I wrote a little bit about Street Fighter V in my last post–to expound on that a little bit, I’ve been a gamer for as long as I can remember. That means about twenty years. It doesn’t feel like it should have been that long… I’m getting old I guess. But on the one hand, it’s been really fun watching the industry evolve from the times of the NES/SNES to what it is today.

In relation to video games, I’ve been playing through God of War III lately, I’ve got a buddy with a PSN trophy score higher than me and we’ve had a friendly contest running for the past couple of years for having a higher trophy score and I’m catching up!

And so I’ve played through GoW 1 and 2 extensively to get the coveted platinum trophies from both games and I finally got started on 3. It’s been over a year since I played the first two and I’ve been really resistant to start up number 3 but I couldn’t figure out why. I enjoyed the other two well enough, but something just wasn’t clicking with me.

Well I figured it out, the major flaw in the God of War series that just rubs me the wrong way. And the problem is Kratos.

I know, crazy right? Kratos is awesome! He’s got those chain swords things that he flips around, and he stabs monsters in the head and disembowels centaurs, he’s crazy!

But here’s the thing, Kratos… he’s kind of a dick. Just think about it for a moment. When do you care about Kratos as a character? Do you ever?

In GoW 1 maybe some. He’s tricked by Ares into killing his family and so for that game you’re there with Kratos, you want him to get his revenge for that. The fact that Ares is a sadistic, warmonger helps propel that.

But by GoW 2, you’re running around killing everybody, including innocent people, because Kratos wants revenge on Zeus. And why does he want revenge on Zeus? Because he recognized Kratos was a homicidal maniac and took away his god powers…

Honestly by that point I was be rooting for Zeus. The more I played the more I realized that Kratos really is just insane and it feels like the world is better off without him.

But I’ll finish the game, in terms of gameplay GoW 3 is easily the best one. The difficulty is right where it should be, the controls are super responsive and I’m having a blast playing the game, the story just feels incredibly irrelevant.

On an unrelated video game note, there’s a new Fire Emblem game out for 3DS that I didn’t even realize was coming. I am very excited.

I’d like to do a Twitch stream someday. Maybe if I publish a book and if there are readers/fans that would be interested in participating I could set something like that up. I’m thinking something like Previously Recorded. That’s down the road though, can’t even really think about that until I start getting things published.

Penumbra Part II is coming along, but I’m torn between combining parts 1 and 2 into a single volume or releasing two different stories. I may need a professional editor to weigh in on the decision.

In any case, back to writing.

Previously Recorded’s twitch channel: http://www.twitch.tv/previouslyrecorded_live/profile