It was nice to invite someone over to play video games and not stick on Resident Evil 5 for the 100th time. For me, couch co-op adventure games just seem so hard to find.

It Takes Two provides excellent platform puzzles that delegate varied essential jobs to each player. The level design is also top notch, making innovative use of household items now made gargantuan as a result of your creepy-doll transformation.

My main criticism is the writing. The characters are annoying; on a repeated playthrough I muted the dialogue. The ‘Dr Hakim’ character really makes no sense: intended as a Book of Love, he comes across as more of a ‘Spanish lover’ stereotype (more of a sexy ladies man) than anyone who has been in a relationship longer than two days. And his painfully generic relationship advice reinforces that.
Ultimately, the message of our divorcing hero couple getting back together is cute, but unhelpful. I understand the fantastical escapist nature of video games, but can’t help but feel the more mature thing to do would be to have them go through with the divorce, helping their child understand it’s not end of the world for them. Imagine how many young children with divorced parents are in need of that kind of message.

All of this aside, it is quite funny getting your spouse killed during during the puzzle-platforming segments.

Outer Wilds é um jogo sobre achar sentido nas coisas. Mais especificamente, é um jogo sobre criar sentido onde não há.

Os Nomai tomaram como o sentido de suas vidas e a missão de sua espécie encontrar o Eye of the Universe, interpretando seu sinal como um literal chamado e até atribuindo-lhe consciência. Mas o Eye apenas... Existe. Ele apenas é. Seu sinal é tão significativo quanto a luz de uma estrela ou as ondas magnéticas de um pulsar; e os fenômenos bizarros que acontecem em sua proximidade tão naturais (e misteriosos, como podem afirmar os astrofísicos de plantão) quanto a gravidade ou o eletromagnetismo.

O sentido que os Nomai deram ao Eye of the Universe foi puramente fabricado. Mas isso não significa que ele não tem importância. Pelo contrário, é graças a esse sentido que eles continuaram explorando, observando, criando e experimentando mesmo diante das inúmeras adversidades que encontraram ao chegar num sistema solar particularmente hostil.

Você, como jogador, também irá procurar em sua aventura um sentido que não existe — e provavelmente criar um. Afinal, as várias perguntas com que você se depara têm que ter uma resposta, certo? Por que o sol está explodindo? Por que você está preso num loop temporal? O que aconteceu com os Nomai? O que é o Eye of the Universe? Qual a relação disso tudo?

Por quê?

No final, várias respostas são encontradas. Mas, em vez de revelar um sentido, elas apenas o destroem. O sol está explodindo porque chegou ao final de seu ciclo de vida. Não há nada de malicioso por trás desse fenômeno: esse é o destino de todas as estrelas do universo. O loop temporal? Um mero acaso, uma coincidência. Uma tecnologia vestigal nomai que foi ativada com a explosão do sol. O destino dos nomai? Mortos pela explosão de um cometa não relacionado, que entrou na órbita do sistema solar. O Eye of the Universe? Um fenômeno natural que não vai salvar sua vida ou a do seu sistema solar, por mais intrigante que seja. A relação disso tudo? Aquela que você criar em sua cabeça.

Por quê? Porque sim.

Nada faz sentido. Mas nada precisa fazer sentido. E só porque as coisas não têm um sentido inerente não quer dizer que você não pode apreciar e se importar com as coisas que aprendeu, pessoas que conheceu e lugares que descobriu. Um dia tudo chegará ao fim. O próprio Universo está destinado a morrer. Mas, até lá, podemos apreciar a jornada.

O sentido da vida é dar sentido à vida.

A very expensive dark ride.

GoW really wants to be cinematic. This game is packed full of movie-worthy features: the no-cuts camera, the voice performances, the piles of writing. It's really impressive! But I didn't want to watch a movie, I wanted to play a game.

To borrow a ttrpg pejorative, this game is "on rails". The player doesn't get to affect the plot. They don't even get to talk to the characters - dialogue happens automatically. Our job is to sit quietly and appreciate the story. That, and tell Kratos when to punch.

So with the player relegated strictly to the violence-doing, it's insulting how little impact it has. Exactly once prior to the finale you fight a boss whose death has consequence. Everything else is waves of goons and constantly reused boss monsters. Combat is a distraction, narratively and mechanically. You're barraged with skill trees and crafting and feats of strength to keep you feeling like you're making progress, when actually you're puttering around a forest for hours in a self sustaining loop of finding and completing fetch quests. It's embarrassing!

Given all this, it's a real shame that the story sucks pretty bad. Narratively, it spends most of the game going in circles. You seek prophecy, you read prophecy, you talk about the prophecy you just read. Rinse, repeat. Even the characters are stuck in this mud. Kratos has a big moment where he sits Atreus down and says "I'm treating you the same way I did in the last game." (Hey Barlog, having your characters say the criticism out loud doesn't nullify it, see also "Oh so he still kills gods but now he's sad about it").

It bums me out that these games have a reputation for great stories, when I think what people are reacting to is great character writing and performance. Richard Schiff should've gotten the acting award. When he teleports in front of you, holding a hostage by the neck and pleads, "Can we talk... dad to dad?" I howled. His portrayal of Odin as this smooth talking gas lighter is exactly the kind of fresh energy mythic characters need. Ryan Hurst is given less interesting writing but does just as much with it. His Thor is mean and dangerous but his pain is different and more visible than Kratos'. Not all of it lands - Deborah Ann Woll sure is... a dead mom - but by and large it's pretty nice to listen to these characters run little skits with each other.

Cause that's what prestige games are now: movies with some checklists in the middle.

Imagine that you're playing God of War Ragnarök. You've just discovered a new area and find yourself in a room with a locked door and complex machinery. A puzzle lies before you, obviously, one that you're excited to spend a few moments figuring out and completing. And you would do just that, if it weren't for the fact that before you can even begin to take in this room in detail, you're bombarded with an assault of:

"Father, try hitting this with your ax"

"Oh look, brother, the switch for the gate is to the left!"

"Freeze the water right here Kratos"

"Hold L2 to aim at the target and finish the puzzle already idiot"

This is a scenario that occurs in essentially every new area without fail, and to it I say this: hey, game? Shut the fuck up! Please? Let me get my bearings for two seconds and solve something on my own without you rushing me along. This is a symptomatic issue in too many AAA games; they have Cinematic and Epic stories and the devs want you to know it, so everything must be in service to it, including these puzzles that must be narrated to Hel and back.

Make no mistake, Cinematic and Epic is definitely what Santa Monica intend this game to be. And while the first game is presented in a similar manner, the 2018 GOW ultimately prevails because it is, at its heart, a simple story of a father and son walking up a mountain. Ragnarök, on the other hand, wants to be so much more, too much, to the point where the actual goal of the story is lost in its grand scale. Too often I found myself wondering what these characters actually want. Are we stopping Ragnarök or causing it? Are we killing Heimdall or ignoring him? Do we hate Thor or are we helping him with his addiction and trying to heal his broken family? Wait, what was that last one?

It doesn't help that Kratos and Atreus kind of suck as protagonists. Great performances that earn ten minute acceptance speeches at the Game Awards are wasted on dudes who are as passive as possible in this story until the final act. That passiveness leads to some shockingly dull sequences where you follow around characters with actual goals that at best make you want to play as them or at worst make you feel like it just will never end (it's Ironwood I'm talking about Ironwood). Kratos never wants to do anything in this game, which I suppose is in character, but it should not be the dispostion of the avatar of the player, who naturally wants to do everything. And Atreus is obsessed with finding answers, both to the meaning of prophecy and the secrets surrounding his identity, but having just completed this game I can't tell you if he actually figures out either.

Speaking of prophecy, whatever they were trying to explore in this game doesn't seem to land. The shadow cast over this story is that Kratos will die, and as more and more events line up exactly as predicted, Kratos... just doesn't (yes I know that technically his heart stops during the fight with Thor at the beginning of the game but if that's Santa Monica's workaround to painting themselves into a corner it's stupid and doesn't count). The game really tries to hit this point home in the final sequence, even giving you and your companions unique sets of armor called "Fate Breaker," but considering everything else plays out exactly the same, it does not feel earned at all. Hell, one of the early game twists is that the Giants predicted we would win Ragnarök anyway, so what fate are we even breaking? Coupling this with the fact that this is a completely linear game where you make zero branching choices¹, the whole theme of forging your own destiny falls pretty flat. (There's one brief moment during the Norn mission where the devs seemed to be using the level design to make a meta point, but considering how subtle it seemed I doubt it really meant much and won't go into it.)

Now all this may give the impression that I did not enjoy this game, and while the narrative aspect of it left me pretty underwhelmed, I can't say I didn't have fun here. The combat is as great as ever; staggering enemies and timing parries and choosing the perfect window to use runic abilities, it's all a blast. I've seen some hate thrown at the new weapon, but honestly I liked the addition of the spear. I felt it added just enough variety to the game, and having more choices for approachs to combat is always a boon. Do the weapons all play essentially the same? Sort of, but sometimes you just wanna poke a guy with a big stick. Pulling off a string of attacks and perfect parries feels super rewarding, especially when using the high-risk, high-reward shield options. Almost makes fighting some of the bullshit challenge bosses worth it.

And bosses, man are there a lot of them. To replace the Valkyries from 2018, Ragnarök introduces a new set of scary Power Rangers to track down across the realms, the Berserkers. While I was Gamer enough to work my way up all the way to Valkyrie Queen Sigrun in the previous game and defeat her after a long fight, I don't think I'll be able to say the same for this entry, both because the Berserkers are ludicrously difficult and because a friend lent me this game and probably wants it back. But even if this were mine to keep, the challenge presented by these guys is through the roof and I just don't think they're for me right now. For people who love that sort of thing though, they'll have something to shoot for.

Besides bosses, there's still so much to do in this game. I was prepared to finish it the other day when the story seemed to be nearing completion, only to be caught off guard by a massive secret area brimming with new objectives. That the game can pull something like that nearly 40 hours in and I still feel the urge to venture into it is a testament to its design. That urge is helped in no small part by some truly beatiful visuals that draw you way in. Yeah yeah, it's AAA of course it's gonna look good but MAN does it look good. There's one location that hosts a dual boss fight towards the end that is so stunning I just had to sit there and take it all in. Even on my poor little 2014 PS4 it was simply breathtaking.

There really is a lot that I just loved in this game, but it's love in bite-sized chunks, moments that were fun or maybe a bit moving that really only supply brief talking points. And that means, dear reader, that you've arrived at the section of the review where I get lazy and resort to bullet points. Hooray!

• Joked about it earlier, but the performances here are all on point. To paraphrase Christopher Judge, Christopher Judge is a motherfucking beast.
• Those Playstation easter egg books are so silly but I like em. Spent an embarassingly long time trying to figure out "Large Society Ground Orb, The Performance"
• As a former shithead Mythology Kid who just ate up stuff like Percy Jackson, seeing dumb but fun reinterpretations of myth tickles me to no end. The stories go that Loki and Angrboda become the parents of Fenrir and Jormungandr. How does this game handle this? In a dumb and fun way!
• Ratatoskr good. Squirrel funny.
• The resistance characters are fun but underutilized. Except Lúnda. Don't like Lúnda.
• Atreus trying to copy his dad and smash open a chest only to hurt himself is exactly what I thought would happen and it was still hilarious.
• For as pointless as their inclusion ended up being, Ragnarök the person looked cool.

So that's my review of God of War Ragnarök. I guess my final product here was a little long-winded, definitely petered out towards the end. And despite it all, landed pretty much right down the middle of everything. Pretty much just like the game then.

¹There is exactly one Telltale-style option at one point where you can choose whether or not to throw a snowball at a certain character, and honestly if that had some kind of impact on that character's motivations at some point in the endgame I would bump this score up but as far as I can tell nothing changes.