I platinummed Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands on PS3

 Hello everyone. I recently platinummed the PS3 version of Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands (my third PS3 platinum) and I wanted to talk about it. I found my old PS3 and my 2015 save file and saw I already had most of the trophies and decided to go for the platinum.

Overall, this was a very straightforward and easy platinum. To the point I feel the main guide on PSNprofiles is exaggerating a bit. This game is a not a 4/10 difficulty. I’d say closer to a 2.5. It's possible and not too challenging to get all the trophies in a single playthrough. There are a few missable trophies that have some good spots to farm them in the story mode but also have ok replacements in challenge mode. 

I missed the following trophies on my first casual run back in 2015: "Acrobat - Jump on enemies 30 times in a row without falling or using the Power of Time." because there wasn't a need to ever jump on enemies. And "Sand Nemesis - Kill 50 enemies in a row without being hit and without using upgrade powers or the Power of Time." I missed this one because I'd catch a stray hit and was never concerned about this. Both of these trophies can be farmed in the challenge mode quite easily but there are easier places to obtain them in the story mode such as when these summoner enemies keep summoning weak skeletons you can easily kill.

 

I also missed "Stay Dry - Move on solidified water for 1 minute without using the Power of Time."  because I found description confusing. Wasn't the act of solidifying water itself using a Power of Time?What it actually means is that you just have to walking/standing/climbing on water structures for a minute straight while holding the L2 button to solidify said water. You're allowed to jump between water structures to release L2 to recharge the water solidifying power to continue the process. I missed this one because the game encourages you to be platforming quickly through these sections. You aren't exactly encouraged to chill on a couple water columns for a while as they could stop working. But this was easy enough to get as I found the first 3 water columns and just chilled on them to get the trophy.

 

"Our Little Secret - Don't worry. We won't tell if you don't" was one 2015 me never figured out. It turns out that all you have to do to get this trophy is start a playthrough on the normal difficulty and change the difficulty to easy mode at any point. I suppose that explains why every loading screen tip kept hinting to turn down the difficulty.  It's not one I ever would have even accidentally got. POPFS isn't a very difficult game. Its combat, especially towards the end when you get the upgraded sword, lets you tear through groups of enemies. So.... points for being the most well hidden trophy?

 

"Got Walkthrough? - Find and break every sarcophagus." is the trophy for finding the only collectibles in the game. There's around 20 sarcophagi in the game that you can break for health, magic/sand and XP.  The game does try to clue you that a sarcophagus may be nearby with these blue dust particles that get more dense as you get closer to them but despite often being right on the main path, these collectibles are hidden just out of sight in some clever places. Levels with a blue colour palette also camouflage these dust particles. I followed the Achievement Hunters' guide for them. It was a trip hearing the guy apologize for a 10 minute video being long in 2011. Ah the memories.

 

"Untouchable - Defeat Ratash in the Throne Room without taking any damage" is the first actually sorta rough trophy (and the one with a typo). This requires you to defeat the main boss of the game in your first fight with him without taking any damage i.e your health bar depleting. Everything else is fair game. The trick is the Stone Armour power you unlock. This prevents your health from being drained by enemy attacks even if the Prince grunts in pain or gets sent flying by a massive attack. The key is to activate this power and keep it on for the whole fight, including the brief platforming section since Ratash is throwing fireballs at you.

 

The main issue here is the way POPFS does checkpoints/autosaves. The game does not allow you to make manual saves or level select in any way. So if you take actual damage and the fight progresses to the next checkpoint, you gotta replay the entire game to get back to this point and try again. Supposedly, you can still reload a checkpoint in a latter stage if you get hit and it should still count but fortunately, I didn't have to test this. The boss fight itself also isn't very challenging or long so even being a bit wasteful with stone armours should still mean you can complete this easily.

 

The final trophy I earned was "Invincible - Finish the final battle against Ratash without taking any damage". This one has the advantage that even if you mess up and complete the game without getting the trophy, this is saved as your last checkpoint so you can literally continue your last save and keep retrying this. You can use the same Stone Armour strat as the previous one except the fight goes on so long that you won't have enough magic to stone armour for the entire fight and mooks almost never drop refills. So there is a bit of trying to dodge his easier attacks and timing when to activate stone armour to get the most out of it. I also advice making sure you reach this point with max magic. The fight itself isn't hard but it can be annoying to get hit by a stray attack that does like 4% of your max health and needing to retry.

 

And that's it for the most notable trophies. Everything else was simple enough that 2015 me got without even trying. I do wish the game had a few more cool challenge ones (in addition to a manual save/level select to help with that). For example, how about a speedrun one like God of War 1 or Prince of Persia '08 to beat the game in under 7 hours or something?  In 2007, Ubisoft released a licensed game based on the TMNT movie that basically played like a Prince of Persia game. One of my favourite things about that game was that it came with a series of bonus platforming levels that were genuinely tough. I would have liked to see something like that in this game. POPFS does have a bonus time trial challenge I couldn't even attempt because it was locked behind Uplay (and I am pretty sure POPFS PS3 doesn't even support the new Ubisoft Connect client so I might not even be able to redeem it anymore). Regardless, POPFS was a fun game to play and platinum.

 

As for the game itself, I really like POPFS. I might even say this is my favourite Prince of Persia game to play. I love the Sands of Time Trilogy but whenever I replay them, the platforming feels rather .... basic. With the exception of the odd challenge room or the final gauntlet in the Two Thrones, I tend to go on autopilot whenever I play them. The traps and timing often doesn't challenge me and I feel like I am going through the motions. POPFS has some wild sections such in the Djnn city where you need to combine and alternate between the Water Solidify Power and the Recall power at such speeds that I have to get engaged. I love that stuff. The sequence near the end where you have to wall jump between multiple waterfalls in quick succession is just so fun to play. POPFS has arguably the best platforming in the series (tied with POP '08. And for saying that, I might have lost all my credibility lol).

 

POPFS' controls are pretty good and about what I expect from a modern Prince of Persia game. There are a few changes that did sometimes conflict with my muscle memory from the Sands of Time games. You now have a manual jump by moving and pressing X and rolling is bound to O. I did have a few oopsie moments of jumping into a gap instead of rolling but managed to adjust pretty quickly. Something that took me longer was vaulting/climbing. In the SoT games, when you're climbing or clinging onto something, pressing X makes you climb up it and pressing back + X makes you back eject off it. POPFS changes it to holding up to climb and just X to back eject which did mess me up a few times. Rewinding Time is now bound to R1 instead of L1 and wallrunning/Interact is bound to R2 instead of R1. I had a few embarrassing movements of rewinding time instead of wallrunning or pulling a lever.

 

What makes platforming more interesting in POPFS is that you have more places to wallrun which is incorporated into platforming. For example, you can now wallrun horizontally or vertically while climbing and there are platforming sections that task you to time a vertical wallrun while shimmying to dodge blade traps and then fall back and resume shimmying. Or shimmy into a horizontal wallrun and jump into a pole swing. Manually jumping into a wall also lets you follow up with a vertical wallrun by holding R2 so you do miss out on extended wall jump sequences since you can wallrun up them to skip needing to do as many wall jumps.

 

The game also improves the Prince's animations and better accommodates flow. For example, lets say you cling to a column. In past POP games, you'd have position the Prince so his back faces where you want to go and then press X to back eject to where you want to go. But in POPFS, you can just press Direction + X and the game will buffer your inputs and make the Prince automatically jump in that direction when the animation allows. This led to a lot of cool sequences where I was in the zone moving from wall to pole to column all without breaking my stride or pausing. It was fun.

 

The final piece that adds to platforming is the Prince's powers. The Prince gets 3 main platforming powers: the ability to solidify water and the ability to recall parts of the environment and a Sonic Homing Attack. Solidifying Water lets the Prince freeze all water in the environment. Letting him wallrun on waterfalls and swing/move on columns. Some puzzles also use this such as freezing a water stream to block certain objects. You have a gauge that determines how long you can freeze water for. The game throws timing challenges at you where it asks you to freeze and unfreeze water such as mid jump. So you jump and hold L2 to freeze a stream of water you can swing off, press X to jump off and then release L2 to unfreeze all water so the next stream or column can move into place, then hold L2 to freeze that. All this at a rapid pace. Later levels go wild and ask you to freeze and unfreeze and plan out your path when wall jumping at a rapid pace. It's great.

 

The second ability is "Recall" not to be confused with the Prince's ability to rewind time. This lets load in a destroyed piece of the environment be it a floor, wall, pole, column etc by pressing L1. The catch is that the Prince can only load one item at a time. This leads to platforming challenges where you load in a platform, jump and then press L1 to unload the platform you were just standing on and load in the next platform to land on mid jump.

 

There's a wild section in the Djinn city that combines these abilities. You're sliding down a crumbling staircase. The game throws challenges at you where you use different combinations of tapping L1 while holding and releasing L2 and pressing X. You're jumping, freezing/unfreezing water and recalling the environment at once. It's great.

 

The 3rd ability is a Sonic The Hedgehog-like air homing attack that lets you cross long distances to fly into an enemy across a gap. The game throws platforming challenges at you to homing attack into birds and jump off them and combines this with the other powers.

 

So yeah, hopefully y'all can see why I like POPFS' platforming so much. However, I do have some complaints. The first is regarding Recall. The game shows you the next section/platform you can recall with a yellow silhouette of it but doesn't highlight the current platform you recalled. In 90% of cases, I found it was intuitive to know that if I recalled the next platform, which previous platform would disappear and if I would have to jump off my current one first. But in a handful of times, I was caught off guard and fell to my death (of course, I could rewind to undo it). Still, maybe some blue or green outline on recalled platforms to make it obvious they are the current recalled one would have helped here.

 

I do feel it's a missed opportunity the game doesn't go further with the environmental powers. After the Djinn City  Section, you never need to use the Recall powers. The game justifies this that since you aren't in the Ruined Djinn City anymore, there are no more ruins to recall. But I don't know, the current palace is still crumbling and falling apart. Why leave behind such a fun mechanic?

 

Another complaint I have is odd. Remember earlier when I praised POPFS' animations and flow? It's hard to explain but around 80% of the time, POPFS' animations and sense of flow is on point. But 20% of the time, it kinda isn't which stands out and takes me out of the experience. To use an analogy, imagine you are playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater. You do a combo of 5 cool fast tricks in a row. For your 6th trick, you decide to do a basic kickflip. For some reason, your skater takes a second longer, braces himself and then jumps and does a kickflip. Even if it doesn't break your combo, it can throw off your rhythm which can mess you up later.

 

POPFS normally does a pretty good job in maintaining the flow state but there are times when I am sliding or running or climbing and I try to do a Wallrun and the Prince lags for sec before doing it. It throws me off that I sometimes mess up the following sequence. Some of the Prince's animations also don't seem to match his momentum. His horizontal wallrun feels really slow which definitely messes with me.

I think this throws me off because of how much I played the SoT trilogy. In those games, while the Prince's animations were more scripted and less flexible they were more consistent and better showed a sense of momentum. Like in SoT, if I run and then do a Wallrun, the Prince always starts the wallrun the same way and he moves quickly enough with distinct phases to his animation that I can always tell what he's doing, how far he's got left and when I should jump.

 

I can't be sure but I have my suspicions that  POPFS nudges your animations and inputs to help you. I first noticed this when I clearly jumped perpendicular from a beam and would have missed a column. So I should have fallen to my death. But the Prince made a slightly more diagonal jump and reached the column.

 

My second piece of evidence is the way rewinds work. In the SoT games, you can rewind to the past 10 seconds by holding L1. Releasing L1 stops the rewind exactly where you released it. Lets you have a sequence where you are standing on a safe platform, then do a horizontal wallrun then jump. Lets say you jump too early. In SoT, you can rewind to either before you began the wallrun or mid wallrun and correct your jump right there. But POPFS works differently. It doesn't stop rewinding when you release R1, it continues rewinding you until it puts you in a "safe spot". So in this example, even if you release R1 mid wallrun, it would rewind you back before the wallrun.This often threw me off, especially during wall jump sequences as rather than rewinding me mid jump, it would rewind me a bit earlier to a wall cling state and I'd fail that. 

 

All this makes me suspect that all the occasional weird "delays" and "hitches" I sometimes feel are the result of the game's invisible assists kicking in. I imagine with time, I probably could have gotten a better feel of how they worked. If I could get good at Classic Assassin's Creed Parkour, this is in my wheelhouse. But I will complain at the way rewinds work now. In SoT, choosing when to end a rewind was part of learning the game. It was cool that even when you made a mistake, a more experienced player could rewind just before it and keep going while a less experienced player could rewind further back to give themselves more of a buffer. The animations and controls were intuitive enough that it was feasible to see where you messed up and how to correct it. Still, overall, the platforming is still arguably the best in the series. I imagine a hypothetical sequel would have ironed these out. 

-Combat:

 

POPFS holds the honour of having arguably the best combat in the series while feeling just as unengaging as its predecessors. Let start with the controls. You have a basic 5 hit combo with Square. Holding Square charges up a power attack. You can combine regular and power attacks for those 5 hits. Triangle does a kick which can push enemies back and drop enemy shields. You can jump on enemies with X and hop on top off enemies or press square to do an aerial attack. You can also do cool cinematic takedown animations if you knock an enemy into a wall or railing and then press Square. You can roll with O and that is your only defensive option. No Block or counterattack or parrying here.

 

You also have 4 Sand powers activated by pressing one of the D-Pad buttons. Up activates the Stone Armour which temporarily prevents you from taking Damage. Down Activates a wind storm that sucks up nearby enemies and damages them. Right activates a fire trail that follows the Prince and damages enemies that step into it. And Left adds Ice attacks and projectiles to the Prince's basic attacks. The game also adds quite a few enemy types like summoners, giant charging minotaurs and minibosses that are cool to fight. Defeating enemies also awards XP you can use to purchase upgrades such as increasing your health and magic reserves, improving your Sand powers etc.

 

Ultimately, the combat was something I tolerated in this game. And in my most recent playthrough, ran past almost every combat encounter and had a much better time. Prince of Persia games don't have the most engaging combat. The different enemy types don't require different strats or learning how they operate so every fight feels the same. The Sand Powers didn't change much about how I played and were just there. I think its telling that one of Two Thrones biggest innovations was adding stealth kills so you could skip fighting enemies and in POP '08, your punishment for being slow in a platforming section was a combat encounter. POPFS doesn't do much to address this. Every combat encounter starts to blend together. Especially towards the end of the game where you get the improved water sword that 1 shots most enemies and tears through most larger enemies.

 

I always wondered if a Prince of Persia game would be better served if combat was reworked into being an extension of platforming where enemies were platforming obstacles rather than enemies in a fight. Even something like The Two Thrones where you could use stealth to quietly take out enemies has its merits as it requires you to climb to certain vantage points or position yourself to get the drop on enemies. The Two Thrones even has a stealth takedown you do when wallrunning letting you transition from a platforming wallrun into a stealth kill. POPFS never incorporates that or even the Djinn powers to deal with enemies.

 

I'm just saying, in a Mario game, Mario doesn't need to start throwing hands with multiple Goombas in extended combat encounters for the game to be fun. It's enough to Goombas be obstacles Mario jumps on to defeat and move on.

 

Graphics and Artstyle:

Graphically, the game also looks impressive. The sandy kingdoms, effects, palace rooms and blue mythical areas are beautiful. I will complain the game lacks visual variety compared to something like Sands of Time which explored more novel areas like the zoo, construction areas, different kinds of baths etc. Sands of Time felt like I explored more and different places. To the point the game's save points named every location and the final vision showed you a lot off the areas you visited along the way that I remembered. Show me a screenshot of a location from Sands of Time or The Two Thrones and I am pretty confident I can tell you where in the game that is. Show me a screenshot of a location in POPFS and I'd have a harder time. It's harder to describe but POPFS feels more like individual areas are all connected by "biomes" that share the same general architecture and visual themes. I experienced a similar feeling in Warriour Within (granted, it was worse there as WW was a lot less varied in its visuals).

 

Performance and Stability:

The game did hard freeze on me around 3-4 times on this playthrough in such a way where I couldn't even exit the game and had to manually get up and turn my PS3 off. I did also notice a few slowdowns in areas with a ton of enemies and effects. Not sure if it's because the game has some issues, or my PS3 and/or Disc is getting older. My poor PS3 was chugging every now and again. So be careful should you choose the play the game. Aside from that, the game seemed to run flawlessly.

 

 

The Story:

POPFS' story was ...... ok. It's not something that will stick me nor was it something that upset me. I felt mostly neutral playing it.

 

Part of that, I feel, is the nature of the game. POPFS is an interquel, set some time after the events of Sands of Time but before the Dhaka came and started hunting the Prince for 7 years leading to Warriour Within. The game can't really challenge the Prince or give him a major arc since he has to be relatively static for Warriour Within to happen. The game is also quite self referential and often feels like a callback to its predecessors, especially Sands of Time. During the opening sequence, there are set pieces where the Prince shimmys along buildings and the camera zooms out and the scene feels like a HD remake of the same section from Sands of Time. The final climb is in a treasure room. The Prince even references Azad and Farah several times. The game also uses a similar blue aesthetic for the more dreamlike areas of the Djinn. The climax of the game has the Prince taking a few cues from Warriour Within by obtaining the water sword. The main villain, Ratash, even resembles the Dhaka visually. The Two Thrones shows its influence with Razia becoming a disembodied voice that comments on the Prince's combat performance.

 

So not only is POPFS limited by its place in the timeline, its going to be harder for it to stand out given its references to past games. To the point I wonder if this game wouldn't have been better served actually being a 7th gen HD Remake of Sands of Time. But even ignoring that, I feel POPFS doesn't do its story many favours. The first issue is the tone. The Prince is quite chipper and lighthearted to the point of cracking MCU style quips at the situation. The entire palace is turned to sand and there are sand monsters everywhere plus a giant demon rampaging around. In terms of danger, this is worse than in Sands of Time since there isn't even a way to rewind time to fix everything. Yet it feels less dire. At least in Warriour Within, the Prince was straight up terrified of the Dhahka whenever he showed up but the Prince never shows that kind of fear here which undermines the tension.

 

Sands of Time was by no means a dark game, (especially next to Warriour Within) but the game still highlighted how severe the situation was. The Prince would lament at how tragic the devastation was. He rarely made light of the situation and most of his humour/jokes was directed at Farah to bring some levity. Playing Sands of Time, you get a sense of how occasionally lonely, atmospheric and haunting some locations could be. The story being framed as a story a future Prince is telling also helped it out by contrasting the wiser and more cautious future Prince with the more brash and arrogant current Prince as well as expositing how the Prince is feeling. POPFS starts with the Prince explaining to Razia how he got there for first part of the story before dropping the narrator framework entirely.

 

The Prince's conflict and arcs are underbaked. There is the idea that the Prince looks up to his brother Malik and feels conflicted when Malik calls him a traitor. Prince is also unwilling to go ahead with killing Malik to stop the main villain Ratesh as Ratesh slowly takes over Malik. But the game touches these beats before moving on. One weird element is how Razia, Djinn the Prince meets on his journey, is handled. Unlike the PSP or DS version of Forgotten Sands, the Djinn here doesn't accompany the Prince by becoming his sword until the end of the game. So instead, the story has it that the Prince occasionally finds an entrance to her domain as he explores, stops in for a quick break and fill Razia in on her progress. This limits the story since it isolates the Prince's characterization to brief cutscenes in between long stretches of gameplay.

 

In contrast, The Two Thrones was setup that the Prince was stuck with the Dark Prince as a comforting voice in his head and devil on his shoulder from quite early on allowing for conversations and plot progression through the dialogue that occured as the player played. Even Khaleena as the narrator helped out here by expositing information. I feel POPFS would have had more to work with if Razia joined the Prince sooner. Their dialogue when they join near the end is quite entertaining.

 

If I could wave a magic wand and tweak the story to make it more entertaining, I'd do the following:

 

Firstly, I'd have the Prince show more anxiety and worry at the situation while trying to hide it from Razia. Like, this is the second time a Sands of Time-like event happened and there is no hourglass for him to undo it like nothing ever happened. There will be lasting consequences this time. If the game is going to have so many callbacks from Sands of Time rather than being a more novel story, I think it would be interesting for a follow up to Sands of Time to explore how that's affected the Prince. Go all in on the concept. The closest the current version of POPFS does is having the Prince be distrustful of magic because of his past experience. But I'm imagining a moment where the Prince has flashbacks to Sands of Time and is caught off guard and stressed by it. Because while the Prince managed to successfully reverse the situation in Azad, it was still an extremely stressful and "trial by fire" sequence for the Prince that changed his personality and outlook. Especially since there isn't even anybody the Prince can talk to about it (yet). This is a secret only he knows.

 

I also feel it would be interesting if this anxiety affected his decision making process. In the current version of POPFS, the set up is that both Malik and the Prince have a piece of the medallion that gives them powers. Both of them are levelling up as they defeat enemies but Malik is slowly getting corrupted by his where he becomes more distrustful and paranoid of the Prince. What if the Prince's anxiety and experience facilitates this. Like, lets say there is a plot beat where the Prince uses his past experience to solve a puzzle or deal with a section that someone without the experience couldn't have. Malik sees this and becomes curious that the Prince is hiding something from him. The Prince tries to explain how to fix the situation without explaining how he knows it which makes Malik suspect the Prince is the one being corrupted or being driven to madness by the Medallion. This weighs on the Prince that despite having past experience, he messed up and maybe even begins to feel that Malik is right.

 

Maybe this could also apply with the Prince's relationship with Razia. What if the Prince was initially hesitant to trust Razia and hesitates on fully going after Malik rationalizing it will be fine. After all, the Prince reversed the events of Sands of Time so surely Malik can do the same. This creates the conflict between the 2 where Razia suspects the Prince is hiding something and not taking the situation seriously and the Prince suspects Razia has ulterior motives. Finally culminating in a sequence where the Princes messes up just like how he did in Sands of Time and gets temporarily trapped with Razia somewhere. The situation looks hopeless and Razia chews out the Prince for this. The Prince finally drops his guard and confesses his worries to Razia and tells her an abridged version of Sands of Time. That he has seen something like this before and he doesn't want to believe he'd have to kill Malik and why this made him distrustful of Razia. You could have Razia not believe the Prince at first but give him the benefit of the doubt and this becomes the moment that fully unites the two as a proper team.

 

I also feel the final boss fight against Ratesh, who has taken over Malik's body and grown into a kaiju sized threat, was rather underwhelming (even ignoring the fact that the Prince beat him twice already). The preceding platforming section across floating broken scenery in a sandstorm was arguably a lot more interesting and fulfilling gameplay wise. The actual fight consists of a platform where you avoid Ratesh' telegraphed attacks and attack his chest when he gets close. Even when I first played the game over a decade ago, I always wondered why this fight felt so underwhelming despite the cool spectacle of fighting a skyscraper sized monster. I think I now know why. Lets compare 2 bosses from The Two Thrones: The Final Boss Fight versus the Vizir and the first boss fight against the Giant.

 

For the boss fight against the Vizir, yeah you have all the hype and build up from the story but even on a mechanical level, this fight works. Vizir's first phase as this biblically accurate angel is a back and forth where he attacks and moves quickly and you have to move fast and strike fast well. It feels like a back and forth so even though The Two Thrones' combat isn't amazing, it works with the fight and elevates it. The second phase has the Vizir go to the edge of the arena and summon floating rocks as mines for the player to avoid. You have to dodge the rocks, get under him and do a vertical wallrun into a QTE sequence to cut off his wings quickly before he moves. Here, the fight uses both the movement one of the new core additions to The Two Thrones, the QTE Speed Kill system in a memorable way. The final phase has him fly high his telekinesis creates one final platforming gauntlet out of random debris for you to climb and stab him. It's cool and memorable to have the final phase of the fight use the platforming the Prince is known for. The one shot only adds to this.  For the Giant Boss in Two Thrones, you can't attack him directly. Instead you must go to edge of the arena, climb up to get to the Boss' head level and do a QTE to stab out his eyes. Once he's blind, you attack his legs taking care to avoid his attacks before finishing him off. 

In both cases, even though the actual boss might not be the most complex, the way it plays feels unique to The Two Thrones. It highlights the mechanics and platforming of the game so it feels memorable. If you took the Vizir and ported him as is into something like God of War 3 or Dark Souls 1, the fight wouldn't play out the same as it does in POP The Two Thrones. But in the case of Ratesh, you can paste him as is and he'd work the same because nothing about his mechanics of avoiding telegraphed attacks and attacking the glowing spot on his chest is unique to POPFS. Even POP '08 did a better job with its final boss Ahriman. In POPFS's case, I feel a better boss fight would have been a quick platforming gauntlet similar to the one preceding it. Have the Prince moving in a Sandstorm, using the Recall Power to trap or damage Ratesh. The final strike could have been one where the Prince uses the Freeze Water power to freeze rain in such a way where he can use it to platform to Ratesh/Malik and deliver one final tearful strike to end the game. The final conversation between the Prince and Malik could also add a line where Malik notes that he suspects the Prince lived through all this before but is unsure of the details as Malik dies. Adding the twist of the knife that the Prince truly doesn't have anybody now that knows what he went through or believes him. I feel even if this sequence was short scripted set piece, it would feel cooler and be more memorable than the current version. But maybe this would have been infeasible to implement.

 

I do suspect the game might have been rushed as the ending is extremely brief. With stuff like the aftermath of the game and Razia's fate relegated to a quick voiceover after the main ending. If that's true, then it further dilutes an already underwhelming ending. I imagine in an alternate timeline, if the game had more resources, there could have been a sequence where we see Razia sacrificing herself and the Prince having 1 final sombre and quiet platforming section where he returns Razia's sword (kinda like the vibe POP '08 was going for).

 

 In closing, despite my complaints, I really do like POPFS. Its biggest flaw is that its story is ok and that its mechanics have a few nitpicks and missed opportunities. But despite that, I 100% recommend this game. The raw platforming is some of the best in this series. The game more than justifies its existence and forgives every flaw from that. It was a truly enjoyable game to Platinum. Of the 3 versions of Forgotten Sands I played (The PS3 version, DS version and PSP version), this is by far not only the best version of FS but also arguably the best playing game in the series (besides maybe POP '08). If this truly is the last the big budget AAA Prince of Persia game we ever get, then I am ultimately satisfied the series still ended on a high note.

Splinter Cell Blacklist Embassy Missions Review and Tier List

 Hello everyone. A while back I bought Splinter Cell Blacklist on PC  and got addicted to it. Put around 30 hours into it in a single week. I really enjoyed the game. One of my most unexpected and favourite aspects that I spent the most time in was, believe it or not, The Embassy/Charlie's Missions and I wish to talk about them today. Before we begin, here is some context for those unfamiliar with the game or the mode.

 

Blacklist was the latest Splinter Cell game released in 2013. In addition to the main missions that progress the story, you have side missions given to you by Sam's crew that all have a gimmick attached. Grim's Side Missions will fail you if you get detected. Kobin's Side Missions have reinforcements show up if you get detected. Brigg's missions are coop only. Charlie's missions are a kind of wave based horde mode where around you must eliminate 30-50 enemies per wave. Enemies tend to spawn in batches of 5-12. These levels are typically set in an open map based in a foreign embassy.  Later waves become more challenging with there being more armoured enemies, guards with goggles, dogs, drone operators that jam your goggles and vision modes and send out seeking drones after you, snipers and more. The mission continues for a max of 20 waves although you can successfully end the mission after every 5 waves and even resume there later.

 

 I took a brief look online and saw that these Embassy/Charlie missions were generally disliked by players. And I can see why and will even agree with them. But first, I wish to discuss why I enjoyed this missions so much (at least for the first 10 or so waves). At their best, these missions play like an alternate flavour of a Batman Arkham Predator map. Sam is incredibly agile and quick and it's oh so satisfying to survey the map, note where 6-10 enemies are, plan a route to move through the map in creative ways and taking them down. Doubly so if it can be done non-lethally so you could pop a smoke bomb drop down, KO 3-4 guards and then use Mark and Execute with the Electric Crossbow to KO 3 more. The better maps give you plenty of routes to stealthily move to other locations and take out enemies along the way. In something like Batman Arkham, Batman doesn't need many escape routes or mind if the map is rather large because he can grapple and glide to quickly escape detection or cover large distances. Sam Fisher can't do that so the better maps tend to be more compact with more rooms and windows. This often let to waves feeling more tense, oddly enough as I felt more vulnerable but more deadly than in Batman Arkham. The missions also often swap out enemies and even introduce objectives like "non-lethally KO and capture certain High Value Targets (HVTs)" to help keep waves interesting and prevent the player from getting to complacent or just sniping everyone by needing to rush to get closer to certain enemies.

 

However, the modes' downsides pop up on higher waves. For one, Dogs. They are drawn to your position and can sniff you out. When they detect you, they will charge you and trap in an animation where you have to mash E to escape. You are completely vulnerable during that time. So if other guards are around and begin firing at you...... you're done. Dogs can also bypass your human shields/hostages by trapping you in their bite/mashing animation. In the main campaign, dogs are rare and the game never throws 2 max at you. But some embassy waves can throw 20 dogs at you in a single wave. The only solace being that dogs are weak and will go down to a single silenced pistol shot at medium range. 

 

They are made worse by Drone Operators. These guys jam your goggles so you lose access to alternate vision modes while they are conscious. But their main issue are the little RC drones they spawn. These drones patrol the map, if they spot you they alert every other enemy then rush you and try to explode. The point blank damage from the explosions is often enough to kill you instantly and each Drone Operator often spawns multiple drones. Normally, the game disables an operator's drones once you take them out but it's inconsistent. I had times when I took out an operator and his newly deployed drone deactivated the exact second he went down. Other times, I got spotted taking out said operator by his newly deployed drone. The drones are weak enough to be disabled by a single shot and will explode on a second shot which helps with creating distractions and taking out some enemies but in collaboration with dogs was a nightmare. Getting trapped by a dog was a death sentence in waves with drones. It often got to the point where I had to exploit the collectible save spots by hiding in there and spending most of the wave just sniping the dogs and then throwing an EMP round just to deal with the 15 or so drones camping me. It's not fun when the overuse of these enemies restricts you so much.

 

Here are a few ways to fix these. For dogs, I'd prefer the way Assassin's Creed 3 did animal attacks. If a Wolf or Dog attacks you in that game, you have to do a QTE to counter their attack and take them out. If you messed this up, then you have to do the mashing to get out. Something like that would work way better here. I'm imagining a system where a dog lunges at you, you do the QTE and you have the option of either loudly shoving the dog away or doing a lengthy and loud takedown animation. You're exposed in both cases but at least now you have the chance of not instantly getting screwed over by a dog attack by being able to escape. For drone operators,  limit the number of drones that can be active, or let players be able to hack drones remotely to use against enemies. So rather than limiting the player's movement, they allow new opportunities in a map.

 

With all that said, lets talk about about the maps themselves. Note that there is no compass or map in the game but for the sake of convenience, I am going to say the direction you spawn in the map faces North. For maps that are circular or rectangular in nature, I am also going to be using a clock notation to help with orientation and location. For example if you're at the centre of the map and you go straight forward, I'll describe that as in a 12 o'clock position. If you're at the centre of the map facing the direction you spawn and go forward but turn around 10-ish degrees to the right, I might describe that as towards the 1 o' clock position. I apologize if it may be confusing. Like I said, Blacklist doesn't give you a compass like its predecessors.

 

S Tier (These maps are perfect and are super replayable and give so much to mess around with): Nothing. There are no maps I'd put in S tier.

 

A Tier (These maps are great, are replayable and give you lots of options): Nothing as well.

 

B Tier (These maps are good. Are somewhat replayable and give you a fair amount of options): The Pakistani Embassy. This map has the potential to go into A and even S tier. It's so close and already so fun.  First the setup.  

 

The map consists of 3 main areas. A sort of "ruins" area towards the South consisting of more of  hallways with blind spots. These are connected to a road area with quite a few cover spots. The road area is sandwiched between the ruins and the embassy itself. The Embassy is towards the North and takes up around half of the entire map. The Embassy has 2 "regular entrances". One main entrance/garage that leads to a large garage area. In this garage area, there is a luggage scanning room towards the east (around a 2 o'clock direction from the centre of the map) and stairs on the west leading to the upper floor. The upper floor consists of a room (around a 10 o' clock direction from the centre of the map) with multiple windows on the west side you can use to enter and exit the embassy. These are connected to 2 hallways. One hallway has windows letting you drop down to the garage area and another window connected to the other hallway. The other hallway is also a long balcony that gives you surprisingly great view of the road area and ruins area letting you snipe quite well. The balcony is also a great area to get takedowns as unalert guards won't spot you doing ledge takedowns and the cover on the ground makes it easier to get away with aerial takedowns on guards and even follow up with regular takedowns on unarmoured guards.

 

The 2 hallways also lead to a walkway that overlooks the Luggage scanning room and stairs that lead to a lobby area which is the other "regular entrance". The stairs have a pipe and wall overlooking them you can climb and are isolated enough to easily get the drop on enemies making it one of the best spots in the game. The lobby room is also connected to the luggage scanning room by windows only the player can climb. The lobby room also has walls you can climb around to get the drop on Enemies or use to climb around to the luggage scanning room. Finally on the west side of the embassy, there is a blocked door you can slide over that enemies can't.

 

The pros of this map: This map seems to understand the general constraints and requirements this mission needs to be fun. You need lots of densely packed rooms to provide lots of blind spots to let the player takedown enemies without getting spotted by other enemies. You also need to provide rooms with openings only the player can use to quickly move around. Either  to get to enemies and bypassing more dangerous/occupied areas or escape enemies when inevitably detected. A quirk of Blacklist's guard AI is that they don't "learn your tricks" and try to rush to where they can shoot you (or shoot your last known location) which you can exploit. 

 

For example. I mentioned the west room on the top floor with the windows. Lets say you get detected on the top floor and have jump out the window. Enemies will see you do that and opt to all run outside the embassy towards the western side so they can shoot at you. However, the fastest way for the enemies to reach that position is to go down the stairs and out the garage entrance. In scenarios where there are no enemies already outside when you jump out the window, it can take around 5-10 seconds for guards to reach you while your silhouette is hanging outside the window. So you can exploit this by jumping back into the room and watching every enemy go outside. Or drop down and use the blocked entrance on the West Side to slide back into the Embassy into the Garage Area. This area gives you at least 2 potentially safe ways to shake off enemies depending on the situation.

 

There are other examples of routes helping you out. If you get spotted in the lobby, you can climb into the luggage scanning room. Every guard will then attempt to pathfind to the luggage scanning room. You can exploit this by jumping back into the lobby or going to the walkway above the luggage scanning room, climbing onto that and using the pipes above it to move to safety or hide. The luggage room is a great area to use the Sleep Grenades since its so tight so alerted guards will crowd it to try shooting at you. Or if you're spotted outside, you can rush the garage entrance and climb into the Luggage Area, or break line of sight and climb up to the second floor. That's the biggest strength of this map. The embassy gives you lots of routes, places to climb and rooms that are isolated for enemies allowing you to shake them off. It's not foolproof as you can get shot to death if not careful but it is still a fun map. Even the road and ruins area aren't too bad on earlier waves as the amount of cover can let you take the initiative and stealthily go after some enemies that are patrolling outside despite the mission being set during the daytime. The ruins have balconies and walkways you climb onto and use for takedowns or quickly enter/exit the area.

 

The main cons of this map is that many windows are permanently boarded up for some reason. For example, that eastern staircase I mentioned that connects the lobby and upper floor with the pipe that's fantastic for getting takedowns? It has windows that would connect to the outside similar to the windows in the upper floor western room. But those windows are boarded up. Having those be open would add so much by giving you a more convenient way to get in and out of that area which ends up being sorely missed in higher ways when more of your routes are covered and you need to use higher ground/ledges as much as possible to even stand a chance. I also wish there was a zipline on the Western side that lets you zoom from the Embassy to the ruins and bypasses the road area as another option. As well as pipes and ways to connect the blocked Western entrance to the upper floor from the inside safely.

If the map had these, it would be an S tier easily. But as it currently stands, I could even make the argument for it being in B+ tier.

 

C Tier (The map is passable but has potential to easily be better with some improvements): Russian Embassy

 

Out of all the maps in the game, this one feels the closest to what a stereotypical Splinter Cell level would look like. It's the only map that's set at night and actually feels like it (Sorry Swiss Embassy). The Embassy itself looks more like a high tech spy building than an embassy.

 

You spawn in the southern edge of the map in a parking lot with enough cars that it is feasible to go out and hunt down a few isolated enemies. The embassy in front of you has a main entrance. An alley to its eastern side that lets you move behind the embassy and towards the back gardens. This alley has stairs to get to the roof off the embassy. The gardens have a fair amount of cover and even a zipline from the embassy rooftop to cross a bit of it. Returning to the parking lot spawn, if you go towards a 10 o'clock direction, left of the main entrance, there's a wall that separates the parking lot from another alley that connects to a few of the embassy's rooms and a path to the gardens. The wall also houses a walkway that provides another path to the rooftop, a window to enter the embassy and stairs that lead down to that alley. The rooftop is also covered in pipes for cover that give you plenty of spots to take out enemies from. The inside of the embassy consists of tight rooms with plenty of cover.

 

Pros: I love how atmospheric this map looks being set at night, with rain/lightning. Enemies are wearing goggles that make them look like Soldier 76. The verticality and separation points on this map are pretty good. When I got spotted, it wasn't impossible to quickly climb the main building. Enemies would try pathfinding up there like in the Pakistani embassy which gave me a chance to give them the slip. The high amount of cover also makes it easier to sneak up on enemies. This also would be a fun Call of Duty Map.

 

Cons: The biggest I issue is funnily enough, the inside of the embassy. There are only 3 safe entrances, the front (and the windows on the front), the back and the western side. There is a laser grid and windows for a collectible you can use to enter/exit which triggers an alarm that draws in every guard (which has its uses).  But most other windows on this map are boarded up. This makes actually going inside the embassy too risky since it's easy to get trapped. The only times I went inside were to KO a few stragglers or when I was forced in because every other way was too dangerous.

 

Another issue us that the rooftops don't actually give you a full view of the map. The north western side of the rooftop has this massive structure that blocks your view and movement. The map is also too large I feel. You can trim down a good chunk of the Garden area. The Pakistani Embassy was perfectly fine with just the roads and ruins as additional areas.

 

In terms of improvements, I feel this map is capable of reaching S tier. Firstly, open up more of the windows so it's easier to get in and out of the embassy especially from the rooftop. I would add in a skylight or something as well. So now the player has more of a reason and its convenient to move back and forth from the embassy. As well as multiple escape routes.

 

D tier (The map has potential and could be salvaged or improved slightly but its current design makes it a pain to play): Swiss Embassy.

 

This map looks fun for the first few waves but quickly shows its true colours. The setup is interesting. You start in a larger foyer area with columns around you. There's a balcony that houses a collectible which you can use a barely useful sniper shot and safe spot for dogs and drones. The foyer's northern side connects to a hallway. The foyer's western side has a door that leads up stairs to another upper floor hallway that overlooks the ground floor one. The ground floor hallway leads to an area with a walkway above you that you can access with stairs on the right side. The upper floor hallway also connects to the walkway. Past the walkway, there's doors and stairs that connect the upper and ground floor hallway. There also also a few side rooms and windows you can jump into in a pinch.

 

The pros: This map looks so cool. I like the idea of the walkways and upper/lower floors encircling the map. This map would be really fun as a Call of Duty Multiplayer Map honestly. You have wide open areas for shooting, balconies and walkways for varied elevation. Add in a few ladders and it would be a blast.

 

Sidenote but this barely even looks like an embassy. It reminds me more of a giant train/metro station lol.

 

Cons: The first major issue with this map is how disconnected all the ledges, pipes and routes are. In the foyer, there are pillars/ columns you can climb..... and that's it. You can't full encircle them because there's a lamp that blocks your way. You can't side or back eject like in classic Assassin's Creed to move between columns. When you climb this column, you can't even use them to properly turn around and shoot enemies from a vantage point. They often serve better as emergency hiding spots.

 

This idea of disconnected routes extends throughout the map. You can't circumnavigate the ground floor hallway by handing from the ledge of the upper hallway because there are obstacles. There are no ledges on the right side of the ground hallway. In the staircase on the west side of the foyer, there is a pipe you can use to climb above the doorway and ledges that lead around the stairs but these don't connect so the pipes feel useless to use. The worst are the stairs at the back side of the map. There is a pipe that goes over the walkway but in order to access it, you need to climb the columns surrounding the walkway. So if you are on the walkway and want to get on the pipe above you, you need to drop down the walkway to the ground floor hallway below, then move forward and climb the column, climb the pipe on the column and then position yourself to where you were on the walkway.

 

The map is also lit up like crazy. It may be set at night but it feels brighter than many actual daytime levels in this game. Areas like the foyer and hallways can easily become deathtraps when you're spotted as there is minimal cover, few rooms to lose enemies and super easy to get cornered/trapped. Later rounds had me exploiting the collectible safe balcony far more than I would have liked.

 

The first improvement I'd suggest is just make the hallway entirely circumnavigatable while hanging. The player's movement and sightlines are already limited enough as it is so giving players the means of actually moving back and forth would be invaluable. Have wires going from the columns to the walls so the player can hang from the columns in the foyer and shimmy from there to the walkway pipe without needing to even touch the floor. I'd even go a step further and add another upper floor walkway/hallway to the right side of the ground floor that can't be accessed by enemies quickly to give the player an escape route. I'd also add stuff like a long bench that cuts through the ground floor hallway to give the player something they can use to sneak along the ground floor without being as exposed.

 

I feel all this would bump this map up to B tier. It would still be hurt by how open the map is compared to the Pakistani one but it would be more fun to play with.

 

 

F Tier (This map is unsalvageable in it current form ): Egyptian Embassy

 This one is just painful and the only one I didn't bother to play past the first 5 waves. It completely misses the design of the better embassies. 

Lets start with the layout. You spawn in the southern side of the map. Above you is a walkway that gives you a great view of most of the map. To your left is an enclosed wooden staircase you can use to break line of sight and climb up to the walkway. The first area to the north of you is a mess of wrecked cars that reminds me of the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 2022 map Border with more open areas to the left and right. To the north of that is the Embassy which consists of a balcony 1 story up with stairs on either side.

 

The eastern side of the map has scaffolding you can use to climb up to walkways that connect to the main walkway from earlier.  The map is also quite small and almost circular shaped. And it's possible to circumnavigate around 70% of the perimeter of the map without being on ground level as the edges of the map have ledges/wires you can use to move from the scaffolding from the 4 o'clock position all the way around to the  12.5 o'clock position of the map if you look at it from the top down.

 

That's unfortunately where all my praises end for the map. The negatives drag it down. For starters, this map is 95% in the open. Aside from the enclosed wooden staircase at the 7 o'clock position (from the centre of the map) and the dead end room at the 12 o'clock position (and also the secret collectible room that doesn't overlook anything), there are no rooms or buildings you can use. The map seems to intend you to use the cars for cover when approaching anything on foot, the ledges and wires for circumnavigation and the southern walkways to quickly climb to break line of sight and escape. This isn't ideal because the layout (and the fact the map is set during daytime) makes it hard to even approach enemies safely. I wished when playing this map that I had the Octocamo from Metal Gear Solid 4 as that would have given me a better way to hide and approach enemies and I could crawl.

 

When you get spotted, you have no easy way to lose pursuers. Running through the scrapped cars doesn't help because needing to zig zag through cars means you can't put much distance when trying to escape guards. The lack of rooms means you can't quickly break line of sight and then have options to move elsewhere based on the guards' pathfinding. 

The map being open means even climbing is dangerous as you're entirely exposed as enemies shoot at you. Even the circumnavigation isn't ideal because enemies can spot you from balconies/walkways and you have no safe places to escape to. Dropping down returns you to the car scrapyard and all the worries that entails. Continuing circumnavigating isn't ideal because you're an open target. There really isn't much to help you out here. And when the waves throw snipers and HVTs you have to capture under a time limit, then you have no options aside from just brute forcing quickscopes and using your grenades to quickly take down guards and hope the RNG was in your favour. I'm glad I didn't play until dogs and drones spawned because those would have been nightmarish on this map.

 

Being generous, this map could work as a Batman Arkham Predator Map. Place a few gargoyles and its suitable for Batman to glide and grapple around. I can see it working for Batman gliding next to cars and using them for a few stealth takedowns and grappling away. Or as a mode in Metal Gear Solid 4. But it doesn't work for Blacklist. I spent quite a while thinking of minor additions that could improve the map. My first idea (besides setting this map at night for some small aid) was actually allowing players to circumnavigate it. Which helps but doesn't solve the problem what happens when enemies spot you. The next idea was cording off entire sections of the map. For example, the Eastern/3 O' Clock position could be separated by a line of cars and maybe a barricade/checkpoint setup that Sam can jump over but enemies need to pathfind around using the massive scaffolding to give the player 10-ish seconds to hide after jumping over similar to the Blocked Entrance in the Pakistani Embassy. Do a similar thing for the Western side as well. Also have more wires criss-crossing towards the centre of the map to allow the player more aerial takedown opportunities. You could also have a few watchtowers dotted around connected by wires and only accessible via a ladder to keep the player safe from drones and dogs. You could also have the Collectible Laptop room connected to the balcony above it to give the player another escape route and way to move between the balcony and ground floor safely.

 

All this could possible bump this map to D tier. But ultimately this map being an open outdoor map constrains it too much and requires so much reworking to even be passable that it would end up becoming a different map altogether.

 

In closing, what have we learned so far from this? Ignoring whether these kinds of missions make sense for a Splinter Cell game, I feel the Embassy/Charlie's missions have potential as a replayable series of Predator challenges. I remember Conviction had Deniable Ops. A series of missions set in large maps that tasked you to take out a number of enemies per section of a level with more enemies spawning if the player got spotted. I remember this being some of the most fun stealth gameplay in Conviction (not a huge bar but still). I feel Blacklist's Embassy missions had potential in being the most replayable stealth missions. The kind I could just pop in and play on a whim if I just wanted something to play in the future. The Pakistani Embassy is the best one and its pros of a more open ended map with plenty of exits, windows and isolated rooms with elevated entrances to throw off pursuers are fun. While stuff like the Swiss and Egyptian Embassy show how not to do it. If we ever do get a new Splinter Cell game in this style (as opposed to the classic SC games), I'd be looking forward to seeing if these missions reappear and if they are improved.

 

 

 

 

 

I platinummed God of War 3 on PS3

 Hello everyone. I recently platinummed the PS3 version of God of War 3 (my second PS3 platinum) and I wanted to talk about it. I found my old PS3 and my 2015 save file and saw I already had most of the trophies and decided to go for the platinum.

 

Overall, this is a pretty straightforward if somewhat challenging platinum. Similar to past GOWs, most of the trophies come from completing the story, finding all the collectibles and doing a couple challenges along the way (although most are missable so you have to look out for it). You can even platinum this game in 1 playthrough.

 

There's a trophy for finding all 10 Godly Possessions ("Priceless - Collect all of the ‘Godly Possessions’ ") . 2015 me already found 9/10. I missed Hephaestus' Ring. These collectibles are usually close to the God or Boss you fight and aren't super out of the way. The other collectible trophies: "Feather Plucker - Collect all of the Phoenix Feathers", "Are You Horny to Win? - Collect all of the Minotaur Horns " and "Eye Candy - Collect all of the Gorgon Eyes" throw you a bone as even though you need 12 of each of these 3 to both get the trophy and max out magic, item and health respectively, the game has multiple redundant chests for these (like its predecessors) so you can miss a few chests and still max these out. If anything, GOW3 feels the most generous of the classic Greek GOW games in this regard. 2015 me managed to find all the Feathers and Horns and most Gorgon Eyes. Compare this to GOW1 and 2 where I felt like I barely got 50% of the collectibles on my first run and GOW Chains and Ghost of Sparta where I got around 60-ish percent.

 

There are also trophies for grinding or using your tools a lot such as "Nice Tan - Blind 100 enemies with the Head of Helios" and "It’s getting hot in here... - Burn 100 enemies with the Bow of Apollo". Not too hard to do and there are a few places that spawn infinite enemies you can use to grind if you want. I personally just used the bow and head as much as soon as I got them to get these ones over with as soon as I could.

 

"Hit Man - Perform a 1000-hit combo" was a tricky one. There aren't many places to farm this. The only 2 places I know are the Skorpius boss fight where once you break its armour and stun it, you can keep hitting it with the Nemesis Whip to wrack up the 1000 hit count. Or use the section in Tartarus where you get jumped by 12 skeletons and use an unupgraded Claws of Hades L1 + O attack behind some pillars the enemies can't reach you to get these weak floating skulls to attack your enemies. On Titan difficulty, the enemies have so much health and the Claws so weak that I could get to 1000 hits and none of the enemies even died. I chose this one as it felt safer.

 

The hardest trophy is arguably "Unhuman - Beat Titan Mode". Titan is GOW3's hard difficulty mode.

 

Bit of a tangent but I always liked that that the first 3 GOWs hardest difficulty modes corresponded to the factions Kratos was aligned with at the time and changed per game. GOW1 had Mortal (Easy), Hero (Normal), Spartan (Hard) and God (Very Hard) since Kratos was in service to the Gods. In GOW2, it went Mortal (Easy), Spartan (Normal), God (Hard) and Titan (Very Hard) since Kratos was now working with the Titans. And in GOW3 it goes Spartan (Easy), God (Normal), Titan (Hard) and Chaos (Very Hard) since now Kratos is working on his own and causing the apocalypse.

 

I am glad that GOW3 only asks you to play on Titan (Hard) mode for the platinum. The jump from normal mode to hard is intense. Enemies deal more damage and have more health. Even basic legionnaires can take sizable chunks out of your health. Tougher enemies hits can tear off 80 points off your health bar minimum (for reference, 100 points is how much health you have at the start of the game) with their heavier attacks doing more.

 

The end result is that almost every combat encounter with anything greater than basic legionnaires becomes more tense and memorable as its easy for mistakes to snowball. Armoured Legionaries for example, can't easily be grabbed, come in packs and do a variety of attacks. Not too challenging to deal with on their own but mixed with other enemy types like Satyrs or shielded enemies, they can form a team that can throw off your rhythm and leave you open for attack. I died quite a lot in fights with mixed enemy groups involving foes I couldn't easily grab. I had to really learn enemy attack patterns, get more comfortable with parrying, get better at resource management so I could use magic attacks at the right moment or to get me out of a tricky spot. As well as learning more about how the GOW3 combat system worked. Shout out to ExtremeGameplays GOW Combat Guide to teach me a few tricks.

 

GOW3 takes away a few of the "tools" I used in GOW2 to make my life easier. It reworks how enemy throws and collisions work. In GOW1 and 2, throwing enemies into each other did bonus damage depending on your difficulty. Throwing a weak enemy into another on Easy barely did any damage. But throwing a weak enemy into another on Hard melted enemy health bars. GOW3 removes this feature. Now thrown enemies deal a flat 10 points of damage to each other no matter what and on what difficulty. The game does sorta make up for it with Kratos' new grab and battering ram move where he grabs an enemy and rams them into other enemies which can work in a pinch but only deals 50 damage max in the best case. Still, in cases where there are a lot of basic legionnaires, such as Hercules' boss fight, it can still trivialize most encounters.

 

The other ability GOW3 takes away is "tricking" or "i-frames on certain moves". In GOW2, quickly equipping Typhoon's Bane or Euryale's Head made Kratos phase through attacks for a second. I exploited this to let me phase through enemies and keep attacking without needing to dodge, roll or parry as the timing was a lot more generous. GOW3 doesn't have that so now, I gotta parry and dodge better.

 

However, GOW3's hard mode does feel more manageable than GOW1 and 2 (those were beyond brutal). I could get through most fights after multiple attempts and learning how it worked and by saving all my magic and rage powers for near the end to quickly end the remaining amount of health. The hardest fight by far was the Cerberus fight near the end of the game. This one was rough. Cerberus moves and attacks quickly. His ranged and melee attacks seem difficult if not impossible to parry. He's surrounded by exploding hellhounds that damage you. I tried kicking the dogs at Cerberus which felt unreliable. Later phases summon Satyrs who can move quickly and tear huge chunks off your health. Most of my deaths happened quickly as I'd mess up, get hit which set me up to get hit by something else which took most of my health. My approach ended up double jumping above the enemy, doing a single L1 + Triangle Attack and air dashing away and repeating as the safest way to damage Cerberus and then getting out danger range. Even then, it felt like I took close to 30 tries on this one fight. I'm just saying, if Zeus wanted to stop Kratos, he should have just sent multiple Cerberus after him.

 

I remember seeing a lot of talk online about Zeus being a nightmare on Titan mode. And he can be but there are ways to manage him. His first phase is a 2D Street Fighter-Eqsue encounter. The trick here is parrying and the Nemian Cestus L1 + O attack and blocking. Zeus has a 3 hit melee combo where he does an overhead punch with a long wind up I could parry around 70% of the time. He follows up this punch with a quick jab I could parry 90% of the time (it was easier since it was so quick after the first punch that by the time I stopped blocking and started blocking again, it was usually enough to count as a parry) and a 3rd attack which is a thunderclap that cannot be blocked or parried and must be avoided. Getting a parry here interrupts his attack string and lets you get several free hits on him.

 

His other attacks in this phase such as jumping and shooting lighting can be easily interrupted by attacking him or using L1 + O with the Cetsus to smack him and end the attack early. His final attack of lightning on the ground can be blocked and he usually follows that with his melee combo string. If he ever blocks, I used the Cetsus L1 + O move to break his block. Once I got the pattern down, I was able to complete his phase 1 with at least 80% of my max health intact.

 

Phase 3 inside Gaia's heart is a doozy.  The gimmick here is that Zeus becomes more aggressive as you attack him, spawning more clones that can overwhelm you easily. As well as periodically being able to heal off the damage you dealt him by healing off Gaia's heart. The trick here is to avoid being "too aggressive". Here, the saviour is the Nemian Cestus' L1 + O move. It doesn't count as being aggressive for some reason. So you can chain L1 + O moves to slowly whittle down Zeus' health and he rarely spawns more than 1 clone and repeats the same basic moves you can learn and avoid. Periodically punching Gaia's heart to get the healing instead and parrying/reflecting back Zeus' lighting blasts back at him. It's a long battle of attrition as I suspect the L1 + O move doesn't do a crazy amount of damage. But this slow and steady strat guarantees victory after a really long fight. All this for the "Unhuman" Trophy.

 

There is an exploit to make this easier. Supposedly, if you go the combat arena, set your health, magic and item power to infinite, set the difficulty to Titan, die several times until the game asks if you want to lower the difficulty, refuse and quit out, then start a new playthrough, the game carries your maxed out character with the infinite stats into this new playthrough. And you can cheese the 3 Judges to sequence break the game. I didn't try this out since I needed to find all the collectibles and beat the Labyrinth for the platinum but supposedly, it still works on both the original PS3 version and the PS4 remastered version.

 

Speaking of which, another challenging trophy is "aMAZEd - Beat the Labyrinth without dying or failing" The Labyrinth is a long and challenging section near the end of the game where Kratos has to solve some puzzles and deal with enemies while facing environmental traps or is on a timer. It's very easy to fail especially in the spikes room. I died close to 27 times or so. It would be painful to restart the entire sequence from scratch every time....... but there is a way around it. When you die, the game gives you the option to reload the last checkpoint, which voids the trophy, or quit to the main menu. If you quit to the main menu, you can load the autosave for the most recent checkpoint which doesn't count as a death. And I exploited the hell out of this lmao. I am not doing this legit on Titan difficulty!

 

The final trophy I earned was "Up to the Challenge - Beat the Challenge of Olympus". Like in previous GOW games, GOW3 gives you 7 bonus challenges to do after beating the game. The first was "Population Control - You have 50 seconds to make sure that no more than 50 skeletons are spawned at a time". Not too bad. Just spam the Cetsus and it shreds the enemies. "Bare Hands - Defeat all enemies without any weapons in less than a minute". The challenge has 2 statue enemies and one cyclops as well as a lot of skeletons. The goal here is to grab skeletons and use the battering ram move to damage them since Kratos doesn't have any other unarmed attacks. The time limit here is very tight and any slight mistakes can cost you the attempt. The main trick is to avoid the QTE execution move with O when the enemies' health gets low as that costs too much time. You're better off just ramming them more and killing them quicker and even damaging other enemies along the way. This one took a lot of attempts.

 

The 3rd challenge is "Get Stoned". You have to let the Gorgon turn you into stone 10 times and thankfully there is no time limit. The trick here is to go against every instinct you have as a GOW3 player. If you stand still to let the Gorgon petrify you, it takes a really long time and isn't even guaranteed to happen. You have to press O to attempt to grab a Gorgon which will fail and force them to immediately try to petrify you, then press L1 to attempt to reflect it, then intentionally fail the QTE to instantly get petrified then break out. The main issue here is luck as the game starts spawning Satyrs and Cyclopes that can one shot you in a petrified state, ending the attempt. This one took a long time and a lot of restarts.

 

The 4th challenge is "El Matador - Olé - Don't get gored by minotaurs and don't get piled upon by skeletons. No Time limit". This one also took a while. If a single minotaur hits you with their charging attack (even if you block it) or if a single skeleton grabs you, it's over. The strat I found was positioning myself to let the Minotaurs either fall off the stage or letting me do a L1 + O with the Blades of Exile to knock them off. And doing an airborne L1 + Triangle to clear out some of the skeletons gathered beneath me. You have the Rage of Sparta which seemingly renders you immune to getting gored or grabbed. I used it in the final wave to clear out most of the enemies and make my life easier. I still choked a lot in this final stage which was embarrassing.

 

 The 5th challenge was "Knockout - Ring out enemies to earn 1000 points. Sentries are worth 15 points. Minotaurs are worth 30 points and Wraiths are worth 60 points. You have 60 seconds". The game starts out summoning a cyclops you have to weaken enough to be able to ride which summons all the enemies for you to start knocking out. I only failed this twice. The trick here is to rush down the Cyclops as soon as you can so you have as much time as possible for the ring outs. I took too long on that. 

 

The 6th challenge was "Hades' Kids". Here, you have 60 seconds to kill 5 Cyclops with more Cyclops spawning as you kill them. The challenge being the large number of Cyclopes can make it harder to get in to hit them. The trick is do the full Square combo plus triangle at the end to try killing them as fast as possible and skipping the low health QTE execution to save time. This one took me 3 attempts.

 

 The 7th and final challenge was "Simply Smashing". You have 20 seconds to destroy 30 urns. The Time limit is strict. The best strat is to use just the first square attack and not any more moves as those burn too much time. The spawns for the urns are static so you can eventually optimize the run for the win. This one took 4 attempts.

 

So yeah, overall, a really fun game to Platinum. I feel it's reasonable to get the platinum in under 10 hours start to finish. The combat and challenges were really fun and engaging. Most of the more difficult ones had some strat to help me out and it was cool to learn more about the game to succeed. I recommend trying this one out.

 

As for the game itself, I love GOW3. It may be my favourite GOW game. I do feel there are aspects the other GOW games do better but GOW3, overall, does the most things right.

 

For example, one of the things I loved about GOW1 was the "world design". The majority of GOW1 is set in Athens with the player crossing some areas multiple times but the game tries to make these revisits feel more novel. For example, there's a floor with an ornate decoration. It's striking but otherwise unremarkable. But later, you open a stairway that leads you back to the area. It feels like a Dark Souls 1 style shortcut but in a linear game. You may not be able to use these "shortcuts" to manually explore the world on your own but it helps so much in making Athens feel like a bigger world with its own shortcuts and paths. It makes you feel like this is a Dark Souls 1-like world that Kratos is exploring but the player is experiencing only a part of. It's a similar case with Pandora's Temple with the player revisiting previous areas that open up new ones. The game's fixed camera angle also helps guide players to the right paths. The game also foreshadows elements through its environment. For example, the giant sword you cross as a bridge comes up in the final fight against Ares.

GOW2, Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta on the other hand, do this less often since those games are typically longer journeys from A to B rather than exploring a singular location. Kratos for example, doesn't have much reason to revisit the area close to the Steeds of Time nor is there as much environmental foreshadowing. Not a knock against those games. You kinda need a more "A to B" based game to work like this.

GOW3 operates a bit more like  GOW1. Kratos revisits places like the entrance to Hades, Hephaestus' workshop, Aphrodite's room, the Chamber of the Flame, the Chains of Balance and these areas are flagged and foreshadowed. It's cool to see the chains in the first 15 minutes of the game, and then be climbing them several hours later. However, the use of Portals and the sometimes homogeneous visuals (especially in Hades) hurt the variety. Show me a screenshot from GOW1 and I can usually make a pretty good guess where in the game this is and what the rough plot progression is at that point. Show me a screenshot from GOW3 and I'd have a tougher time. But for what it's worth, the environments in GOW3 are beautiful and detailed and cool enough to be impressive in the moment.

 

I'd be remiss not to talk about the visuals. I remember as a kid, playing GOW3 and Prince of Persia Forgotten Sands at the same time on my PS3. Both games open with a really cool CGI cutscene. But when both games transitioned back to in-engine, only GOW3 looked as good. GOW3 was the first game I ever played where I felt like we reached photo-realism. Kratos on the main menu screen looks so detailed. You can see every pore and wrinkle on his skin and this is maintained into the game. This even helps the storytelling as you can read emotions on Kratos' face that would have been harder to render on the PS2. For example, Kratos slight eyebrow raise at Hercules or his twitch when Hephaestus tries to appeal to Kratos' feelings as a father. The sense of scale is fantastic. Stuff like Kratos fighting on top of moving Titans truly looks and feels epic in every sense of the word. GOW3 is the kind of game that feels like it could have been released as an early PS4 game as is and people wouldn't have felt like it looked like a PS3 game.

 

The visuals also help sell the violent appeal of GOW games. The executions feel more gory and visceral. Kratos ripping out a Cyclops eye in GOW2 was fine. But Kratos doing the same in GOW3, when you can see the optic nerve and Kratos getting showered in realistic looking blood and it sticking, it hits harder. To the point I even started feeling sorry for the poor monsters and enemies in Kratos' way. (Which is kinda the point but more on this later).

 

This was actually a complaint I had with GOW2018. The game tones down a lot of the violence and gore with only the werewolf execution coming close. There's a point when Baldur impales Kratos in the hip into a wall with a large stone and there's no blood. Even ignoring the spectacle argument, it also weakens the power of the moment. Seeing Kratos angrily do a violent execution (especially to protect Atreus) would help in reinforcing the idea that this guy can go hardcore and still has monstrous tendencies. Or showing Kratos in a rough spot where a particularly rough fight leaves him covered in blood and requiring him to use his Wolverine-like healing factor after the fact.

 

 

One odd thing  I want to highlight is the way the game saves. In past GOW games, you'd step into the beam of light, the game would give you a GOW themed save screen and you'd be on your way. In the PS3 version of GOW3, it uses the PS3 save menu and takes ~45 seconds to do a save. The game goes quiet and uses the PS3 sounds which..... feels so ..... haunting? Quiet? lonely? unsettling? It's hard to describe. You go from the generally loud and bombastic soundscape of the game to this extremely quiet respite. It often made me reflect the stuff I just played and despite not fitting the theme the way the PS2 GOWs save menu did, I think I prefer the way GOW3 does it just for that brief unsettling serenity and respite from the action. I remember having a similar feeling when I played the PS3 versions of Dead Space 1 and 2 but not the PS5 remake Dead Space 1. I guess there's something about the PS3 save menu that's unusually haunting?

 

-The Combat:

 GOW3 retains the same combat system as its predecessors (you even start the game with the same combos and moves from GOW2) but generally builds and improves on it in almost every way without taking out or compromising the system (sorry GOW: Ascension). The main change are the new "Blades of Exile" Kratos gets as his main primary weapon which give you generally faster and safer versions of moves from past GOWs. For example, the L1+ Square move from GOW2 was really long and powerful but made you quite exposed. GOW3's L1+Square gives you a quicker version initially you can optionally extend if you want. Same for how you can hold L1+ Triangle to extend/charge the move.

 

The biggest Blades of Exile addition is the L1 + O also known as the Hyperion's Ram. This move has Kratos grapple into his opponents from range with a shoulder tackle that can stun and knockback enemies and get in close to resume combat. I love this move as it helps keep the flow going while giving you a safer move to use in more tricky situations. And it even gets some millage in platforming sections by letting you jump between flying Harpies. The game also ties magic attacks to the weapon you have equipped. The Blades of Exile give you arguably the best magic attack in the game with the "Army of Sparta" letting Kratos summon a Spartan Shield and Spear Formation to surround him and bombard enemies with arrows. I got a lot of use out of this to use its I-frames to avoid attacks while wrecking an area.

 

The game gives you 3 other weapons you can switch with the D-Pad or using L1+X to switch and do an attack simultaneously. The first is The Claws of Hades which have wider attacks and uses Magic to summon spirits of enemies that do an attack before leaving. The animations of this weapon are cool (and its L1+O attack helped me get the 1000 hits for the "Hitman" trophy) but I didn't rely on this weapon a lot. What's more disappointing is its magic attack. You can go in the pause menu and choose which Spirit you want to summon but most summons aren't particularly useful. Some like the Centaur do have merit in sending in a charging Centaur that can send enemies flying and cause ring-outs. But the most disappointing is the Gorgon Spirit that acts as this game's replacement of Medusa's Head from the previous GOW games. You press R2 and the Gorgon Spirit shows up, takes a huge chunk of your magic, fires a small beam that may not even freeze an enemy and then leaves. I would have used this magic summon way more if the magic cost was lowered and I could hold R2 to extend the beam longer to petrify and destroy enemies.

 

The next weapon is the Nemesis Whip which has incredibly fast attacks that are great for launching and stunning enemies. You can hold Square or Triangle at the end of certain attacks to have Kratos spin the weapon to keep damaging opponents. Its magic attack works like Chronos' Rage from GOW2. I liked this one.

 

The final weapon you get are the Nemian Cetsus. Giant Close range gauntlets that do absurd damage to enemies and can melt them really quickly. You wanna do some crazy DPS? These are the tools for the job. They're so fun to use with attacks having a satisfying crunch and screenshake. It really makes you feel all powerful. These were the weapons I used to take down Zeus. Its L1 + O lets me yo-yo him. The combos are fast, often launch enemies and have nice AoE properties. Their biggest downside is their R2 Magic Attack which releases a massive shockwave. This attack is nerfed on higher difficulties so you're better off switching to the Blades of Exile if you want a decent Magic attack on the harder difficulties.

 

I remember the biggest complaint from GOW3 at the time was that you essentially only have 2 different weapons. The Cetsus and 3 flavours of the Blades of Exile. I won't dispute that but I feel even though the Blades and Cetsus cover pretty much all the niches in the game and can be all you need, all the weapons at least feel fun to use and don't take away your options in order to accommodate them. Its cool to switch between all of them mid combo. Something less feasible in GOW1 (which required a brief pause to switch weapons) or GOW2 (which required you to go into the pause menu to swap weapons).

 

GOW3 also introduces sub-weapons that have their own separate meter now. The first is The Bow of Apollo which fires rapid arrows or a charged fire arrow. You can use it in a way to deal chip damage and keep your combo going akin to Ebony and Ivory from the DMC games but the raw DPS of the Bow is actually quite good and can potentially melt enemies from a distance so don't sleep on this. It even gets use in some puzzle/environmental sections by letting to ignite traps from afar.

 

 The other Sub-weapons don't feel as useful. Helios' Severed Head lets you blind enemies but is rather cumbersome to use in combat as enemies aren't stunned for long and it takes precious time to charge it. Most of its use comes as an environmental/puzzle item to light up dark areas and reveal secrets. I do wish there was a way to incorporate its full flash into regular combat. For example, if you do a parry + L1 + triangle, you can instantly do a full flash that blinds the room which can help when you're surrounded. I also feel the flash would have been more useful if it worked like the Concussion Detonator from the Arkham Games where stunned enemies awkwardly flail around and become hazards rather than targeting you as it could be a way to get a room of enemies off your back temporarily without completely trivializing them.

 

The last sub-weapon are Hermes' boots which let you do a dash attack on the ground and do a much more useful air-dash. They also let you dash up certain highlighted walls. These were the most disappointing as they don't really offer an interesting niche (aside from the air dash. That's amazing to have).  The ground dash knocks some enemies up. Outside of combat, they feel more like a key to navigate the environment. There's no platforming or timing challenges of doing wallruns/jumps like in a Prince of Persia game. Could have been interesting to have a GOW: Ghost of Sparta like running tackle/grab move with these. Or Prince of Persia Warriour Within style wallrun attacks where you can run up a wall and incorporate that into combat.

 

GOW3 also has a Rage/Devil Trigger mode called "Rage of Sparta". Activating this also makes your weapon the Blade of Olympus. This state initially feels powerful as Kratos zips along the battlefield and uses souped up versions of Blade of Olympus attacks from GOW2. But I didn't enjoy this state as much. It doesn't work as well as a "panic mode/final phase" move like in GOW1 and 2 because Kratos isn't entirely immune to damage. Damage is only significantly reduced. It also seems to run out really quickly and the movement can be tricky to control. GOW2 also had a cool feature where if you try blocking in its Rage mode, it would use your Hit counter to fuel a powerful AoE explosion that would last as depending on your hit counter. GOW3 doesn't really have any kind of "final attack" move here. One Idea I always had was if you parried enemies in this state, it gives you some Rage back, extending how long you could be in this mode and rewarding players for making even more skillfull use of this. As it stands, the Rage mode is useful but as good as GOW2's version.

 

I will also complain that GOW3 lacks a NG+ mode like its predecessors and that using alternate costumes and artifacts you unlock voids trophies! 😤 . Why? GOW1 and 2 didn't do that! Let me mess around using my unlocks in NG+ and get some trophies! I also only got 1 costume for beating the game: Fear Kratos. What happened to the joke costumes from past GOWs? I take it back. GOW3 is the worst GOW ever!

 

-The Story:

 

I enjoyed the story of GOW3. The main highlight are the individual Gods and Titans Kratos deals with. They tend to have a decent buildup and spectacle in their encounters that makes them memorable and distinct from one another. You have the opening with Poseidon which, aside from being a spectacle on a massive scale as you're fighting him while being a small speck on Gaia.  Followed by the brutal First Person POV from Poseidon as you see how terrifying Kratos can be. Hades is a bit of a misstep in presentation as he doesn't do much creative such as summoning the spirits of Lysandre and Calliope to mess with Kratos, but the actual fight as a more typical "small Kratos vs a large foe" was just really fun to play. You had Hermes taunting Kratos and Kratos using that against him by sucker punching him with a catapult. The whole section with Chronos where he's the entire level and you move from around onto him. It's all great.

 

But the standout isn't just the cool spectacle but also the emotional arc of Kratos. In GOW1, Kratos, at his best, was a sympathetic anti-hero/tweener. He does some brutal messed up stuff but you sympathize with him given what he's been through and the fact he's ultimately motivated more by his trauma and grief than his anger. Kratos attempts suicide when he learns the Gods can't cure his nightmares. GOW2 has Kratos begin his heel turn where he turns this grief and trauma into anger for the Gods. It starts out in a such a way where you're rooting for Kratos since it appears he got screwed over by the Gods. But step back and realize he was doing the same kind of stuff that justified killing Ares in GOW1. The Gods aren't exactly in the wrong here. The story shows that Kratos' anger against the Gods is as much as a product of manipulation as it is Kratos' misguided attempt to live with his trauma. When the Last Spartan dies in GOW2, Kratos loses all hope and doesn't resist almost getting eaten by the Kraken until Gaia steps in and motivates Kratos.

 

GOW3 is the culmination of that. Kratos is now fully heel. Dude is a bigger threat than any of the Gods. You play as the supervillain here. You play as the Hulk that Bruce Banner lost any and all control on. Every God he kills results in some consequence that only further destroys the planet. Killing Poseidon floods the planet. Killing Hades means souls are now lost in the underworld so death isn't even an escape from the madness. Killing Hermes and Hera kills all plant life and causes widespread disease so any survivors don't even have much hope. The game isn't subtle about the fact that Kratos' quest for revenge isn't noble or justified anymore. Kratos doesn't have any noble motivations of "well the Gods are corrupt and killing them will make things better". Kratos quest for revenge is a misguided projection of his own failures because "it's all he has left". It's literally the "Men will destroy the planet instead of going to therapy" meme. And it works. It's Kratos' rock bottom before he finally becomes a babyface in GOW2018 (and faces the consequences of his past later).

 

Pandora's role is to show that despite everything, Kratos does have a heart somewhere. His desire for revenge (as a way to deal with his trauma) conflicts with his desire to protect Pandora (likely as penance for his failure with Calliope). It's the one thing that makes Kratos (who casually kills everyone he comes across without batting an eye if it makes his journey even slightly easier) reconsider revenge. And its Pandora's death that Kratos brings up in the end as a "I got my revenge, but what does it matter? Pandora is dead". And this is why I am so mixed on the ending.

 

On the one hand, I like the ending. It thematically works. Kratos learns that there is no magic power to cure his trauma nor can it ever be 100% solved. It requires serious self-reflection, personal effort, time and therapy to even begin to move on, forgive yourself and grow. Kratos had the power of hope all along. The literal and metaphoric power to kill Gods but also the power to never have needed to kill them in the first place to deal with his problems. It adds to the tragedy that Kratos had to learn that the hard way. It's also heavily implied that Athena was manipulating Kratos the whole time during GOW3 to kill the Olympians so she could step in and take over once they were all dead, using Kratos as a pawn so even his revenge was him being manipulated. Kratos choosing to stab himself, while almost certainly not enough to take him off Santa's Naughty List, is arguably the first time in his life (or at least in a long time) that Kratos defies the Gods in a way that's actually selfless. He is no longer a pawn and does something noble. Setting the stage for his arc in GOW2018.

 

I will complain that the dialogue however..... is definitely too cheesy. I like to joke that it feels like all the stuff with Pandora was written by someone who writes Shonen "The power of friendship" Anime who got the right idea but wrote the dialogue their way. It's weird because I find myself agree with what's going on and praising it while having it feel so out of place and tonally dissonant.  I don't know how to reconcile this. The concept is rather hokey despite being thematically appropriate.

In closing, GOW3 is arguably the best GOW game (unless we count costumes and unlocks. Then it's the worse 😤). The core combat, aesthetic and flow are easily the best in the series. The level design, story and world are top notch. On top of being one of the best times I had platinumming a game. I 100% recommend this game because no other game I ever played truly feels as much of an epic adventure as GOW3.

 

My next platinum review will be the PS3 version of Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands. See you then

GTA6 Platinum (April Fools)

  Hello Everyone. I recently platinummed GTA6 and I want to talk about it.

 

Unlike my past platinum trophies reviews (which y'all never read for some reason), this one was quite the challenge. At least half the trophies in the game are missable, a couple are buggy, and many are extremely difficult to do without careful planning and foresight.  You either have to do multiple playthroughs with entirely different just to get a single trophy, or you decide you haven't suffered enough trauma in life and decide to do it all in a single run with a single build and pray. 

Lets start with some of the straightforward notable trophies and work our way up to the more challenging ones.

 

“Vice City Bootcamp – Complete the Tutorials Flawlessly”. In something of a change for Rockstar, when you first boot the game, it gives you the choice of hopping straight into the story mode, or hopping into GTA Online, or doing a tutorial. If you select the tutorial, it drops you in a Splinter Cell Double Agent PS3 inspired dreamscape tutorial map. You have access to maxed out versions of both Jason and Lucia with all their stats and skills in a sorta small sandbox map which gives you opportunities to practise some of the game's mechanics and controls before you hop into the singleplayer for real. This tutorial includes challenges for driving, pursuits, stealth, gunplay, hand-to-hand, climbing, hacking and pickpocketing with a "bonus challenge" for each. To get the trophy, you need to do the bonus challenges for each of these tutorials.

When playing the game casually, you can skip the tutorial although the game will have some dialogue where Lucia roasts Jason for being so rusty and out of practise whereas she will compliment him if you do the tutorial. You also get some bonus stats and money the more of these challenges you do in the tutorial before you start the singleplayer.

 

Most of these challenges are pretty easy. The shooting one is a reskin of GTAV's shooting gallery and you just need to get 600 points. Stealth is basic and requires you to complete the course without failing once and under 4 minutes. The only one I'd say I found challenging was pickpocketing. It requires you to position yourself perfectly and bump into NPCs and press L1 right as you do it to pickpocket them. What makes it more challenging is the RNG. You can't pickpocket anyone. I mean, you can try but NPCs without pockets or those who are alert will get alerted if you try pickpocketing them. You have to actually look for suitable marks in people with lots of exposed pockets and distracted such as being on their phone or looking around. This challenge took me a few restarts because not enough of them spawned in.

 

The Hacking tutorial is actually kinda funny and cool. Poor Lucia has to type out Unix terminal commands on her phone while I have to either type them out IRL with a PS5 controller or use the quick menu to select commands with L1 and objects with R1. L2 brings up "tricks", these are perks, insight or actions Lucia can do automate or skip certain actions. For example, if you already know the IP Address to ping, you can just hold L2 and select "Ping IP address x" and just ping rather than needing to type out "Ping X" or use L1 to select the Ping command and R1 to select the IP address to ping. Oh And the game doesn't pause as you're doing this.

 

The hacking tutorial asks you to complete the hack without getting detected and without using any tricks. The intended way is to explore the room and find info you can use, then punch in a series of commands to get the computer to open the correct door..... but you can just type "sudo systemctl reboot +1" to make all doors reboot in a minute so they are unlocked, leave the computer and walk in front of the door and enter after a 1 minute to skip having to do all the work.

 

I actually really like this trophy. Yeah, it can be a bit boring at times but I like that it encourages you to actually try out all the mechanics in a safe and isolated manner before you play the real game. In addition, the game is pretty forgiving with this trophy as you can keep retrying the challenges if you mess up and it will let you know if you ace them.  Bonus points for GTA6 finally adopting a modern control scheme so no more mashing X to run. It reminds me of Watch Dogs 2/Legion's control scheme. Better late than never

"Vices' Embrace - Spend the night with another character". This trophy requires your character to get laid. By getting this trophy, you cannot roleplay the average GTA player. 

“Vice City Initiate – Complete the Prologue Without Committing a Crime”. This one is confusing because the game isn't clear on what exactly counts as a crime. You're literally robbing a liquor store! How is that not a crime already!? The thing is that this trophy and the in-game stats page have a very different view on what counts as a crime. You need to execute a very specific series of steps at specific times to appease the game even if the in-game stats counter disagrees. For example, when asked to threaten the clerk, don't aim your gun at her even if the game's pop up says to. Instead, switch to Jason, switch to Lucia and then immediately switch back to Jason and he will be pointing his gun at the clerk. Hold L2 as you do this and even though it counts in your stats as a crime and you get a wanted star for it just like if you did it initially, the trophy doesn't count it as a crime for some reason.

There's a few more humerous examples of what counts as a crime. For example, if you litter during the mission, it voids the trophy and counts as a crime. During the subsequent on-foot escape, the intended strat is to let your partner shoot the cops while you hang back. If you want to speed up the process, you can switch characters as you shoot which counts as a crime in your in-game stats but doesn't void the trophy since technically you "weren't in control" at that exact second.

 

"Vice Sightseer: Explore all of Leionida": This trophy requires you to visit every sub region on the map including all underwater and cave locations. This game loves its underwater caves and by God it's going to make you use it to explore every crevice.

The way the game tracks is that when you open the world map, locations you haven't visited either have a rocky texture if they are on land or have a paper-like texture if they are on water. Once you do visit them, their texture updates to reflect what they actually look like. On paper, this sounds like a fair system. If you explore the map and do all the POIs, you should naturally hit most if not all of the locations.

 But the problem is that it includes small random islands scattered all over the map. Some of which have the same texture unexplored as they do explored. So if you haven't been keeping track of which of these random islands you visited, it can be really tedious to find them. On top of that, this also includes all of the underwater locations as they also count as sub regions even though they don't explicitly show up on the map as different locations nor are there clear boundaries or borders so you wouldn't even notice if you entered or left an underwater region.

 I only noticed something was fishy when I was looking through my PS5 Screenshots. Unlike other PS4/PS5 games but similar to Witcher 3, TES6 names screenshots based on your in-game location rather some date string. So if you take screenshots in Kelly County, it will name them as either "KellyC-1-A7-01-01-26" or "Sentinel-04-H9-03-02-27" (even the game has a hard time keeping its geography straight lol). When underwater, most locations, even those that are POIs, will show up as either located in Leonida or Vice City. But a couple had unique names like "Thraas-Secrets-4-QZ-09-10-24". These are those unique sub regions that you need to visit at least once. But like I said, it's not always clear which you've already visited. Even PSNProfiles doesn't have a good list of which regions count and which are there. My solution was to dump all of my PS5 screenshots to a USB, dump them to my Mac, and cross reference them with a random YouTube Comment and the Wiki that listed out possible regions, double checking if that region has multiple possible names. On top of that, the trophy is said to be buggy where even if you have met the requirements, it can pop hours later.  Fortunately, I got it as soon as I touched the Bird Keys.  

"Vice Fighter - Defeat all flight club members without losing". This was one of the hardest trophies to get. Normally when you're doing the flight club missions you get set to this warehouse/boxing ring where you have to fight these maxed out crack addicts in unarmed combat. These crack addicts are designed to be extremely difficult to beat and even have instant KO moves they can perform on you if you get stunned too much by their attacks since they have crazy high stats and you aren't wearing much  hidden armour. When playing casually, this quest isn't an issue because you're supposed to get beaten up so the story can continue. You can even come back later and fight the enemies in a more fair setup. However, the trophy requires you to actually win on this first visit.


I was stuck on this for quite a while. I'd eventually make a mistake, get struck by a stray punch, or get a rock thrown at my poor character's head from an offscreen opponent, get stunned, and then instantly Knocked Out by an opponent doing a German Suplex or Burning Hammer at Mach 8 on poor Jason, breaking nearly every bone in his fragile twink body, killing him instantly.

My only hope was to fight fire with fire (or at the very least embers). I doped poor Jason with as much Sprunk as his blood sugar could handle so he could deal some damage, dodge, parry and counter without using too much stamina, and recovered somewhat quickly after getting stunned. But even then it took me a long time. And there are people on YouTube who somehow did this without investing in Strength! Those people are absolute machines!

I ended up repeatedly making attempt after attempt. Slowly learning the intricacies of the combat a little bit more every time I got teeth kicked in. My poor character may have gotten multiple ass beatings of a lifetime, but at least he was making more and more progress every time. Until finally, I slowly became the John Wick of GTA6 unarmed combat. I danced through the battlefield, dodging and countering attacks and getting hits in (until I inevitably messed up and had to reset). Until I memorized every possible situation and thanks to my overly specialized build made specifically for this purpose, I prevailed. I beat the shit out of all those Crack Addicts with my bare hands. I performed the same German Suplexes and Burning Hammers they used to break my neck on them, giving them a taste of their own medicine. They had to catch these Hands as they were Rated E For Everyone. Not even Johnny Sins evil Twin Brother, Sohnny Jins, could unfuck the mess the I left behind. And in the end, I earned that bronze trophy for all my hard work. I no longer have to frequent Super Weenie Hut Jr's. I can now eat nails without milk at the Salty Spitoon.

 

Those were some of the more notable singleplayer trophies. I could explain all the collectibles, aligator wrestling and story related ones but those are easy enough with a guide. But GTA6 has an online component with trophies necessary for the platinum 😢. I wish the singleplayer and online had different trophy lists but alas.

 

“Friendly Fire Department – Accidentally kill all your teammates with ‘non-lethal’ options.” Why Rockstar made a trophy that encourages griefing, I will never know. This one requires you to fail an online mission by having all of your teammates die at the same time to either tear gas or the stun gun.

 

“The Influencer – Film and export a Snapmatic Reel that goes viral" - This one goes beyond the game. You actually need to make an in-game video, post it to the Rockstar Social Club and pray 100 players actually upvote it. Suffice it to say, people just made a thread online where everyone that wants the trophy just posts a random a video and the community goes through and gives everyone 100 upvotes once every 3 weeks. I had to wait 4 weeks for mine! 😤😤

 

“Method Actor – Remain fully in-character during a 30-minute RP session.” I was never fond of RP in any of Rockstar's games so this was challenging. I decided to join a quick DMV roleplay server where I spent 10 minutes arguing with another player at who was at fault for a DUI crash before both our in-game licenses were suspended and the cops ordered us to fight to the death for it back. I lost and was subsequently thrown into prison where I refused to speak until I got my lawyer. I'm glad this happened because I could AFK the remaining 15 or so minutes without breaking character since you actually have to use your microphone and talk in this mode otherwise you get penalized for breaking character.

 

It took 80 hours or so but I got the platinum eventually. Was it worth it? Mostly yeah. But ignoring that and talking about the game itself, how was it? GTA6 is alright. I enjoyed my time with it. It's fun but I feel the gameplay and mission design is lacking while the mechanics are great.

 

The first 25% or so of the main story is great. The missions are surprisingly open ended and reward creativity and experimenting with all the mechanics. For example, the mission "Debt to Society" has the player tasked with stealing a car from the San 4 San gang but you have complete freedom in how you do it. You can just ride in guns blazing, get into a shootout with every gang member, steal the car and escape a police pursuit. Or you could use Lucia to stealth around the place, sneak into the garage, use her phone to disable the car alarm, frame a local gang member as a high value target to trigger a gunfight between the gang and the cops and drive away in the confusion. Or you could play as Jason and goad some gangsters into a fistfight which doesn't draw much attention from other gang members or the cops, get a few wins and use the chance to buddy up so they don't mind you stealing the car. And that's just a few examples. The next 4 or so missions are just as, if not more open ended.

 

Unfortunately, right after the "Double Tap, Single Life" mission, the game immediately pivots back into Rockstar's typical overly rigid mission design. You have another car robbery mission that instafails if you try stealth, hacking, combat etc. You have to start shooting. In the subsequent car chase, if you get even a bit too far from the target, you get a mission fail. No dynamic "find the escaped target" mission change like in the first quarter of the game. You can't shoot out his tires, change cars or damage him in any way. It's such whiplash from an otherwise really solid sandbox game.

 

It's disappointing because the game has no shortage of cool mechanics. Between combat, hacking, throwing bricks, gunplay, stealth, using vehicles and disguises etc. All of those get so much use and freedom in the first quarter to an almost Hitman 4-like level before becoming so rigid and restricted afterwards. And once you have a taste of how good the mission design can be, it's hard to forget it when the game does. The game never becomes downright frustrating but never feels as fun as it once was. Like, it's cool that the game has a sequence where I can trick an NPC into pulling over when I steal a cop car and turn on the sirens for a mission. But I used to be able to do that to complete missions previously and it never becomes useful later.

 

I also feel some of the actual mechanics are also a bit under baked at least at first. Stealth is pretty basic, on par with RDR2's simple system. It does pick up later when you finally get more control and options. I do like that if you don't shower, enemies can smell your body odour and detect you. Hand to hand is pretty good. The game had a ton of fighting moves but enemies stop engaging in hand to hand after a while so those moves go to waste. The stats system seems promising. Both Jason and Lucia share the same core stats in Strength, Stamina and Driving but Jason can get an extra 20 points in shooting allowing him to dual wield certain guns like in GTASA and even do "tricks" like curve bullets or have them ricochet. Lucia has hacking and the higher this is, the more "tricks" she can do in a hack. But in practise it ends up being a bit of a gimmick and shares the same issues with GTA SA and V's stat systems. Namely that stuff like driving is rather annoying in the early game because your driving stats are low and at max they bring you back to what you already had in GTAV. So you have to deal with understeer or the odd drifts until you earn the privilege of getting back the standard GTAV driving.

 

Gunplay is the most disappointing because it feels like the same system from GTAV and RDR2. There, the game's default aiming setup on controller relies on a very strong auto-aim that locks onto enemies' chests and you can do a quick flip up on the right stick to get headshots every time. To the point you can complete entire shootouts with just L2 + R2 if you have an armour piercing combat rifle. It's a shame because the game's weapon customization system is genuinely amazing. Like, this game takes the best aspects of weapon modding from games like Fallout 4, Metal Gear Solid V and Call of Duty and and packages it quite well. You can take the starting pistol and mod it such that it becomes a rapid fire silent sniper rifle that fires sleep grenades. Weapons have so many stats and things to play around with but the game never takes full advantage of it. 

 

That is, until the 1.06 update. I wish I waited longer to play the game because this fixes all my problems with the gunplay. It renames the current aiming model to "Easy aiming" in the settings menu and adds in "advanced aiming" as an option. This now allows weapons to have stuff like more recoil, sway and even degradation. Gunfights are a lot more intense now because that frankestein's monster pistol you modded may fall apart in your hands as you fire it, requiring you to scavenge the battlefield for a different gun. Even the base guns you make light modifications to feel more interesting to tinker with as you can experiment with seeing how they fare against armoured enemies, or will hip firing, or from behind cover. I ended up with a knife with a taser glued to it and a pistol that fires shotgun rounds as the only weapons I brought on missions beforehand. With the other 70% of the time using the weapons I found on missions, occasionally modifying them in the field. Why this wasn't in the game from the start, I will never know.

 

 Unlike past GTAs, GTA6's inventory system works a bit more like MGS3 and 4 where what you carry is dependent on weight. Both Lucia and and Jason's inventory weight scales with their strength to a max of 100 kgs. Your gadgets, weapons and ammo are factored into this. Missions actually seem designed around this concept and are a lot more grounded compared to GTAV. For example, if a helicopter comes after you, you probably won't just instantly shoot it down with an RPG or Sniper since you either won't have one on you or have such limited ammo that you'd want to reposition for a better shot first. Missions tend to account for this and give you spots to move around to, hide or perch for a better shot. In a return to older GTAs, weapon spawns on the map are more common and useful and can be marked or memorized nearby. So if you do need a sniper, remembering where one is stashed or spawned on the map can come in handy. This helps in learning the map and having it be an extension of your toolset.

 

Driving is much improved now and I enjoyed it a lot more. Fans of GTA4 might be disappointed that it's not a 100% return to its driving, instead feeling like more of a modified version of GTAV's.  But I feel that suits the game and series better. The GTA games are primarily set in city environments where the player must weave through traffic and sharp city blocks, engage in drive-bys, engage in police pursuits, frequently crash out and start accelerating from a stop, as well as frequently swap cars and not have any "on the fly tuning system similar to games like Need for Speed Payback". GTA4's driving was rather frustrating to get to grips with since it felt like I have made some of those low speed turns when I was driving IRL. GTAV's driving, while better suited to the map, did "overdo" it and made driving too easy and all cars handle the same. GTA6 modifies GTAV's driving such that beater and s!$tbox cars and large vecihles feel worse but also more distinct to drive than mid tier cars which feel worse and more distinct than sports cars which seem to have their GTAV handling intact.

 

-Minigames and side activities: 

GTA6 seems to take the Yakuza 0 approach to side activities. In addition to being stuff you can do anywhere at anytime, as well as having a ton of minigames (including bowling, basketball, air hockey, claw machines, arcade games etc), the game also ties some side quests around them. In GTAV, you had no reason to go do golfing or darts or arm wrestling or watch movies since nothing in the game ever even encouraged you to try them. There are still people that don't even know you can play darts in GTAV.

 

Now, each activity also has a short side quest chain associated with it that gives a small story with some choices/RPG stuff. For example, there's this r/c hot wheels-like racing activity in the game. You can do it whenever but at one point, you unlock a series of side missions where either Lucia or Jason can enter into an r/c tournament and it becomes this full on comedy skit where you switch between one character doing the racing and the other trying to sabotage the other children from winning. You even now have Mass Effect style choices and dialogue wheels that change how the missions progress. It's great. What the main missions suffered in their rigidity the side missions more than excel. Another one I loved was the chess side quest where Lucia makes Jason pull a Hans Niemann in order to win a $100 tournament just to flex. The mission even has different outcomes depending on which opening you play and if you play moves a human would play and not the computer. It's good stuff. I recommend the game for the side missions alone.

 

- The Online Mode.

 

Since I had to play GTA6 Online for the trophy, I might as well talk about it. My time with GTA6's Online was limited. I mostly spent like 3 hours getting what I needed for the trophies and leaving. I was never a fan of GTAV online. It felt grindy, repetitive and overly rigid and it was hard to afford anything. What few times it did play well like Cayo Perico were rare. It felt like for the most part, Rockstar tried to shoehorn the overly rigid design of GTAV singleplayer into a multiplayer environment.

 

To my surprise, that's not the case. Online feels like an extension of the first 25% of Singleplayer. The way it works is that you are dropped into this sort of alternate timeline where the events of GTA5 and 6's main story hasn't seem to have happened and Jay Norris is alive and  welcomes you to Leonida. You're then given a series of missions to do that either run in the main world or in their solo instance/sessions/lobbies. You're free to progress those storylines as you play the game and these individual missions are really free and open ended. The game is also a lot more grounded and to the point. No flying motorbikes just yet.

 

The first thing I noticed compared to GTA V Online and RDR Online is just how much more intuitive and welcoming this mode is. The game gives you a proper missions/checklist menu so you know what you can do, where and what the rewards are.  Once you complete a storyline, you can choose to "reset/NG+" that storyline on a harder difficulty with more rewards but more challenging enemies and scenarios. The missions even remember what you did on previous playthroughs and will block off the routes you took last time. For example, in the "Pink Collar Crime" mission, you can enter the hotel lobby from the front to bug the reception. But on a replay, that entrance will have more guards so you may have to find an alternate route.

 

 The big new feature are dedicated Roleplay Community servers run by  players. You actually have to give an interview and fill out a form before you even join one and then follow the rules laid out. I've seen roleplays for both wild heists from the singleplayer and online replicated in the server, to more mundane people roleplaying Breaking Bad. 

  

-The Story,  Environment, map and performance.

This is the one area where I have zero complaints.  The game looks and runs flawlessly. This is truly the most detailed and alive world in any video game. Everywhere you look, you have NPCs moving and behaving realistically. If you walk into a store and go into the backrooms, you can see employees on a smoke break in accordance with their schedules printed out on a wall. This truly feels the closest to a simulation of a real place in any video game. Graphically, it looks fantastic. Character models and environments look better than in real life. This game has more customization options for your character than in Sims and more options for your car than Need for Speed Underground 2. I've seen players make some whack stuff Online. Especially those weebs and their UwUmobiles.

 

I do like the game's use of social media and how it can both affect you and you can affect it and the environment. For example, you can blow up Adder Cars with secret sticky bombs, film it on the game's version of Tiktok called "ViceLoop", post it to lower Adder's stock and profit. The game is really dynamic. If you commit crimes while wearing a striking look and NPCs take videos of you, then it becomes a trend and other NPCs will start dressing like you. And you can even use this to hide in crowds and lose the police. I don't know how the game does it but the in-game radio and news broadcasts remember what you do and even broadcast it. I was walking around and saw a News broadcast of that time I casually stole an FlyUSA airplane and crashed into the ocean and died.

 

There's a toggle in the game to sync this Online. So now the game downloads trends, in game posts, news reports etc from other players into your game. I turned it on and it was wild. NPCs were dressing up like Hatsune Miku and Guts from Beserk. The in-game ViceCoin cryptocurrency that's supposed to be 0 for plot reasons is now at $431 billion. Strip Club stonks and Viceloops dominated my in-game feed. My favourite feature is actually the Assassin's Creed Odyssey Map Photo mode where photos other players took in Photo Mode show up in your game as you drive or on the map. It looks great.

 

 

The story was also excellent. I bought Lucia and Jason's romance instantly. The 2 are so wholesome (when they aren't doing crime) to the point that they will refuse to let the player go to the strip club or use prostitutes since they love each other. Their character development is on point and I loved how the story is a deconstruction of the criminal lifestyle that GTAV showed as cool. It's like the "other side of the coin" to GTAV.

 

Despite the otherwise grounded gameplay, the story and setting feels like it's out of an Onion Article and never failed to make me laugh. Shout out to Jason's  Brother, Caleb, who is a conspiracy theorist living in a swamp commune and believes the city is run by AI-generated NPCs posing as politicians. The game presents him as a nutcase until the twist that he was right all along. Then uses him to explore themes of police brutality and the erosion of civil liberties without democracy as you deal with ViceMetro+ PD.

 

I won't spoil much more but I do recommend it. I do love that the game actually remembers your choices across all missions to determine the ending. I got the bad ending where Jason learns he was a clone of Caleb all along. I really should have done the Fire missions earlier.

 

In closing, GTA6 is a pretty good game. I enjoyed my time with it despite the challenging platinum. I do wish the excellent mission design  held up and the game had more time in development so the 1.06 patch could have been implemented at launch. I don't think I'll come back to the game or check out the Online stuff. I have had my fill of GTA. See you all in 2028 when I finally get my Platinum review of Concord 3 out.