Random thoughts on video games

I picked up the God of War Collection for the PS3 on sale the other day. GoW never really interested me, but since it was $20 for what amounts to two games, that was a pretty sweet deal. Side note - I also picked up Split/Second, which I'll get into later.

The first thing I noticed (and I'm sure millions of others have ranted about since the games '05 release) is that it is pretty much a Devil May Cry clone but with Quick Time Events (QTE) thrown in. I have no problem with this, since the first DMC is one of my favorite games. However, like its source material, GoW suffers some of the same major problems of the DMC series. One of which is awful camera choices. I don't mind it when a developer makes a static camera for the sake of artistic freedom, but once that static camera is jammed in an awkward side view angle of an underwater deathtrap where any movement is guaranteed death, that kind of pisses me off. And this isn't the only example of this happening in GoW. It happens a number of times mid-jump, and the controls switch based on the camera, so that means pressing forward during a camera shift will send you flying in an unintended direction, usually off a cliff or into a vat of red liquid.
Some of the puzzles are brutal the first time through in that you will die a dozen times (or however many times it takes to get a 'do you want to switch to an easier difficult, which doesn't affect combat so it doesn't really help you out right now' screen).

Split/Second seems like it is what Burnout would've become had they taken out driving into traffic instead of making an open world suckfest. I know some gamers like Paradise (at least, game sites claim people do), but I enjoyed the ability to check my opponents into oncoming traffic a lot more than driving around like an ass looking for someone to race.

It's odd to be writing about a 5 year old game, I admit. But I was originally going to rant about how stupid water levels are in most games, including some Mario levels, and that they only usually serve to piss off the players to the point where they want to put there fist through their TV like some maladjusted WoW player whose girlfriend just deleted his precious characters.