I’ve been busily grinding away at God of War, which is seriously killing my OCD due to its open layout and many chests and doors that I just can’t open yet. I love Metroid-vania, hub style games but it goes against every fiber of my being to leave a place with shit left undone. Anyhoo, that’s more of a personal hangup than a problem with the game. I’ve been enjoying it so far, but I have to say… at the moment I’m having my doubts that it is the 10/10 that a lot of the gaming media have been praising. It certainly feels as though the God of War hype train has struck again.
Don’t misunderstand; the game is fantastic so far and I’m really enjoying it, but that combat system is far from intuitive. I was expecting something fast and fluid and visceral, but Kratos seems to have lost a step in his old age. The action is a bit on the clunky side and not nearly as seamless and smooth as GoW’s of old, and the tight camera gives the player a very narrow field of view. There are arrows that give a hint of what is happening behind Kratos, and an audio cue or two from Atreus, but other than that you are left to avoid attacks from enemies you can’t see.
My other complaint with the combat, and this is a personal one so don’t give me too much shit, is that I’m not a Dark Souls veteran, so the default controls that use the R1 and R2 buttons to attack felt very weird. So much so that I had to go into the options and change the button layout to the Square and Triangle buttons. This worked fine for me, but I eventually reached a point in the game where I was expected to do things that my chosen “classic” button layout just wasn’t designed for.
For example, there is a point early-ish in the game where I fought a golem-like boss made of stone. It opened up his chest to reveal a weak point, but almost immediately starts shooting fire. As Kratos, I had to aim and throw my axe, then quickly dodge. Well, in my “classic” control scheme, I had to squeeze and hold the L2 trigger to aim, then press the square button to throw. But I also have to aim with the right thumbstick. It was difficult to do this and then tap the X button to dodge before being hit by fire, but I managed. All that changed if I wanted to charge the axe before throwing. Having to hold down the Square button to charge left me physically unable to aim. This control scheme was even more incapable once the game really started throwing out a mixture of monsters and the axe tosses are meant to be done quickly while dodging and avoiding other attacks. I eventually had to revert my control scheme back to the default layout. Luckily by then I had adjusted to the game’s combat enough that the transition was a little bit easier. Also of note is that, even though it’s been a very long time since I’ve played a GoW game, I will still tap Circle to dodge. Every damn time.
My complaints about the control scheme aside, the rest of the game has been very entertaining. I honestly had not been following the development of the game, and didn’t realize that Christopher Judge was providing the voice for Kratos this time around. Which is cool, but… well… being a hardcore Stargate SG-1 fan back in the day, I was very familiar with his voice, and recognized it almost immediately. The problem with this is that his Stargate character, Teal’c, acted extremely similar to Kratos. Both were warriors, both had sons they were training to be warriors, they both had a contempt for the Gods, and the list goes on. I’m playing this game and I’m trying to imagine Kratos, but all I can see is Teal’c talking to his son Rya’c, even scolding him and calling him “Boy.” I realize this is a problem a very tiny fraction of the gaming community will have, but I’m definitely having a hard time with it, though it is admittedly pretty cool having Chris Judge’s gravelly voice in my video game.
It’s also interesting how this game has clearly been influenced by the new Tomb Raider series. From the open “hub” style areas, to the hanging objects to shoot, to the random “artifacts” that can be found scattered through-out the land, there’s more Tomb Raider here than I would’ve guessed. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, more of just an observation. And of course, the Tomb Raider influence shines through in the dingy caves and tombs, the watery passages and rickety bridges, and random wall-climbing, ledge shimmying goodness. The game looks great, though I don’t really have a good grasp on the “actual” graphics, since my base PS4 is showing in HDR and being upscaled to 4k by my TV, which is gonna do some extra image sharpening and stuff. I imagine if you’re playing on a base system and a 1080p TV, or a Pro with an actual 4k signal, you’re getting a truer sense of the game than I am. That said, it’s still pretty damn nice to look at.
I’ve barely reached Alfheim at this point, and the game is still revealing new gameplay mechanics and such to me, so I’m reserving any Judge-ment (hah!) for the end. So far it’s been a pretty good ride, and I can’t wait to see the rest.
