Tuesday, December 8, 2009

God of War Collection: Review




This will not be a review of the games per se, as both God of War and God of War II were last generation games that received multitudes of stellar reviews. I will, however, review how these PS2 classics translate to the PS3 and its trophy system. 
First off, I will say that you still get a lot of game for $40. There is at least 20 hours of solid, solid gaming here and you get value for your money.


The games look fantastic; they are presented in full HD glory, but I do have one quibble: the in-game cut scenes for God of War look awful. GOW II doesn't have this problem, but the in-game cut scenes from the original game look grainy and washed out. This difference isn't totally surprising because GOW II did have HD capabilities (it was originally released in 2007), but I would have expected a bit more from a PS3 re-release.


This collection also highlights a fundamental shift in gameplay from last generation to the current one. In a vast majority of current-gen games the story mode is divided into chapters or missions, and you can replay these chapters or mission as many times as you want. This makes getting trophies (secret or otherwise) much easier. However, in both GOW games you only have the option of restarting where you made a save file. So it is very easy to miss a trophy and have no recourse in going back to acquire it. The only choice you would have is to start another game from the beginning. Normally a current gen game would have 0-2 missable trophies. But GOW has 8 and GOW II has 11! As a result you need a careful playthrough to ensure that you don't miss any trophies.


If you loved the games on the PS2 you should be playing them right now, but if you have never played these game before and if you enjoy gory action hack and slash games you should pick this up. For me, it will hold me over until God of War III comes out in March.

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