Games I Dislike That Everybody Else Likes
The only one of these I don't really care for. If you thought God of War III felt samey while also looking really grey and uninteresting, just wait until you get a look at this! After how much I dug Chains of Olympus I was expecting this one (its other PSP counterpart) to follow suit, but no - I'm shocked at how inconsequential this feels. Its most grievous sin is committing the video game prequel kiss of death: making every 'new' addition to its franchise lore seem completely pointless by setting it up just to delete it immediately after, so everything can go back to the status quo by the end anyway (rather than, you know, telling its own story that actually sticks around). Storytelling here is totally nonexistent, Deimos was done so dirty and even by GoW standards a lot of this is just futile misery porn BS. While CoO benefitted from its smaller scale, this one feels strangled by it - trying to tell this momentous, grand melodrama by rushing right through everything. It's got good things - Sparta is cool, all the boss fights are solid, the Arms of Sparta rock, and we (finally!!) even get some new enemies here that are fun to fight! Still have my usual quibbles with the combat though - stunlocks here there and everywhere, some bad hitboxes, the Wraiths are objectively bullshit to fight in this game, and - while I still vastly prefer it to GoWIII's item meter - one out of every two times you activate the fire meter it just does nothing lol. Strong contender for worst QTEs ever, too. Just an overall hollow, nothing experience. By this entry these games felt like they were starting to suffer from the same genre fatigue as, say, the Guitar Hero games in the late 2000s.
The only one of these I don't really care for. If you thought God of War III felt samey while also looking really grey and uninteresting, just wait until you get a look at this! After how much I dug Chains of Olympus I was expecting this one (its other PSP counterpart) to follow suit, but no - I'm shocked at how inconsequential this feels. Its most grievous sin is committing the video game prequel kiss of death: making every 'new' addition to its franchise lore seem completely pointless by setting it up just to delete it immediately after, so everything can go back to the status quo by the end anyway (rather than, you know, telling its own story that actually sticks around). Storytelling here is totally nonexistent, Deimos was done so dirty and even by GoW standards a lot of this is just futile misery porn BS. While CoO benefitted from its smaller scale, this one feels strangled by it - trying to tell this momentous, grand melodrama by rushing right through everything. It's got good things - Sparta is cool, all the boss fights are solid, the Arms of Sparta rock, and we (finally!!) even get some new enemies here that are fun to fight! Still have my usual quibbles with the combat though - stunlocks here there and everywhere, some bad hitboxes, the Wraiths are objectively bullshit to fight in this game, and - while I still vastly prefer it to GoWIII's item meter - one out of every two times you activate the fire meter it just does nothing lol. Strong contender for worst QTEs ever, too. Just an overall hollow, nothing experience. By this entry these games felt like they were starting to suffer from the same genre fatigue as, say, the Guitar Hero games in the late 2000s.