For anyone paying attention to next-gen game development, this should come as very, very little surprise:

God of War III won’t be released on PlayStation 3 for at least another two years. A reliable Sony source has told us that we shouldn’t expect to see Kratos blowing his fuse until around Christmas 2009 at the earliest, scotching rumours of a winter 2008 release. That really gets our goat!

Oh, a goat joke. I get it.

This isn’t surprising, because the development cycle on major games has gone through the roof, and lest you forget, God of War II hasn’t even been out for a year. Anticipating a late 2009 release for the title almost seems optimistic through that lens. If I had to bet money, I might even say Spring of 2010, unless of course Sony continues on the path it’s been on for the last 14 months. Sony needs Big Games on the platform, and really, God of War might be their biggest.

However, this:

Barlog also reckoned God of War III would be playable in 1080p and would feature Sixaxis functionality, including rumble support. Too bad we won’t see it for a looooong time.

…is laughable. Except for the rumble support. That we’ll definitely see.

-Aegies

Look no one at ESG doubted that Sony would have some great games. Both Aegies and I are constantly playing our PS2s. However we have been jaded for a while by the current PS3 and PSP line ups. That was..until more information came our way about Sony exclusives for the PSP and PS3. Here is a little list with 1up.com links:

(more…)

Fanboys be damned you can’t tell me that you don’t think Sony has been making an inordinate amount of mistakes with the gaming community. They have been giving statement after statement that pushes their support away and failing at viral marketing. I was hoping that with their Island of Rhodes website we were going to see them dropping some big news that could help turn public opinion about their hardware. The announcement of God of War 3 or even God of War PSP is what a lot of people expected. I think that this could have been a boon to Sony, in a similar fashion to the way that the announcement of LittleBigPlanet got people excited about SCE.

Alas, Sony has let down the gamers once again. It turns out that the islandofrhodes.org website, you know the site that had an epic countdown for over two weeks, has turned out to just have videos of God of War 2 level walkthroughs with commentary. To call this dissappoiting is an understatement I feel Dan Dormer of 1up stated this best in his report on the release of this content when he said, “Countdown timers scream grand reveals, not nice additions.”

Why do you build me up just to bring me down Sony?

Chufmoney

Update: So, granted, the conclusion of the countdown to development commentary was anticlimactic to be charitable, but there’s more to the site than was initially thought; playing around with the site by the online community has uncovered some additional tidbits, including puzzles and webgames that lead to a higher res, true progressive mode (which is not, contrary to Kotaku’s post, actual HD, but that I’ll nonetheless be checking out when I get home), as well as, wait for it… another timer. With letters that appear over time. I think it may be too early to call this an addition to the blunder list (which is so, so long), but a countdown to another countdown is playing with gamers’ emotions Sony. You’d better know what you’re doing. (Aegies)

So I haven’t yet completed God of War 2 (nor has Chuf), but I do have the excuse of finals and papers until last Thursday morning. I also have the excuse of not being as impressed with the game as the general editorial community seems to be, and while Chuf has said this is because I’m a Ninja Gaiden fanboy (which I suppose is not so far from the truth), I think there’s more to it. Kotaku has posted a link to a sort of ongoing discussion between Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal and MTV’s resident “interactive media columnist” Steven Totillo discussing the merits of the game and their differences of opinion.

Their arguments are hard to really boil down, because they’re pretty nuanced and multifaceted pieces of critique, so I suggest that you read it and come back. However, for the lazy among you, both writers are nice enough to follow a more or less essay based format for their positions, which means well drawn conclusion paragraphs. Totillo’s main point can be gleaned from this selection:

‘The game is a virtuoso piece of design. It’s beautiful. And if I didn’t know any better I’d say it’s among the best games made in years. But it’s also re-treading A LOT of material and A LOT of tone. Twilight Princess did too, mostly ripping off material and feeling from Ocarina of Time. I was torn with that case, because, from a technology standpoint I would have to recommend Twilight Princess over Ocarina to a Zelda neophyte. But, really so much of the ground it covered has already been traveled.’

Croal’s is a little more spread out, but here are some snippets:

‘You stated that you’d like to see more intertextuality in games, so why do you have beef with intratextuality in games?’

‘…if Jaffe freely borrowed from other games to create God of War, why wouldn’t his successor Cory Barlog freely borrow from the first game?’

‘…since Jaffe has become a fan of musical analogies, I’ll happily apply one here: God of War II may not be perfect–and I’ll get into that in a subsequent email–but it is unquestionably a game that will make you shake your ass. And that’s my point of departure when assessing the quality of my gameplay experiences. Not originality.’

My interpretation after the link… (more…)