge statue to jam elevator to get to gate.
  • There’s an elevator controlled by a lever that goes up to a gate that’s locked a chain located up high that you initially can’t get to.
    • While the elevator is down, you need to drag a statue right to the edge of it, use the lever and the elevator will try to go up and jam.
    • Hop in the elevator and drag the statue inside, allowing it to go up. Once it reaches the top, hop on the statue and cut the chain, lowering the gate for you to get through.

Overall, I think the quality of the puzzles are better and are also more challenging than the ones in the first God of War, which is partially due to use of the new mechanics. I also enjoy the simple, yet smart puzzles more than the longer ones with a bunch of steps of complexity. The shorter ones tend to get you to think more and contain more problem solving over the longer ones.

Bad

Typhon’s Gusts of Wind
There is a narrow bridge you have to get across while Typhon blows gusts of wind at you. There are rock walls that you can use to take cover from the wind so you don’t get blown off. You’re supposed to wait until Typhon finishes blowing a gust, as he takes another breath and then blows another. This is fine, but the only problem is that there is no risk of dying because every time I got blown off I could just recover and climb back onto the bridge.
If you get caught in a gust, you should get completely blown off and fall to your death so there’s an actual risk.

Running Toward the Camera
I never quite had this much of an issue in the first game, but it probably could have happened since it’s in this one. What happened was, I wanted to go back and visit a path I chose not to before, in case the path got blocked off later on, so I had to run toward the camera and cross some deadly swamp water. I literally had to guess where the platforms where because they were out of frame, so I ended up dying a couple times before my guesses were correct.
The camera should never work against the player that much. I actually couldn’t believe it at first, since the level design is allowing you to do this, so you’d think that section would have been tested and caught before shipping the game and adjust the camera appropriately, but evidently not.
Luckily, this type of issue at this severity only happened this one time.

Amulet of the Fates Meter Colour
The meter colour for Amulet of the Fates is a very similar colour, if not identical, to the Rage of the Titans’ meter. This could cause confusion, since the glowing orb for Amulet of the Fates is green. Why wouldn’t it be the same colour as its meter? I think the developers just ran out of colours, but a lack of consistency is never good.

Conclusion

With as good of a game as the first one is, you would think it sets up God of War 2 to be probably just as good, but I think it’s actually a bit better. This is due mostly to the new mechanics that were added to give a bit of a fresh gameplay experience. Amulet of the Fates allows for new, time-manipulating types of puzzles that couldn’t have existed in the first game, the Golden Fleece gives a new way to not only defend yourself but turn it into a powerful attack, Icarus’ Wings temporarily turns you into a semi-bird so you can reach those distant areas, and grappling is another nice addition to puzzles, turning you into Spider-Man.
The only thing that disappointed me was the anti-climactic gameplay at the end. The first game had a story that set up the much more epic final boss battle with Ares, and in God of War 2 it was the events in the story after the final boss fight that reached the climax to set up the sequel.
I’m expecting God of War 3 to really bring it by working the story to build up another battle, the true battle, with Zeus and to make up for the epicness that was lost in this one.

Check back soon for the next Game Design Dissection on God of War 3!

For the next few Game Design Dissections I’m going to be focusing on the God of War franchise. I just beat the first one recently, I’m going to immediately play the second, and then finally the brand-new one that I’m super excited to play. After I’ve played through and dissected each one, I’m going to compare all three and have a look at the evolution of the series from start to now.

This is the first time I’ve really sat down with God of War and played through it entirely. I’ve played bits and pieces here and there before but not enough to get a good feel for the game.
So, I popped in the God of War Collection a couple days ago and started playing on normal difficulty…

The Good

Intriguing Story
Before you start playing, a cut-scene shows a suicidal Kratos jumping off the highest mountain in Greece. This grabbed my attention right off the bat and made me want to play through the story and find out what put Kratos into that state.
The game starts you off 3 weeks prior to that event. As you progress, you see flashbacks revealing little pieces of the story, until it’s all revealed at the end of the game.
The most memorable part of the story for me was when Kratos killed his own wife and daughter under the trickery of Ares. Their ashes then stick to his skin, giving him his pale skin color and endless nightmares. This is definitely the climax of the story and shows how much power Ares had over Kratos before Kratos decided to go against him. It’s a great lead-up to the Kratos vs. Ares battle at the end as you get a feeling for how much Kratos really hates Ares for the pain he’s gone through and he wants payback, big time.

Fixed Camera
The camera in this game is fixed, meaning you have no control over it. The camera does move around on its own though, depending on where the player is in relation to the level and there are a bunch of camera angle variations that change to adapt to that, such as: over the shoulder, side-scroller, top-down, and many others.
Not having any control over the camera means that you can’t peak around corners to see what you’re going to run into, and you can’t prepare yourself for it. This allows for more surprising enemy encounters as they pop out from behind corners when you don’t expect them to. The fixed camera can also help lead the player to areas of interest by looking toward a certain area that it wants to draw your attention to. The camera seems to work best when progressing forward, because when going backwards to already-visited areas, the camera doesn’t feel right so you get a pretty good feeling for when the game doesn’t want you to go that way. This was usually a good thing during my play-through, but there was the odd time where I was supposed to go backwards and the camera didn’t adjust to give me a good feeling about it, but luckily it was quite rare for that to happen.

Adventurous Level Design
The openness of the levels encourages adventure, which is appropriate in an action-adventure game. This is always a juggling match between giving the player areas to roam without making them feel like it’s too linear of level design versus giving them too much and allowing them to get lost, which happened to me briefly a couple times and I’ll talk about that later. I found myself trailing off the main route quite often to see what was off to the sides, maybe a chest with some items inside, just out of curiosity because I’m that type of adventurous gamer who enjoys finding the hidden items and whatnot. It was nice to not have a super-linear route forcing a distinct path.
Level reusability also fits into the non-linear level design equation, as there are many times where you come across a door that is locked and needs a key to be found to open it, so you go somewhere else and eventually loop back around to that door with the key.

Placements: Health/Magic, Save Altars, and Enemies
Throughout each level you come across chests that hold health, magic, and various other useful items. I was pleased with the health and magic placements as there was always some to be found to replenish myself with when I needed it. The game prepares you well with usually giving you health and magic before a big battle and then rewards you afterwards for getting past the difficult section with more to heal yourself with and get your magic bar filled back up. I also enjoyed the chests that alternate between health and magic. You see the chest changing colour from green (health) to blue (magic) and you open the chest at whichever colour represents your needs at the time.
Save altars are glowing pillars of light which you can walk into and save your game. Much like the health and magic chests, these are placed appropriately and can be found before and after climaxes in the gameplay. If you decide to take a break and return to the game later, you don’t have to go very far to get back to where you were.
The enemy placements work well with the fixed camera and pop out from behind corners and surprise you, like I previously mentioned. The amount of enemies that I encountered felt just right. Once I got off Kratos’ ship and stepped foot in Athens, I was introduced to new enemies right away and from there it always felt like I was fighting the proper amount at any given time. There was the odd time where I’d get outnumbered, die, and have to try again, but a slight change to my strategy always led me to victory.

Solid Difficulty Progression
At the start of the game you’re introduced to some weak enemies that you can pretty much just blow on and they’ll die, and then from there they get progressively harder at a nice pace. I personally didn’t care when I encountered the weaker enemies because they didn’t pose any real threat and didn’t have an impact, but whenever a Satyr showed up I cringed a little because they’re probably the most difficult non-boss enemy in the game and they take a while to kill. As far as the bosses go, their difficulty order could be rearranged a little bit, but for the most part they start off fairly easy and end up hard.
Overall, it is a difficult game but that’s the whole point. Everyone before Kratos who had ever attempted to reach Pandora’s Box died at some point along their journey, so it’s supposed to be a challenge and an easier game would have worked against the story. Of course, being too difficult is a bad thing but I don’t think it was. If you’re not a regular gamer and your skills aren’t up to par, the game does let you change to easy difficulty if you really want.

Action-Packed Combat
The fast-paced, action-packed attacks with the Blades of Chaos are always entertaining and keep every battle enjoyable as you thrash through enemies with a long list of powerful combos. The Blade of Artemis gives you a nice change of pace if you want, too. Combine those with 4 magic powers and you have yourself a nice variety of attacks. You can even grab certain enemies and rip them apart if you’re into that sort of thing.
The blocking is very quick and you can get it in when you have to make those split-second decisions and is nicely balanced with attacks. If you’re in the middle of a big attack that has a long animation, you’ll have to wait until it plays out before you can block. This gets the player thinking about the risk versus reward before they choose to do a powerful, long attack. There wouldn’t be any risk in the combat design if the player could just stop in the middle of a long animation and instantly block.
Dodging, like blocking, is also very quick for those desperate moments. It comes in use against enemies that can cause damage even if you try to block it, and it feels good when you dodge out of the way at the last second from an attack and the enemy just barely misses you.

Cinematic Quick Time Events (QTE)
When I’m battling with an enemy and QTEs become part of the battle, it gives me a chance at earning to see how Kratos would fight instead of it being my style for a change. It doesn’t come easy with certain enemy types as they demand your fingers to be very quick, but when you succeed with the quick ones after failing a couple times, it feels good to see Kratos unleash with a spectacular attack on the enemy.

Rage of the Gods
When you fill the Rage of the Gods meter by killing a certain amount of enemies you can then activate it and cause greater damage and take very little damage for about 10 seconds. It’s great for moments of desperation when your health is running low and you want to unleash on an enemy without risking much health.

Variety of Upgrades
As you progress through the game you get rewarded with a good amount of upgrades to use in your upcoming battles:

• 4 Magic Powers
  • Poseidon’s Rage: An electrocuting attack that zaps enemies within range of Kratos.
  • Medusa’s Gaze: Turns enemies into stone after gazing at them for long enough.
  • Zeus’ Fury: Throw bolts of lightning at distant enemies.
  • Army of Hades: Summons souls of the dead to attack any nearby enemies.
• 1 Weapon
  • The Blade of Artemis
• Health and Magic Meters
  • Once you collect enough Gorgon Eyes (for Health Meter) and Phoenix Feathers (for Magic Meter) hidden in chests, you get increased health and magic meters.
• Power-ups
  • After you collect enough red orbs you can upgrade your powers to give you stronger attacks, new attack moves, etc. for your weapons and magic powers.

Epic Boss Fights
Throughout the game you are put to the test with 3 epic battles that help define the strength and determination of Kratos:

• Hydra
  • The sea monster is made up of 3 Hydra heads, with the middle one being the Hydra King. You come across it numerous times throughout the first level, but the last encounter is the one that puts an end to it:
  • It’s only attack is biting at you.
    • In the final battle you have to defeat two Hydra heads by wearing them down and then drive spikes through their heads to kill them. They work together to protect themselves, as one will suck you towards it to get you away from the other one that you’re fighting. After that, you climb up to the main Hydra head, the Hydra King, and beat it up, finally driving its head through the ship’s mast with a QTE.
• Medusa
  • The Queen of the Gorgons is next up and Kratos is after her head.
  • She has the power to gaze at you and turn you into stone, shattering you to pieces if she hits you before you break out of it. She also can strike at you like a snake.
    • All that you have to do to kill her is swing away at her with your blades until you reach the QTE and decapitate her. But, right after that, you get to test out your new magic power – Medusa’s Gaze – on some enemies that spawn around you, which adds a little more excitement.

• Minotaur
  • Pandora’s Guardian is the next major obstacle in your journey. This guy wears a lot of armour and there’s 4 phases to get through.
  • He attacks by spearing you with his horns, throws punches, grabs and throws you, and also spews lava out of his mouth.
    • Phase 1-3: Each phase is defeated by wearing down his health and then finishing him with a QTE. For every phase you defeat, pieces of armour fall off until there’s none left for the final phase.
    • Phase 4: The last phase of the armour-less Minotaur is defeated by once again slashing away it his health and then finishing him by impaling him with a log, which pins him to a big door and he conveniently kicks a hole in it to create a path for you to progress through.
• Ares + Doppelgangers + Ares Again = Final Boss
  • Finally, it’s time to fight the God of War himself in a battle that is split into 3 parts. Kratos opens Pandora’s Box and grows to an equivalent size as Ares. Once it seems like a fair fight, Ares decides to 1-up Kratos and grows long, sharp blades out of his back.
  • For the first phase, Ares attacks with a large hammer and also uses his blades, the Doppelgangers in phase 2 use a variety of Kratos’ weapons, and in phase 3, Ares upgrades his weapon to a big, fiery sword, and can summon spikes out of the ground.
    • Phase 1: After hacking away at Ares and draining his health entirely, you defeat his first phase with a QTE and stab through him multiple times.
    • Phase 2: That makes Ares angry and he sucks you into a cosmic arena to fight off Doppelgangers, evil clones of Kratos, and you must protect clones of Kratos’ wife and daughter. As the wife and daughter take damage, you can hug them to spare some of your health and add to theirs. Once you fight off all the evil clones it’s time to fight Ares again.
    • Phase 3: Ares is now more ticked off than ever and he strips Kratos of his weapons, forcing him to look for a new one as he spots the Blade of the Gods. This time around, whenever you take damage it adds to Ares’ health, making him more difficult to kill. Once you have sliced through all of Ares’ health, that’s it, and surprisingly enough, there’s no QTE!

I enjoyed all of the boss fights, but I think their difficulty progression is off by a little. Medusa is the second boss, yet I found her to be the easiest so I would have liked more of a challenge out of her. The final phase of Ares was a good challenge and a hard-earned victory.

Enjoyable Puzzles
One of the things that impressed me most about the gameplay is the amount of quality puzzles. Almost every single one, and there are quite a few, were really enjoyable and weren’t too easy or too hard. Here is a list of the ones I enjoyed:

• Objective: Push the crate from one end to the other to use to reach ledge.
  • There’s a tall ledge that you have to get up to but it’s too high to reach on your own, so you have to push the large crate safely underneath the ledge.
    • On top of the ledge are enemies shooting arrows at you and your crate. You can’t let too many arrows hit the crate or it’ll get destroyed and you have to start all over again. But, there just happens to be pillars to take cover behind along the way, so you have to wait until the enemies stop shooting, give the crate a big kick to push it, and then hide until they stop shooting again. Keep doing this until you reach the end and hop up on that ledge.
• Objective: Freeze enemy on button to open door.
  • There’s a locked door you have to get through and there’s a button that opens the door when pressed. But, when you get off the button the door closes, so you have to lure an enemy on top of the button and freeze it with Medusa’s Gaze to keep the door open to get through.
• Objective: Figure out a way to open door using arrow launcher.
  • There’s a large locked door that needs something special to open it and there just happens to be an arrow launcher a little ways away.
    • Drag the arrow launcher into the room. It is initially facing the wrong way, so you have to place it on a turning platform, pull a lever, and the platform rotates the arrow launcher 90 degrees clockwise, which is only halfway the orientation that you need it to be.
    • Now, every second use of the lever rotates the platform to its original orientation, which would do the same to the arrow launcher, of course. So, you have to take the launcher off the platform, use the lever to rotate the platform, place the launcher back onto it, and rotate the launcher the rest of the way. All that’s left to do is drag the launcher in line with the door and fire away.
• Objective: Stop the Harpies from attacking while you try to cross beams.
  • There’s a path of beams that leads to a door that you need to get to, but Harpies are constantly spawning and attacking you while you try to cross.
    • The beams are above the room where the Harpies are constantly spawning from. There are 2 holes where they come out of, and there are also 2 statues lying not too far away from them. Drag the statues to cover up the holes to stop the Harpies from coming out. You get a confirmation that it’s proper use of the statues because they wiggle every couple seconds to represent Harpies trying to get through.
• Objective: Find a way to reach vines up high on wall to start Oracle rescue.
  • The Oracle is in trouble and is hanging from a rope up high and must be saved. A cut-scene draws your attention to some vines for you to grab onto to start the rescue, but they’re too high to reach on your own.
    • Your tools this time around are a couple of statues. You must drop a statue off a ledge and then drop the other statue on top of it to create a tall platform for you to jump onto.
    • Once you reach the vines, a timer starts counting down and you must quickly hop your way across some platforms to reach the Oracle before she falls to her death.
• Objective: Figure out a way to use swivel door to get into next room.
  • There’s a door that quickly swivels around to another room when its button is pressed and then quickly swivels back when the button is un-pressed.
    • You have to drag a box close to the door and kick it so it slides onto the button and then you quickly get in the door and it swivels you into the next room.
• Objective: Drag a guy locked in a cage into a room and use him as a sacrifice to open door.
  • At the top of a hill is a room with a locked door, a button, and an incinerator. You are told that a sacrifice is needed to open the door.
    • When you go back down to the bottom of the hill, a guy locked in a cage becomes available to you and you have to push him up the hill while you fight off enemies until you reach the room at the top again. Push the cage onto the button, wait for the incinerator to wrap around the cage, pull the lever and fry him alive, opening the door for you.
• Objective: Find a door that contains the path to get out of there while dodging fireballs.
  • There are 3 paths of fireballs rolling toward you that make up the width of the hallway you’re in with some doors on the sides. As you’re dodging the fireballs you have to quickly open doors until you find a path out of there.
• Objective: Rebuild a wall to open door.
  • You see 6 stone pieces scattered around in a room, a locked door, and a rotating platform that you can turn.
    • You must rebuild a wall with 5 of the stone pieces and drag them onto the rotating platform and turn them the correct way so they all piece together. The additional piece is just there to try to confuse you, I guess. Once you’ve rebuilt the wall, the door unlocks for you.
• Objective: Push a box underneath a ledge before the spiked floor kills you.
  • There is in a room with a spiked floor, a ledge up high that you can’t initially reach and a box locked in a cage.
    • The room is shaped similar to the letter U if you rotate it clockwise by 90 degrees. On the upper end of it is a ledge that you have to get up to and on the other end is a box behind a cage. Once you open the cage to get to the box, a timer for the spikes starts up and you have to kick the box underneath the ledge, jump onto it and climb up the ledge before the spikes kill you and your box.

In conclusion to these enjoyable puzzles, the last one on the list is my favourite. Even if you push the box underneath the ledge flawlessly, you’re still cutting it close on time, so it’s very intense. One thing about the timer-based puzzles is that it uses music instead of a traditional visual clock. The faster, more intense the music gets you know you don’t have much time left. This is an effective replacement of a visual timer, if you don’t have the sound turned off.

The Bad

Getting Lost in Level Design
Because this is an adventure game and the levels are designed to give you that feeling and allow you to roam around in places that aren’t always the correct way, you can get lost and left scratching your head. This happened to me a couple times, just briefly, thankfully, and I had to retrace my steps and make sure I went in a route that I hadn’t gone before. It’s a terrible feeling being lost in a game because it shouldn’t happen, but when a game gives you a lot of space to run around, it’s sometimes tough not to get lost.
And if you’re thinking a map would fix this problem by showing you where your next objective is located, it wouldn’t really fit into the game and Kratos is too badass to use a map!

Lack of Diagonal Attacks While Climbing
When climbing a wall alongside enemies and one happens to be diagonally in-line with you, you can’t attack it like you assume you’d be able to. The game only allows for vertical and horizontal attacks. So, you either have to move over, up, or down to be able to attack that enemy.
It’s not like the PlayStation controller doesn’t have analog sticks or anything…

Too Hard to Initiate QTEs
If I’m in a heated battle with a bunch of enemies and one is QTE-ready, I want to be able to easily initiate it so I’m not getting attacked while trying to get into the QTE. It seems like you have to be positioned directly in front of the enemy and I found myself sometimes pressing the circle button multiple times, up to 4 or 5, before it finally worked. It shouldn’t be so picky and let you start the QTE from all angles. If I want to do it from behind (get your mind out of the gutter!) or the sides of an enemy, then I should be able to.

Not-So-Enjoyable Puzzles
While I enjoyed nearly every puzzle in the game, there were a couple that stuck out as being not as enjoyable. One of these tries to be a puzzle but really isn’t and the other is just a big rotating column of frustration:

• 3 Singing Sirens in a Sandstorm
  • There’s a locked door that can only be opened if you kill the 3 Singing Sirens spread throughout a large, sandstorm-desert area.
  • As you wander around with very little visibility, you listen for the Sirens. Once you hear the faint singing, you follow the noise until you reach one and kill her. Repeat that 2 more times and you unlock the door.
• Rotating Spiked Columns
  • There are a couple of spinning columns covered with spikes that you have to climb up without getting cut. Gaps in the spikes give you a path to progress with, but if you touch a spike you fall all the way to the ground.

I’m not a big fan of searching for the Singing Sirens because it’s so mindless. You just walk around until you hear one singing and then look for it and kill it. It’s trying to be a puzzle but really isn’t because puzzles are supposed to get you to think up a solution instead of just wandering around aimlessly until you hear one. This could have been done better by giving the player some indication of where to look, to include some requirement of skill, instead of getting the player to just wander around and potentially take way too long to find the last one because they missed a corner.
As for the spiked columns, Kratos is supposed to be a huge badass but if a blade just barely touches him he falls all the way to the ground. It gets pretty frustrating after you fall 4 or 5 times and I would have liked to see me just lose health instead of also falling.

“Do you want to pick this item up?”
When you go to pick up certain items you get asked if you want to pick it up or not. Well, if you don’t pick it up then you’re missing out on an item that you probably need, so of course you want it. With it asking you that question it makes you think that maybe there are consequences for picking it up, almost as to make you think twice like there’s a trap waiting for you or something, but don’t worry, there isn’t. It’s not a huge deal, it’s just not necessary for required items.

Enemy Pathing
At times, if you lure an enemy away from the area they spawned at, they will stop at an edge and not go outside the area, allowing you to stand on the other side of the area, just out of their reach, and attack them.

Conclusion

To wrap things up, you can probably tell that I really enjoyed God of War. It captivated me in both gameplay and story, which doesn’t happen too often. I really like how the story was laid out, making me want to play through the next section to see the next flashback almost like when you’re reading a good book and a chapter finishes off great and you just have to keep on reading through the next one and the next one until you can’t keep your eyes open any longer. The next chapter for me is God of War 2 and I can’t wait to play it.

Check back soon for the next Game Design Dissection on God of War 2!

Yesterday, the much-anticipated Game Room for Xbox Live Arcade launched and as I wasn’t impressed with the lineup of games available, to my relief there was a little gem hidden inside: Road Fighter.

If you’re unfamiliar with Road Fighter, it’s a Konami arcade top-down racer that was released in 1984. You play as a very fast red car, which can reach speeds of 400 km/h, racing through up to 6 challenging stages. The controls and your objective are simple: hold down the accelerate button (or buttons… I’ll get into that later) while moving your car side-to-side, quickly dodging through the traffic you approach, trying to reach the end of each stage before running out of fuel, and ultimately hitting the finish line at the end of stage 6 if you manage to make it that far.
I vaguely remember playing this game as a youngster, but since I’ve refreshed myself with the hours I’ve already plugged into it from yesterday and a little bit today, I now realize some of the great game design within it.

The Good
The things that make this very fun to me are the design decisions to greatly reward the player, giving us a fine, competitive game. Here are some reasons for that:

Variety of Obstacles and Stage Types
The method behind the madness of this game comes from the variety of obstacles and road layouts present in each stage. Though I haven’t yet managed to get through all 6, which I will hopefully do soon and be at the top of the leaderboard, I’ve gotten a good sense of the variety throughout the first 4 stages: there are static vehicles that just drive straight forward, aggressive vehicles that swerve into your path, and even trucks that throw boxes at you. If you hit a car you start to slide and must quickly recover by steering toward the direction you’re sliding, or else you’ll spin out of control and probably crash into the side of the track. However, if you hit a truck you instantly crash. To add to the list of obstacles, there are also oil slicks that send you out of control and puddles of water to slow you down. As far as the road layouts go for each stage, you start off with the basic wide-lane roads but eventually progress to diagonal and very narrow roads for increased difficulty. Add the two together and you have yourself a very fun and challenging game.

End of Stage Bonus Points
After you’ve managed to dodge your way through traffic and reach the end of the stage before your fuel is sucked dry, you are rewarded with bonus points for the number of cars you passed and your rank. But, not only do you have to be fast for these lucrative bonuses, you also have to be precise and a little careful for even more points…

Collecting All Fuel Pickups + Not Crashing = Mega Points
For every fuel car that you pick up not only adds fuel to your tank but also gives you a good chunk of points: the first one gives you 300 points, the next one gives you 500, and then 1,000, and so on for up to 10,000 points per fuel car collected. With there being 4 of these per stage, this can add up to a lot of points for being a great driver and collecting each one and not crashing. On top of that, if you manage to collect all 4 in a stage, you get an additional 3,000 points. This might sound nice and all, but it’s not easy. You see, if you miss just one or crash at any time, the multiplier resets back to 300 points for the next one you collect. It might be a little depressing at first when that happens to you but you’ll get over it.

The Bad
Accelerating and Gearing Up Instead of Accelerating and Braking
Konami chose to go with an accelerating/gearing up control scheme rather than simple accelerating/braking for some reason. The way it’s set up is you hold the A button to start accelerating and then when you want to go faster than what first gear allows you have to start holding the B button as well. Now, when you want to decelerate slightly you let go of the B button while still holding A, but if you want to slow down significantly you let go of both buttons. This could be done better if the A button was the accelerator and the B button was the brake. You would obviously hold down A to accelerate, let go of it to start decelerating, and use the B button to brake for more deceleration and forget about having to shift gears. I’ve never been a huge fan of holding down A and B at the same time like that, but luckily it’s not a huge deal and it definitely doesn’t spoil the game too much.

All-in-all, Road Fighter is a great game and a must have for the Game Room. If you’re like me and demoed each game that’s currently available for the Game Room, you’ll notice the quality difference between Road Fighter and nearly every other title and they just don’t seem to be on the same level of awesomeness.

Today, EA is allowing the NHL 10 community give them feedback on must-fix bugs to help make NHL 11 be the best game it can be. I figured that since I just launched my website and I play a lot of NHL 10, I thought it’d be appropriate for my first Game Design Dissection to focus on some hockey.

Here are a few fixes for EA that would assist NHL 11 in getting it to a level of true hockey authenticity for online play:

That Damn Wrist Shot Exploit
This is the one exploit in the game that is the most frustrating for me and I’m sure for a lot of other players as well. In case you’re unfamiliar with it, I’ll explain the basics of it: it’s when the puck carrier brings the puck behind them and then lets the wrist shot go, tricking the goalie as they watch the puck go flying past them into the net way too often. It’s a problem because it’s such a high-percentage shot that players who abuse this resort to doing it as often as they possibly can and throw out any sort of true hockey play that you would expect from authentic hockey. I used to play a lot more of the Club mode than I do these days because I got sick of people using the exploit and I instead play Online Versus Play because I don’t run into it as often. I guess it’s because there are more players on a team in Club, so the chances of someone doing it are greater compared to usually playing against only one person in Online Versus Play.

CPU Teammate Penalties
Don’t you hate it when you get punished for something you never did? I could be playing perfect defence when all of a sudden one of my CPU teammates decides to skate over to the other team’s puck carrier, slash him and leave me with a penalty to kill. Now, I’m punished for a penalty I never committed and giving my opponent an advantage they don’t deserve. It’s supposed to be me versus my opponent, not me versus my opponent and sometimes my own teammates!

Taking Control of Goalie Passes
When a goalie makes a save and passes the puck off, it’s very common for the opposing team to be unable to take control of it in front of the net for a second or two, even if it’s passed directly to them. I know fixing this would slow the game down, as players would freeze the puck more often for a faceoff, but that’s realistic hockey and the player should be punished for making a careless pass.

In conclusion, even with these issues, NHL 10 is still a great game, but the above-mentioned are what is keeping it from playing like a true-hockey experience. So, EA, if you’re reading this… please?

UPDATE - March 26, 2010:

New Player-Select System Needed
One thing that I left out and now realize I should have definitely included to the above is the defensive player-select system. I don’t think I can remember EA taking any major steps towards evolving this in… forever, actually. Currently, as it is, you press the player-select button and the game tries to guess which player you want to take control of, according to certain conditions, when ideally you should be able to choose exactly which player you want to control in a quick amount of time, similar to how NBA games do it with the button icons floating above the different players’ heads. You hold in a button to make those icons appear and then press whichever other button according to the icon to take control of your desired player. But, that’s just an example, as I don’t think that would work too well with a faster-paced game of hockey because it’d probably take too long to notice the icon and then press that button. Perhaps a better solution would be to hold in a player-select button and then at that point the game would make its best guess and select a player, as it currently does, but if you’re not satisfied then with that button still being held you could use an analog stick and point in the direction of the player you want to control and quickly cycle through the players until you get to the correct one. It’s definitely something to think about, as it’s frustrating when you sometimes have to press the player-select button multiple times before you finally get to control the one you want, and by that time it could be too late and you get scored on.

It’s time for this system to evolve!
Craig

Allow me to introduce Game Design Dissection: my views on a specific game’s design. I pick a game and choose topics based on different parts of the design that grabbed my attention and share my thoughts. Whether you agree with me or not, feel free to leave your comments so we can discuss it further. That’s where the fun is. Game’s are supposed to be fun and so is talking about them!

The first one is coming real soon!
Craig

Hello and welcome to my blog! Within the next couple days, maybe even tomorrow, I’m going to start blogging regularly about game design. I’ll play a game, new or old, and talk about what I think is good and bad, and why. I might also talk about some pretty random stuff every now and then to mix it up, and you can find more of that on .

Feel free to post comments to evolve the discussion and check back again very soon for my first real post!
Craig