This is copy pasted from my review on Grouvee
Link to that: https://www.grouvee.com/user/DucksOnQuack/reviews/2604685/edit/
Funny how this came out on my dad's birthday and his son hates a game about a father/son relationship.
God of War 2018, in my opinion, is the most overrated video game, period. It tries to distance itself from being a game first as far away as possible to prove a rotting corpse that "ViDeO gAmEs cAn Be aRt!" Instead of pushing the genre, it dumbs down from its own series and derives from other successful games. If this were a new IP, fine, but this is a sequel to GoW 3 and a soft reboot for newcomers. A "video game" in a video game series, perhaps. Well is the gameplay, at least, better, more challenging, expanded?
Let's get into what I liked before we get dirty. I found Artreus to be fine. People may find him annoying and he is insufferable at one point (which does make sense for the story even though it is a low point). I didn't mind him too much. I find it a neat idea how he is an extension to your toolkit, but he becomes overpowered once you get the shock arrows. The comedy got some laughs out of me. Especially with a character that joins your party later on. He is also a fun way to present the lore and worldbuilding to the player. For as much as I despise the camera, it is used to great effect in one and a half boss fights. And that's the first major one and the first reprise of said boss. I like the characterization of Kratos now that I have a basic knowledge of the Greek God of War trilogy. It's a good way to keep the series fresh and advances his character after the remorse he felt at the end of 3.
Now let's get down and dirty. Ready? The gameplay is shit. I said it. It is. And I have soo much to say about it. The feel of playing God of War is somewhat good, but the systems surrounding it suck. My biggest issue with God of War's gameplay is the removal of the jump button. This is a huge detractor, especially it is removed from a series of games that let you jump. Like I said, if this was a new IP, it wouldn't be as bad. An example would be The Last of Us for as basic as that game's gameplay is since it is more grounded, but this is a game about magic and gods. I see no reason to remove a jump. How does removing a large factor of 3D games push the genre, let alone the series forward? It guts depth of combat, platforming, puzzles, arena design, and enemy variety. Jumping in combat. Remember that? It was in nearly every action game and one of the most fun things about watching combos was all of the juggling in the air, added layers of offense and defense and ways to approach encounters, made for good downtime to read the room, let arenas add verticality to them instead of them being flat? Remember that? What about platforming and level design? Well you don't worry about that if every jump, every climb is automated. No margin of error to find here. I'd take platforming sections than walking and climbing any day of the week since it at least has challenge instead of it being a bore. Enemy variety. It is severely lacking. A majority of them make up of humanish enemies and they look, feel, and play so similarly to one another that it makes the game feel padded and drawn out. You can approach them the same way as you do every other enemy and it gets boring. Puzzles. They're boring. They're too similar with make Artreus drop the chain, throw the axe, shoot the arrows. If there's going to be a jump in the sequel, don't treat it as if it were a monumental innovation like with TLOU Part 2.
"But person writing this review, the camera wouldn't work with jumping in mind so how is the camera in this game?" It is a literal war crime to melee action games and the fact that the sequel is keeping this is an even worse war crime. It is so tight and closed in you can't easily get a good look at what is going on. It feels so restrictive. Being in a corner is a terrible situation to be in as you can only see Kratos and not much else. Had it zoom out when entering encounters like say Batman Arkham, it would've made this a million times better. You'd still have your third person shooter camera and it'd work for those walkie-talkie moments and then zoom it out when fighting and you still have a better feel of the game while still keeping that one take gimmick. The one take thing serves no purpose if you're switching menus and fast traveling. It breaks that feel of it if you're spending minutes If you want the game to be replayable, do something like fucking Cyberpunk 2077 of all things by having a skip button that speeds the game up until the next piece of dialogue or skip it entirely. Speaking of which, by god is the game barely replayable as an action game in the veins of Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, DOOM Eternal, and even its predecessors. Hours of walking and talking that barely add flavor, you can't skip cutscenes on the first playthrough. Climbing is worse than even Uncharted since you can't even die or make any errors when climbing. It's just a vertical form of walking. God of War has been praised for its walking moments. There are so many moments that are questionable where you walk as slow as possible while holding something and it feels so dissonant. You're telling me Kratos walks slow when holding a crystal, but he is strong enough to flip a goddamn temple? Let him be smug about his godlike strength. What reason is there for him to not sprint? There are so many of these downtime moments that make this game feel like a slog. There are puzzles in between combat, story, and walking and they also suck. They are so simplistic and all blend in with one another.
Many have criticised how much God of War derives from other games. feel so tacked on for the sake of baiting for awards and praise rather than a vision shining through. Open world design? Check. Uncharted-like climbing? Check. Looter and gear system and RPG elements? Check. "But what about the execution? That's how you know something is good rather than looking at just the concepts of the tropes." These are executed in the most half-baked way possible. The open world isn't interesting. The small islands blend in with one another and rarely stand out. Exploring them feels more like ticking boxes off of a checklist rather than seeing a place that catches your intrigue. The sidequests are all for the gear. So the gear. God of War shouldn't have had this at all. This is the most tacked on system in the game. The gear is so uninteresting, so incremental that the gear isn't what matters, the numbers that it adds to Kratos do. Just the skill tree and upgrades through story progression could've been fine, but nooooooo. Santa Monica Studios had to bloat the game with this worthless junk. It breaks that one take camera shot if you stick to looking at menus changing and upgrading your gear. Just the stuff that Santa Monica Studios puts into GoW makes it feel so manufactured.
How's the story since lots of people seem to love it? It's slow. It is bloated. Some moments were fine, but it never moved me or made me feel much. That's because of how much God of War is trying so damn hard to follow the success of a recently released game: The Last of Us. This is a story about a father/child relationship (Joel/Ellie and Kratos/Artreus) about overcoming loss (Sarah and Faye). The games are slow burns with some emotional highs and lows with setpieces to spice up. God of War takes way too long to pick up. Like 7 hours until it picks up with a new character joining your party and many more hours later until you get a new weapon but even when they pick up, the game gets old. It's also annoying the amount of roadblocks the main quest has, sometimes roadblocks within roadblocks. Sure, some do serve a purpose to progress the story and worldbuilding(Kratos having to admit that he can't escape his past, Kratos having to tell the truth to Artreus after he falls ill, Kratos having to bring Artreus down from his arrogance), but they still task you to go somewhere else to get a thing to get through a roadblock and it gets tiresome and I keep groaning, waiting for the journey to be over with. Arguments exitst between charactersto strengthen the dynamic. Like The Last of Us, arguments ensue between the 2 main characters but unlike TLOU, they don't really flow. My favorite example being Alfheim where Kratos tries to get the Macguffin and learns that Artreus favored Faye all along, afterwards when he gets out, Artreus says that he wasn't there for him and we're given no time to mellow out. And move on like nothing happened. The shift happens so suddenly. Come on. It has some of the most poorly executed scripted setpieces that I have seen in a AAA 8th gen Sony game. They look exciting, but they do not give the player any control aside from some QTE's which breaks the immersion of these fights since you're focused on which button to press. At least Spider-Man had QTE's correlate to the main controls. At least Uncharted still put you in control. If these are the type of moments that don't put the player in control, then just let me watch the action instead so I could be immersed.
Now combat is where my focus is. I love my combat heavy action games like DOOM Eternal, ULTRAKILL, and Devil May Cry. It was disappointing to see what God of War's combat was like and I am glad that Devil May Cry 5 was released a few months later to prove that there is a market for games that don't follow modern AAA formulas. The sense of weight from the combat feels visceral, but the camera, lack of a jump button, and the lack of motivation for the player to use their entire toolkit at once make this game a tedious experience. God of War has all of these mechanics, bumping enemies into one another, pushing them off the arena, bumping them into walls, freezing an emeny and then kicking them to a wall for an instakill, but one thing I strive to see in action games is why? Why should I use all of your moves at once? Why should I be careful with what I do? If the game answers my questions, then it pushes me into getting better and getting into the fun zone. However, God of War has no answer. With the lack of enemy variety, fighting them boils down to hacking, parrying, dodging, runic attacks. Though we got some literal DmC: Devil May Cry ideas here with enemies only being vulnerable to a certain weapon. You know, the worst part about that game's enemy design since it is so restrictive and situational. Bosses are mostly misses. Either they are moments of spectacle that don't require much thought or they are repeated minibosses. I can count with the fingers of my 2 hands how many times the troll has been reused throughout the main game. Have fun seeing the same animation of Kratos smashing them with their pillars because you will see it a lot. The Valkyries are fine bosses for challenge, but you still fight them the same way. I wish that one of them would be introduced throughout the main game to give the player the challenge to make them play better and then give them the intrigue and option to fight the rest. Does the game reward you for playing well? Well you don't have to be careful with your health for the next fight since you can 1. regain your health from the stones after the fight or 2. die to the next one to gain all of your health back. The XP that you get from fights is arbritrary, meaning that no matter how good or bad you play, it doesn't impact how much XP you get, lacking any reason for experimentation. All the combat boils down to is using the most powerful strategy possible over and over, making the game very stale since it lasts 20-30 hours.
Everything about God of War feels like if Illumination was a game developer; a dumbed down, derivative, manufactured game meant for mass appeal. The sequel looks like its more of the same and not a next gen game showcasing what the PS5 could do so I barely any hope for improvements if a stripped down, yet bloated mess is going to be seen as the highest standard of action games. I'm going to be entirely honest here, I hate God of War. I hate it because it reeks of smugness despite being derivative of other games. I hate how it pushes to be an interactive movie rather than a video game to prove that they can be art. This is as "awardbait" as awardbait can get and playing through a game like this makes me want my time back. Video games are art, but this was not the way to prove it.
3/10
Link to that: https://www.grouvee.com/user/DucksOnQuack/reviews/2604685/edit/
Funny how this came out on my dad's birthday and his son hates a game about a father/son relationship.
God of War 2018, in my opinion, is the most overrated video game, period. It tries to distance itself from being a game first as far away as possible to prove a rotting corpse that "ViDeO gAmEs cAn Be aRt!" Instead of pushing the genre, it dumbs down from its own series and derives from other successful games. If this were a new IP, fine, but this is a sequel to GoW 3 and a soft reboot for newcomers. A "video game" in a video game series, perhaps. Well is the gameplay, at least, better, more challenging, expanded?
Let's get into what I liked before we get dirty. I found Artreus to be fine. People may find him annoying and he is insufferable at one point (which does make sense for the story even though it is a low point). I didn't mind him too much. I find it a neat idea how he is an extension to your toolkit, but he becomes overpowered once you get the shock arrows. The comedy got some laughs out of me. Especially with a character that joins your party later on. He is also a fun way to present the lore and worldbuilding to the player. For as much as I despise the camera, it is used to great effect in one and a half boss fights. And that's the first major one and the first reprise of said boss. I like the characterization of Kratos now that I have a basic knowledge of the Greek God of War trilogy. It's a good way to keep the series fresh and advances his character after the remorse he felt at the end of 3.
Now let's get down and dirty. Ready? The gameplay is shit. I said it. It is. And I have soo much to say about it. The feel of playing God of War is somewhat good, but the systems surrounding it suck. My biggest issue with God of War's gameplay is the removal of the jump button. This is a huge detractor, especially it is removed from a series of games that let you jump. Like I said, if this was a new IP, it wouldn't be as bad. An example would be The Last of Us for as basic as that game's gameplay is since it is more grounded, but this is a game about magic and gods. I see no reason to remove a jump. How does removing a large factor of 3D games push the genre, let alone the series forward? It guts depth of combat, platforming, puzzles, arena design, and enemy variety. Jumping in combat. Remember that? It was in nearly every action game and one of the most fun things about watching combos was all of the juggling in the air, added layers of offense and defense and ways to approach encounters, made for good downtime to read the room, let arenas add verticality to them instead of them being flat? Remember that? What about platforming and level design? Well you don't worry about that if every jump, every climb is automated. No margin of error to find here. I'd take platforming sections than walking and climbing any day of the week since it at least has challenge instead of it being a bore. Enemy variety. It is severely lacking. A majority of them make up of humanish enemies and they look, feel, and play so similarly to one another that it makes the game feel padded and drawn out. You can approach them the same way as you do every other enemy and it gets boring. Puzzles. They're boring. They're too similar with make Artreus drop the chain, throw the axe, shoot the arrows. If there's going to be a jump in the sequel, don't treat it as if it were a monumental innovation like with TLOU Part 2.
"But person writing this review, the camera wouldn't work with jumping in mind so how is the camera in this game?" It is a literal war crime to melee action games and the fact that the sequel is keeping this is an even worse war crime. It is so tight and closed in you can't easily get a good look at what is going on. It feels so restrictive. Being in a corner is a terrible situation to be in as you can only see Kratos and not much else. Had it zoom out when entering encounters like say Batman Arkham, it would've made this a million times better. You'd still have your third person shooter camera and it'd work for those walkie-talkie moments and then zoom it out when fighting and you still have a better feel of the game while still keeping that one take gimmick. The one take thing serves no purpose if you're switching menus and fast traveling. It breaks that feel of it if you're spending minutes If you want the game to be replayable, do something like fucking Cyberpunk 2077 of all things by having a skip button that speeds the game up until the next piece of dialogue or skip it entirely. Speaking of which, by god is the game barely replayable as an action game in the veins of Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, DOOM Eternal, and even its predecessors. Hours of walking and talking that barely add flavor, you can't skip cutscenes on the first playthrough. Climbing is worse than even Uncharted since you can't even die or make any errors when climbing. It's just a vertical form of walking. God of War has been praised for its walking moments. There are so many moments that are questionable where you walk as slow as possible while holding something and it feels so dissonant. You're telling me Kratos walks slow when holding a crystal, but he is strong enough to flip a goddamn temple? Let him be smug about his godlike strength. What reason is there for him to not sprint? There are so many of these downtime moments that make this game feel like a slog. There are puzzles in between combat, story, and walking and they also suck. They are so simplistic and all blend in with one another.
Many have criticised how much God of War derives from other games. feel so tacked on for the sake of baiting for awards and praise rather than a vision shining through. Open world design? Check. Uncharted-like climbing? Check. Looter and gear system and RPG elements? Check. "But what about the execution? That's how you know something is good rather than looking at just the concepts of the tropes." These are executed in the most half-baked way possible. The open world isn't interesting. The small islands blend in with one another and rarely stand out. Exploring them feels more like ticking boxes off of a checklist rather than seeing a place that catches your intrigue. The sidequests are all for the gear. So the gear. God of War shouldn't have had this at all. This is the most tacked on system in the game. The gear is so uninteresting, so incremental that the gear isn't what matters, the numbers that it adds to Kratos do. Just the skill tree and upgrades through story progression could've been fine, but nooooooo. Santa Monica Studios had to bloat the game with this worthless junk. It breaks that one take camera shot if you stick to looking at menus changing and upgrading your gear. Just the stuff that Santa Monica Studios puts into GoW makes it feel so manufactured.
How's the story since lots of people seem to love it? It's slow. It is bloated. Some moments were fine, but it never moved me or made me feel much. That's because of how much God of War is trying so damn hard to follow the success of a recently released game: The Last of Us. This is a story about a father/child relationship (Joel/Ellie and Kratos/Artreus) about overcoming loss (Sarah and Faye). The games are slow burns with some emotional highs and lows with setpieces to spice up. God of War takes way too long to pick up. Like 7 hours until it picks up with a new character joining your party and many more hours later until you get a new weapon but even when they pick up, the game gets old. It's also annoying the amount of roadblocks the main quest has, sometimes roadblocks within roadblocks. Sure, some do serve a purpose to progress the story and worldbuilding(Kratos having to admit that he can't escape his past, Kratos having to tell the truth to Artreus after he falls ill, Kratos having to bring Artreus down from his arrogance), but they still task you to go somewhere else to get a thing to get through a roadblock and it gets tiresome and I keep groaning, waiting for the journey to be over with. Arguments exitst between charactersto strengthen the dynamic. Like The Last of Us, arguments ensue between the 2 main characters but unlike TLOU, they don't really flow. My favorite example being Alfheim where Kratos tries to get the Macguffin and learns that Artreus favored Faye all along, afterwards when he gets out, Artreus says that he wasn't there for him and we're given no time to mellow out. And move on like nothing happened. The shift happens so suddenly. Come on. It has some of the most poorly executed scripted setpieces that I have seen in a AAA 8th gen Sony game. They look exciting, but they do not give the player any control aside from some QTE's which breaks the immersion of these fights since you're focused on which button to press. At least Spider-Man had QTE's correlate to the main controls. At least Uncharted still put you in control. If these are the type of moments that don't put the player in control, then just let me watch the action instead so I could be immersed.
Now combat is where my focus is. I love my combat heavy action games like DOOM Eternal, ULTRAKILL, and Devil May Cry. It was disappointing to see what God of War's combat was like and I am glad that Devil May Cry 5 was released a few months later to prove that there is a market for games that don't follow modern AAA formulas. The sense of weight from the combat feels visceral, but the camera, lack of a jump button, and the lack of motivation for the player to use their entire toolkit at once make this game a tedious experience. God of War has all of these mechanics, bumping enemies into one another, pushing them off the arena, bumping them into walls, freezing an emeny and then kicking them to a wall for an instakill, but one thing I strive to see in action games is why? Why should I use all of your moves at once? Why should I be careful with what I do? If the game answers my questions, then it pushes me into getting better and getting into the fun zone. However, God of War has no answer. With the lack of enemy variety, fighting them boils down to hacking, parrying, dodging, runic attacks. Though we got some literal DmC: Devil May Cry ideas here with enemies only being vulnerable to a certain weapon. You know, the worst part about that game's enemy design since it is so restrictive and situational. Bosses are mostly misses. Either they are moments of spectacle that don't require much thought or they are repeated minibosses. I can count with the fingers of my 2 hands how many times the troll has been reused throughout the main game. Have fun seeing the same animation of Kratos smashing them with their pillars because you will see it a lot. The Valkyries are fine bosses for challenge, but you still fight them the same way. I wish that one of them would be introduced throughout the main game to give the player the challenge to make them play better and then give them the intrigue and option to fight the rest. Does the game reward you for playing well? Well you don't have to be careful with your health for the next fight since you can 1. regain your health from the stones after the fight or 2. die to the next one to gain all of your health back. The XP that you get from fights is arbritrary, meaning that no matter how good or bad you play, it doesn't impact how much XP you get, lacking any reason for experimentation. All the combat boils down to is using the most powerful strategy possible over and over, making the game very stale since it lasts 20-30 hours.
Everything about God of War feels like if Illumination was a game developer; a dumbed down, derivative, manufactured game meant for mass appeal. The sequel looks like its more of the same and not a next gen game showcasing what the PS5 could do so I barely any hope for improvements if a stripped down, yet bloated mess is going to be seen as the highest standard of action games. I'm going to be entirely honest here, I hate God of War. I hate it because it reeks of smugness despite being derivative of other games. I hate how it pushes to be an interactive movie rather than a video game to prove that they can be art. This is as "awardbait" as awardbait can get and playing through a game like this makes me want my time back. Video games are art, but this was not the way to prove it.
3/10
3 Comments
Thank you for commenting. I expected a response like this. Persona 5 is a game that meant a lot to me personally. It's not a perfect game. Nothing is. I will criticize Royal for being way too easy, even on hard, but I had fun combining attacks. I will criticize BotW for so many things yet love it do death because of how open it really feels compared to its contemporaries. I thought every scene in P5 had a purpose, and I was hooked and not tired of its 80ish hours where I thought God of War kept padding out the length be tricking you into making it so many freaking times. I though P5 ended at the right mark. It didn't give much excuses for padding while God of War keeps giving excuses like "ohh. The highest place isn't in Midgard. It's in Jotunheim" or that time where you got the rune but uh oh. The gate is now broken because of Baldur. I think I give P5 a pass because P5's structure was composed of mini stories while GoW is focused on one goal. As for the lack of jumping in Yakuza, I'm fine with that. It's both a gritty and lively game. But Kratos is a god that is jumping in the air during cutscenes and he's jumped in previous games so that's is what I'm upset about. And you're right about Yakuza's enemies. I guess I felt caught up in it's spectacle with the combat. And I guess I should reevaluate Yakuza 0 if I have the chance. I do feel some of that repetition playing Kiwami rn so time will tell.
Nice review. Apart from what you've said, I'd actually add that God of War 2018's characterisation of Kratos was one of the parts I disliked the most about it. Contrary to popular belief Kratos has about as many moments of humanisation in each of the Greek games as he does in 2018, and they land so much more strongly when you have his violent, barbaric side right there to contrast them against. More than that, the Greek games integrated these moments into the gameplay much more naturally. No moment in 2018 even slightly compares to the segment during the first game's final boss in which you have to quite literally sacrifice Kratos' life (i.e. health) to restore that of his family, or having to physically push Calliope (who conspicuously isn't mentioned in 2018) away near the end of Chains of Olympus, or basically anything involving Pandora in 3.
And without getting into his performance itself, Christopher Judge sounds far, far too different to T.C. Carson for me to see 2018's Kratos as the same character. It legit distracted me the entire time - the game wants so badly to be seen as this grand showcase of how far Kratos has come and all I could think about was how it's technically not even the same person. Baffling decision, especially considering that T.C. Carson was available and Sony Santa Monica didn't even contact him to tell him that Kratos was being recast.
And without getting into his performance itself, Christopher Judge sounds far, far too different to T.C. Carson for me to see 2018's Kratos as the same character. It legit distracted me the entire time - the game wants so badly to be seen as this grand showcase of how far Kratos has come and all I could think about was how it's technically not even the same person. Baffling decision, especially considering that T.C. Carson was available and Sony Santa Monica didn't even contact him to tell him that Kratos was being recast.
Razy
2 years ago
lack of jump button, lack of motivation for the player to use their entire kit, tedious experience, lack of enemy variety and so on, those are things in yakuza 0 too.
you also criticized the story as being slow and bloated, which are issues to see in persona 5 and yakuza, they are known for slow pacing and a lot of padded out sections.
"humanish enemies and they look, feel, and play so similarly to one another that it makes the game feel padded and drawn out." yakuza has this no idea how you can justify that gap in the score.
Many have criticized how much God of War derives from other games. feel so tacked on for the sake of baiting for awards and praise rather than a vision shining through. Open world design? Check. Uncharted-like climbing? Check. Looter and gear system and RPG elements? Check.
totally agree with this.