First of all, week 4 has been kicking my butt but I think I will finish it this week after one repeat.

Last night, I finished God of War III. I'm going to summarize what I think of the game here, and I think some of it will be controversial (in that what I say will disagree with what the two or three people that read this website that may or may not have played the game think of it).

This paragraph is heavy on end-game spoilers and I haven't yet implemented a spoiler-protection mechanism on this site (emphasis yet) so skip it if you just want the lowdown. Ok, so, in the end, Kratos, the inimitable, uncontrollable, irreverent bad boy of the beat 'em up genre finally achieves his ultimate revenge and kills Zeus, the king of the gods. However, Athena then tries to coerce Kratos into granting her effective power over the remaining world, and the ghost of Sparta finally gets fed up by being used by the gods of Olympus and tired of being bullied by people bigger than himself, takes his own life, not unlike an emo high schooler upset that the football team shoots spitballs at him in the cafeteria. I've read that some people look at this as a fitting end for the character, but is it really? Is this whimper of a finale, lying in a pool of his own blood on the ground, really the way it should have ended? I say, no. (It should be noted that the post-credit scene shows that Kratos had moved from his position, either by his own power or by being dragged, implying that he is not quite dead and will be making another appearance in the future. I personally think that makes it even lamer an ending as an attempt to set up either DLC or another game, when I believe the series has run its course and should have stepped out of the ring gracefully. More on this later.) Although I did expect the game might end with Kratos' demise, I expected it to happen in a Kratesque(tm) fashion, probably dying gloriously in battle or at least finally granting him his reprieve after three solid games of vengeance, frustration and guilt, reuniting him with his family in Elysium (perhaps the one district of Greek mythology he did not upend). At least a small part of me hoped that, given the cameo of Ares' lifeless body at the beginning of the game (as much of an inconsistency it presents), that the finale would include a rematch with the deposed Olympian god of war.

Spoilers complete, read away.

Here's what I think. The producers, as many others in the situation of having their hands on a wildly popular franchise do, got so wrapped up in the game and wanting to make it as epic as possible, that they ended up losing the feel of the game. In the original game, Kratos is on a mission and you learn about the depth of his character through revelations of his past and his motivations. The first game stands masterfully on its own and tells an engrossing story with a triumphant Kratos emerging at the end. The second game, although awesome and fun, starts by mooting the ending of the first game when it becomes clear that the Olympians are the new enemy. As much fun as it is destroying legions of monsters with whirling, flaming blades, God of War II felt much more shallow than the first game. Having heard almost all of the protagonist's story in the first game, the second game is spent learning a little bit about supporting characters (including the now apparently corrupt Pantheon) but mostly just breaking shit up. It then ends with a cliffhanger, the crutch of the media artist. A few years later, we receive God of War III, which picks up exactly where God of War II concludes, and Kratos is right back in the business of destruction. But by this point, all of the main characters are fleshed out as far as they're going to go and we're left with a shallow brawling game. Not to mention that the producers pulled just about every other well known Greek mythological personality into this one to beef up the cast. However, once the initial "wow look how epic this is!" shock/awe from the first couple hours of the game wears off--considering the second game did the same thing--God of War III becomes a soup of running around beating shit up. By this point it's old news. I am all for keeping solid gameplay as-is, but the plot of the third game seems so phoned in compared to the first game. Spoiler: whereas the first game had an interesting plot that intertwined through well known myths, the third game is pretty much a shopping list of killing every remaining character in a loosely connected story.

It pains me to say it but God of War III falls into the same trap as the Star Wars prequels: in an attempt to keep the energy of the franchise as high as possible, the game lost the feel of the original, and the series ended up collapsing under its own weight.

And there you have it. In conclusion, I believe that God of War III is the weakest of the series. Was it fun? Yes. But was it a fitting end to the series? Well, because profitable sequels trump mythos integrity in this day and age, it probably isn't even an end of the series. As I said earlier, it definitely should have been the finale, since few game universes possess the legs to go gracefully beyond three installments, but few (if any) producers are willing anymore to call it a day and close franchise doors for good. In the end, the dignity of the series as a whole suffers, and that's just sad, because the original God of War was a game that renewed my interest in mainstream gaming, and I don't like to see it fall into the same traps that made me lose interest in the mainstream in the first place.

So, it's back to Valkyria Chronicles for me.

In other news, now that I've possibly broken my previous record for the longest headline body ever, and shat all over one of the most highly reviewed games in recent memory: Spring is springing at long last! The cold weather is staging one last rush this week, but its chances of victory are nil. By the time the warm weather rolls in this weekend, I will be so ready to exploit it. I want to redo the ceiling pegboard in the garage to add capacity and increase stability (NERD), which will be a fun little project. Mowing the little backyard starts up again soon, as does practicing my ugly golf swing back there. I got a new laptop recently, after waiting over a month for it to ship, which is great because my old one was getting a little long in the tooth for even some commonplace tasks. It will be especially helpful now that I have a pile of development tasks at home (yes, at home) that I want to complete, ranging from the banal to the terrifying.

Ok, I have rambled on enough. There might be a rather vicious deadlock that I will have to look into in the lab over here, so I should probably go have a peek.