This Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of the God of War series, a series of games which took players on a journey into the darkest depths of Greek mythology, and then murdered everything. Kratos’ one demigod rampage was a swan song of sorts for the PlayStation 2, and God of War III was easily one of the most heavily anticipated PlayStation 3 games, when it arrived a few in 2010. It itself celebrated its 5th birthday on Monday.
So, what better way to celebrate than to revitalise God of War III and bring it to PlayStation 4? Yes, game remasters are almost ten a penny these days, but it will be quite fascinating to see how well such a graphical tour de force from the PS3, brimming with jaw dropping set pieces of staggering scale, holds up after being bolstered to 1080p as this remaster promises to be. You’ll be able to replay the game on July 15th in the EU and July 17th in the UK.
No, it’s not quite the God of War announcement that we’ve been waiting for, but hopefully this is a precursor to Sony Santa Monica announcing a new and refreshing entry in the series, or maybe even a whole new IP in the near future?
Source: press release, EU PS Blog
double-o-dave
I’ll probably give it a whirl as I’ve never played any of them. I take it they’ll upgrade the textures & lighting etc & not just make increase the resolution.
JR.
You’ve never played GoW (God not Gears)??? What are you waiting for? The remastered remaster of the remastered hd collection on the PS5?
I’m so jealous that you’ll get to experience them for the first time. Soooo good.
Starman
Those Golden Axe & Streets of Rage remasters can’t be far off now.
Pitcher-T
Too true, what will happen when the ps5 comes out.
Sony: “we’ll just do what we did for ps4 and remaster last generation”
Developer: “but sir, there are no ps4 games to remaster”
freezebug2
Lol ;)
Maybe a Jetset Willy and Manic Minor 2160p 120FPS HD remastered duology!
TSBonyman
I don’t mind that it’s being remastered for a new audience and i might even pick it up myself further down the line but GoW III was a keeper for me on PS3 so i will quite happily fire that version up when the remaster launches.
Crazy_Del
Called it! I love God of War but I am sick of remasters. I bought a PS4 for next gen games not PS3 Games. I wonder if Sony were being evil and lied about backward compatibility as a tough machine to create, so instead they use remasters as way to make money?
I know folks saying it’s a great way for newcomers on Playstation and never played the game but what if these newcomers bought the PS4 for next gen games. I highly doubt they were expecting a 3,4,5 year old titles for PS4….. did they?
And yes I can NOT buy it but the PS4 will be gathering dust instead!
Pitcher-T
I completely agree. These remasters should be in addition to the great new experiences (even though I hate that word)
It feels like they’re using the newcomers as an excuse.
All newcomers be facing angry PlayStation fans and saying “don’t look at us, we don’t want this either!”
B_Cambo
Yep same here, completely agree with your comment del. It was very sneaky aswell with the whole ‘non-compatibly’ thing for Playstation 3 games on the playstation 4 console, so clear thats exactly why they took that step.
Having said that, I must admit I really loved the fact they Remastered The Last of Us and I’m not going to lie There are other great Classic games that have been ‘remastered’ that I would really enjoy playing eg Resident Evil.
But thats exactly where they have went wrong. Classics would make good ‘Remastered’ games, games like Champions of Norrath (ps2) State of Emergance (Ps2) and even the first two Uncharted (Only as i havent played them). These games would be very ideal for a ‘Remaster’ as they are years old And remain classics. But remastering a game that is less than a year old is just cheap.
beeje13
The PS4 doesn’t have the hardware capability to run PS3 games, because, the PS4 CPU is slightly less powerful.
Also the whole Instruction set architecture is different at a fundamental level.
PS3 games can only be played on a PS3 for security/piracy reasons. This means it cannot be played on a PS4.
Maybe they could have put the PS3 chipset in the PS4 ($50+ extra), maybe that would still not work.
I understand wanting to play PS3 games on the new machine, I would have found it handy myself, but it’s not realistic from an engineering point of view.
funkyellowmonkey(ps3 id)
give us a new gow already, be it on console or vita, just give us new and more! ;)
doug
Best news I’ve heard all day easily the best God of war and the best PS3 game ever
CR8ZYH0RSE
Might as well wait and get it on PlayStation Now if it appears on their.Plus it works out cheaper but it’s just the PS3 version.
Pitcher-T
As mentioned above, they need to either price this like Resi HD or bundle it with something else. GOW3 doesn’t even look that bad yet to warrant an updated version.
I like how PC gamers get the benefit of upgrading their hardware and immediately all of their games are “REMASTERED editions”.
beeje13
Not denying PC have it best with graphics or value, but a ‘remaster’ usually means that they have improved the game’s assets, which doesn’t happen when you plug in a new graphics card. Sadly though, some rereleases are quick ports at higher res and framerate.
Stefan L
It depends on the game and the initial development process. So TLOU, for example, took the high detail models from the cinematics and dropped them into the rest of the game.
But then there are plenty of cases where the remaster has turned to assets created for the PC version of the game (which were there at launch) and filtered them through. Sleeping Dogs, Metro Redux, Tomb Raider and on have used this to great effect.
Of course, Metro Redux was a much greater effort to further polish the original games as well, and Tomb Raider had some nice PS4/XBO only effects like trees waving in the wind added, but the point is that they were working from a higher quality baseline than if those games had been developed with only the PS3/360 in mind. By and large, there’s not a noticeable improvement over what the PC version had in the first place.
The Lone Steven
Hmm, fork out £40 for a remastered version of GOW 3 when i get a PS4 or pick up the original version for less then the cost of pizza and a bottle of coke from dominos. Decisions, decisions, decisons, Such a terrible predictment that this has placed some gamers in. Or they could have done the smart thing and remaster the entire franchise as the ultimate Kratos collection.
Also, what’s the point of having a new console if your studios keep remastering their stuff for it? It’s lazy and i seriously doubt there is a massive demand for a PS4 version of GOW.
What’s next? A remaster of Farm Simulator?