God of War is a big serious game about guilt, redemption, peace, and teamwork but you spend most of the run time killing faceless monsters. It is an intimate, linear journey which is endlessly distracted by meandering fetch quests and side content. It neuters the near perfect camera of the original and replaces it with one which basically drags down the whole game with it. There are some benefit here for story telling reasons and a few of the set pieces, but I fail to see why the camera just couldn't change positions depending on the encounter, cutscene, or set pieces. Any good idea GOW4 has in its gameplay-the recall axe and combat environmental interactions- is just drowned out in just endless and tiring it is, and when you add in entirely pointless rpg mechanics it makes the main gameplay of the game something to dread more then anything. It even skirts any tough decisions in terms of gear by making Kratos's level a sum of his total gear's level so a player is incentived to just choose the gear which makes the level number go up or risk ending up too underlevered to fight enemies.
The story is an okay as a modern HBO/marvel blockbuster spin on Norse myth (its certainly better then Marvel's Thor) , but suffers from a constant slew of quips that deflate key moments and an obnoxiously respective approach to world building: how many times do we need to hear how much of an asshole Odin and Thor are? There is also just some some strange story decisions like how does Atreus fight off a hoard of dark elfs with an axe he was just handed? Its a minor thing but one which sticks out as contrary to the entire story, and is entirely in the cutscene so it doesn't have the excuse of Ludo narrative dissonance.
The original God of War games didn't have the most in-depth combat or nuanced story but it did deliver on constant, ever expanding action where Kratos's single minded rage, and darkly comedic ultitarianism could shine. While GOW4 sometimes delivers in the set piece front, these are few and far between the game's repetitive main combat. While GOW4's combat can feel fresh when a new weapon or move is unlocked, these new strategies quickly get lost in a see of visually similar enemies and rpg number crunching. While GOW4's story sometimes hits the emotional beats it built itself around, even these become diluted when bookended by hours of repetitive gore animations.
The story is an okay as a modern HBO/marvel blockbuster spin on Norse myth (its certainly better then Marvel's Thor) , but suffers from a constant slew of quips that deflate key moments and an obnoxiously respective approach to world building: how many times do we need to hear how much of an asshole Odin and Thor are? There is also just some some strange story decisions like how does Atreus fight off a hoard of dark elfs with an axe he was just handed? Its a minor thing but one which sticks out as contrary to the entire story, and is entirely in the cutscene so it doesn't have the excuse of Ludo narrative dissonance.
The original God of War games didn't have the most in-depth combat or nuanced story but it did deliver on constant, ever expanding action where Kratos's single minded rage, and darkly comedic ultitarianism could shine. While GOW4 sometimes delivers in the set piece front, these are few and far between the game's repetitive main combat. While GOW4's combat can feel fresh when a new weapon or move is unlocked, these new strategies quickly get lost in a see of visually similar enemies and rpg number crunching. While GOW4's story sometimes hits the emotional beats it built itself around, even these become diluted when bookended by hours of repetitive gore animations.