God of War III Remastered - ...Or Does It?

Following the original release of God of War III on the PS3 in 2010, the game would later be ported and remastered for the PS4 in 2015 as God of War III Remastered, with all DLC costumes included on-disc. God of War Collection (collecting God of War I and II) had been released for PS Vita the previous year, however it does feel a little odd that said Collection would not have also been ported to PS4 alongside God of War III. Getting back on track, though I had gotten this port around the time it was released, with the intention to play it prior to God of War (2018) for PS4, it was only after a release date for the new game was officially announced that I finally started to play it as a primer, during whatever free time I had in my schedule. As I played it, I found it to have aged pretty well, even if the remaster generally felt a little unnecessary.

All of the content remains the same is with the original God of War III, just with a minor visual upgrade. I didn’t really notice any major difference in the visuals, however it looked really good nonetheless; this slight graphical upgrade makes the pre-rendered cutscenes slightly more noticeable against the real-time rendered ones, however it wasn't enough to be immersion-breaking. The music was just as good as ever (to the point where I had purchased a copy of the soundtrack beforehand), with the Gerard Marino track “Rage of Sparta” standing out the most. The voice acting was also still good and it was nice to hear Terrence C. Carson’s Kratos again, however I’m confident Christopher Judge will do a good job voicing the character in the new game. I didn’t really run into many technical issues while playing, save for one where I had some difficulty getting a double jump to work in places; I don’t know how much of it was me or some issue introduced in the port, as has been seen with some good remasters such as Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD ReMIX.

As noted in the opening paragraph, all of the costume DLC for the game is included on the disc. This even includes the 7-Eleven-exclusive Morpheus skin (previously only available through a Slurpee promotion that included a special flavor) and the Deimos skin tying into God of War: Ghost of Sparta on PSP. I should mention that you are only required to beat the game once to unlock all of the costumes, which saves a lot of the effort that was originally required.

Overall, God of War III Remastered is a great port, save for whatever technical issues I faced while playing. When I initially (awkwardly) reviewed God of War III, I considered it “a perfect game”; my opinion has since mellowed out, since the idea of a “perfect game” is highly subjective, however I would still consider it one of the best God of War games and it reminded me why I thought it was worth attending the midnight release of the original PS3 version. Though it is a good entry, I would still highly recommend playing the previous entries in the series, at minimum the numbered games, prior to this one should you wish to play it, as this game serves as the chronological end to Kratos’ story prior to the upcoming new entry. Now that Kratos’ journey through Greek mythology is over, it will be interesting to see what he does in the realm of Norse mythology in God of War (2018).