It Is What It Is
God of War has been very good to Sony. One of the late franchises to hit the PS2 back in 2005, the series has made the migration to the PS3, and the PSP, with a new game coming out early next year. In the meantime, Sony has been pushing the story of Kratos for new generations of gamers, with the HD collection of the PS2 games and the HD collection of the PSP games. Now, with the debut of the God of War Saga, Sony brings together every single game currently released in one mixed media package. As you might expect, that’s a pretty good deal.
More Kratos Than You Can Shake A Stick At
There is absolutely no new content in this collection. What you get is God of War,God of War II, God of War III, God of War: Chains of Olympus and God of War: Ghost of Sparta in one package. Sort of. The last two games, both originally PSP titles, aren’t on physical discs, instead they are strictly downloadable titles, which come with a bonus video that brought together all the God of War directors to talk about the series in a panel discussion. It’s possible that with a grand total of five games, and the first GOW games on one disc, with GOW III on a second Blu-Ray, Sony didn’t feel like bumping up their manufacturing budget with the inclusion of a third disc. We’ll never know for sure, but the end result is while this is the complete saga, it’s not all in one “place” strictly speaking, and if you want a physical disc of the PSP games, you’ll have to go out and buy the separate Blu-Ray compilation of that, God of War: Origins.
The important thing here is these are all games that you’ve played before in one form or another, whether it was their original run on their respective platforms, or the new HD compilations. All of them still bring the same quality and legendary gaming experiences they were known for, but now all them are accessible on one console, whenever you like. For the long-time fans of the series, this is a fairly pointless addition, as veterans of the franchise will likely have all of these already, quite possibly twice if they wanted the HD versions of the PS2 and PSP games. For others however, this is an absolutely fantastic bargain in gaming. Five of the greatest Sony games spread across three consoles for the price of $40.00 is some serious entertainment value by any standard, especially considering the calibre of these games. Each one is a AAA title of its respective platform, and still hold up remarkably well today thanks to the HD touch up that all but God of War III received in recent years. There’s also the addition of one month of free access to Playstation Plus for those who don’t yet realize just how much value the service can provide.
At the end of the day, there’s not much to be said about this collection. These games were fantastic during their debut, and are still great experiences today. The gamer that would benefit most from this collection would be someone just now getting on the PS3 band wagon and is looking to start their collection. For such a gamer, the God of War Saga is pretty much a required title to have in the library. Faithful fans of the series can safely ignore this as all these titles are likely already in you collection. The one real missed opportunity here for Sony that might have added a bit more value for veteran fans would have been cross compatibility with the HD versions of the PSP games on the Vita. Both Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta are available already as downloadable titles for the Vita, but Sony might have changed a few more minds—and opened a few more wallets—with HD versions playable on the Vita as well.
