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By Brandon Miller

From the moment I put the Blu-ray disc into the PS3, I knew God of War 3 would be something special. Chalk it up to pedigree. Sony Santa Monica has never let me down in the past so I knew with this being the final chapter in the trilogy, I was in for a gaming experience like no other. Back at E3 2009 I had the pleasure of playing the demo and from that moment on, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the final product.

Let’s start with the game play. Some reviewers criticized the game for being too much like its predecessors. In truth God of War 3 doesn’t reinvent the wheel here. But when the wheel is crafted so beautifully you simply will not care. What Sony Santa Monica have done is simply expand on a winning formula. For instance Kratos now has an array of new moves which if nothing else add options for the way you’ll dispatch enemies. Kratos now has the ability to grab enemies and either bash their heads into a wall, rip them in half, throw them off cliffs or use them as a battering ram against other enemies. Any weapon can now be used to latch onto enemies and pull Kratos toward them to begin juggle combos. It’s all extremely gratuitously violent and I promise you’ll enjoy every moment.

I won’t spoil the boss battles for you by getting into any specifics here, but I’ll simply say that God of War 3 has provided me with some of the most memorable moments in video game history. Every gamer needs to experience these battles first hand.

Graphically God of War 3 is absolutely stunning. Even more so than Uncharted 2 if you can imagine that. The environments, character detail and set pieces are on par with or exceed many CGI cinematics. The fact that you are actually playing this at a silky smooth 30-60 frames per second speaks to the power of the PS3’s cell processor. You’ll marvel at how smoothly the animations look. Every muscle on Kratos ripples and flexes using normal map blend shape technology. The texture detail and dynamic soft shadows add to the dark ambiance of the game. Fire, volumetric smoke, object and camera based motion blur compliment the cinematic experience. The set pieces and environments are as David Jaffe described, “like a painting come to life”. Incredible lip synching with well written and voice acted dialog will further suspend your disbelief that this is a game rather than an epic movie. The music perfectly compliments the visuals with an amazing orchestra and choir capping off a game which can simply be described as epic.

If there is one minor point of contention that I had with God of War 3, it is that the storyline will confuse those who haven’t played the previous games. Consider that your excuse to buy the God of War collection if for no other reason, than the experience the latest chapter to its fullest extent. Aside from that minor flaw, God of War 3 is just about as good as it gets. Run out now and buy this game!

admin Reviews 3, amazing, animation, environments, God of War 3, GOW, GOWIII, Graphics, incredible, review

By Brandon Miller

Sony Santa Monica’s Art Director, Ken Feldman recently posted in the God of War forums regarding how the game has completely changed since the E3 demo the Eyeballistic team previewed last year at E3. Some of the highlights of his posts are listed below:

Kratos being the main character probably gets the most scrutiny so most of the shader and texture detail is applied to him.

They have a hierarchy of detail which draws grunts, dogs and harpies with less polys and computationally cheaper shaders. Boss characters and Gods are afforded as much detail as needed to be convincing.

They’ve improved the game engine greatly since the E3 demonstration. It’s is much more optimized now but the biggest improvements include anti-aliasing on the CPU instead of the 2X software driven anti-aliasing in the old demo. Motion blur that works for the camera, objects and inner objects.Other notable improvements include lens flare and god ray tech, reflections and refraction as well as improved character lighting and texture streaming.

Mr. Feldman also notes that the E3 demo was problamatic and had blurry textures due to poor streaming not texture authoring which has since been corrected.

When asked by user FreshRevenge if the team felt there was anything that they wanted to do but couldn’t, Mr. Feldman responds “As for stuff that we couldn’t do or didn’t get in the game – ask me that question at a later date. I would hate to say something that could take away from your playing experience.” He goes on to note another significant improvement to the game engine regarding dynamic shadows.

“A significant improvement i forgot to mention is dynamic shadows. Ben Diamand one of our coders spent nearly the entire project writing shadow code. In the end it really paid off. The last couple months we had a couple tech artists dedicated to dialing in the tweakers so there would be no shadow pixelization in the game. A big issue i have is bad looking shadow casting on characters up close. When shadows are done right, you shouldn’t even notice them. When they crawl, it becomes the focus and takes away from everything else. The final build of the game, i hardly noticed the shadows, they were so well done.”,  he wrote.

admin Uncategorized E3 Demo, God of War 3, Graphical improvements

By Joseph Tresca

I know it may be hard to believe but honestly up until E3 last year I had barely touched a God of War game. I know, I know, for a self proclaimed hardcore gamer, I knew I was missing out. But the truth is, I fell into the hype of God of War when it was first released on PS2 and originally I was left unsatisfied with the game’s graphics. I’m thinking that having also owned an Xbox, the more powerful of the three systems last generation, I was expecting something less blurry looking. Ultimately, because I’m a graphics snob I stopped playing one of the best third person action adventure games ever created. Years went by and each time I would mention God of War, everyone had the same answer more or less. “It’s a classic!”, they would say. Well it is a classic and I’m making up for lost time with the newly released God of War Collection for the Playstation 3.

From the very beginning until the very end, God of War grips you and refuses to left go. Sony Santa Monica appear to be the originator of many of the dynamic camera angles we’ve come to know and love in the Uncharted series. You feel as though you are playing a movie. The camera artfully pans just behind the lead character, Kratos shoulders as you discover a new area. It pulls back perfectly to allow you to string together combo after combo knocking enemies in every direction. It is so smooth that it really does make the case for running a game like this at 60 frames per second.

Since we’re talking about frame rate, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the incredible animation. Kratos swims, climbs, rolls and runs with an impecceble attention to detail. The game also has such beautiful set pieces, that to an untrained eye it could easily be mistaken for a PS3 game. It’s worth noting that Sony went the extra mile to re-render the game in beautiful 720P, which was one of the main factors behind my giving the series a second chance. I can’t help but feel slightly disappointed that the movie and cut scenes do not share the same benefit as the in game graphics. While working your way through the various levels and settings of the two games, especially the first God of War, you’ll suddenly watch your beautifully rendered 720p Kratos get all pixelated and muddy looking as the old PS2 graphics are shown on screen for any of the cut scenes. This is a minor blemish for me that keeps this re-release from achieving perfection.

The boss battles are some of the best I’ve ever played, the gameplay is furiously fast and amazingly polished. The sound and music is multi-layered, ambient and immersive. The storyline though simple, is cool enough to keep you coming back for more. And come back for more I did. Thank you Sony for re-releasing this master piece. You’ve made a God of War fan out of a non believer. No easy task. Now I’m counting the days before God of War 3 is released!

admin Reviews God of War, God of War 2, God of War 3, GOW, GOW II, GOW2, PS2, Sony Santa Monica

By Brandon Miller

Release dates are stupid. They serve absolutely no benefit. If as a consumer I’m walking into your store, whether figuratively via the web or literally into a brick and mortar shop, and you have the game in stock yet you refuse to sell it to me, then your store policy is completely idiotic.

Two weeks ago I walked into a Best Buy store to purchase Uncharted 2, a game I knew the store had in stock via its online inventory tool. Upon asking the game department staff where I could find the game, I was told that even though they had the game in stock they could not sell it to me.

Now let’s think about the profound absurdity of this statement which ultimately led to me purchasing the game elsewhere. Here I am a consumer; willing to purchase a product you sell at your location; which you have in stock yet refuse to sell to me. Does this make me want to return to your store? Would it make me angry? The answers are no and surely. When will retailers strap on a pair of balls and tell Sony and Microsoft or Nintendo if they carry the product in their inventory and a living / breathing customer asks for this product, they will NOT refuse to sell it to them. This only hurts the retailer, so naturally it should be the retailer that adopts this policy. Obviously Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft could care less how or what retailer their game ultimately sells from. So why do they impose these street date restrictions? If the game is being advertised as being ready on the 15th of the month for instance, yet the retailer receives the game on the 10th, then If I ask to purchase the game and it is in stock, why am I told to wait?

You see I’m a reasonable man. I understand marketing and advertising very well so I understand the idea of building anticipation. But one immutable law of advertising that should never be broken is the idea that if a consumer has something that a retailer can sell to their willing customer, then they must sell it to that customer lest they run the risk of their competition providing the customer with what they are looking to purchase. If I want to buy from you, and you have the product in stock, sell it to me for the love of God. If not, I’ll go to a Mom and Pop shop that actually cares about fullfilling my needs as a consumer. On second thought, maybe I’ll just buy my games at the mom and pop shops to begin with.

admin Industry News God of War 3, Halo Reach, Heavy Rain, Killzone 3, release dates, Resistance 3, street dates