God of War has never been a game you replay though, it's like a Zelda or Sands of Time type deal where you have a ton of substance to its puzzles and set pieces, and once you're done you're really done.

I guess effectively I agree with your assessment, but I don't see it as a flaw on GOWs part, it's just a different kind of game to the japanese, hardcore arcade combat games.

But would you really though? I dunno, I'm a bit of a replayer myself but it certainly depends on how dynamic the game feels and how concentrated and "internally physically interesting" its gamey bits are. Sorry if that's a bit vague but I'm essentially talking about how flexible and addictive it is, and how that stuff is portioned throughout the game.

Uncharted 1 had many arena style battles where the difference was huge depending on what path you took through a scenario and how you positioned yourself. It didn't have a lot of padding either, but was a concentrated, pretty gameplay-centric game. For me that totally changed both with the length and with the structure of 2, where large parts will never actually change and never gave you that tactile feedback to feel addictive.

There are other examples I could make but I think that's one that illustrates it the best. For me GoW has always been the latter kind, the experience kind where too much of it is puzzles and non-flexible elements that play out the same way. Sure, I could see myself replaying it for the oohs and aahs when thing x and y happen because they're totally rad and so forth, but.. yeah.

I suppose that might be what you're getting at with satisfying combat though. For me though I would need it to be a more concentrated experience to feel compelled to go back through it.

Exactly! Spot on. That's what I hamfistedly tried to articulate by saying "concentrated" gameplay. It's just too big of a hassle to go through a sprawling adventure that breaks up its addictive gamey bits with stretches of linear outcomes, be it puzzles in GoW's case, or pressing forward on a stick while things are falling apart in UC2's case.

The more I'm in control of a situation and have some sort of authority in what happens, even if it's on a fairly intimate level, I'm happier. The style of game that boils that down to the bare essentials for me is a truly brilliant puzzle game. Hell, I bought Tetris as a PSP Mini a while ago and I'm playing the shit out of that game because you go in there and you get right to its addictive mechanics.

This is what's so frustrating when games insist on either being so cinematic that they keep breaking up gameplay for me, or when they're being apologetic about the gamey bits. That even covers RPG battles. I love it when an RPG has great combat, a no nonsense battle transision and a lot of encounters. When it's stuck in this weird inbetween state, where it's like a super bland adventure game with a few fights sprinkled in that never get elaborate enough to get into the mechanics properly, that's like the worst thing ever for me.

But yeah, I agree that if the combat is really addictive and fun and there's no other way to spend time with it than to go through the campaign again, that can be incentive enough. Either way, even if GoW had the most awesome combat ever, the other elements of it, their market share in the overall experience and the length of that experience would prolly put me off going for a second run.

BUT HEY I'M REPLAYING MASS EFFECT LITERALLY IMMEDIATELY AFTER I FINISHED IT RIGHT NOW SO, LENGTH, HEH!! I dunno, ME is totally turning a lot of what I thought to be true upside down for me.

But yeah, I still think GOW3 will be substantial enough in terms of sheer length and content that it'll be worth picking up. I mean they're 20ish hour things, or have been so far at least.

I guess I have a hard time identifying with playing so few games, I enjoy practically every genre so if I stop playing a game that's kinda fine, I'll just move on to the next.

If a game really grabs hold and doesn't let go, like InFamous and AC2 did last year, I'll play them until the disc is like.. a small raisin.

If a game is just big and satisfying as an experience I don't really mind not being able to replay it.