This week i’m immensely jealous of Will as he celebrates his one year wedding anniversary with his wife in New York City. So just me this week and there’s only one game I’ve been playing…
God of War
Well one week later and I have completed God of War, well the main story anyways. There’s still a lot more to do after the game in terms of side quests and collectables and such which I will continue with, but in terms of the main game, it is done. WOW.
Simply put just wow. It’s really bizarre in that it didn’t seem that long at all to complete, but then I have to realise having 2 full days off work and doing nothing but play God of War isn’t a luxury I’m afforded too often and that surely resulted in the completion time feeling quicker than normal rather than one or two hour stints in evenings. The ending battle was something else and the very final scene when you go back to your cabin with Atreus is fucking epic. Legitimate goosebumps at that somewhat teaser of what could be install for God of War 2.
It felt quite odd playing a God of War game that featured RPG elements. While not overly heavy at all in that respect, powering up your weapons and crafting armour and such was a very welcome addition to the series. Levelling up Kratos too was something new that worked surprisingly well in the game. It was by means not all that deep as you’d see in other games, but something that freshened up the series. One of the greatest things I enjoyed with the fighting mechanics is the axe. Throwing it into enemies then pressing triangle to have it return had it’s moments of you thinking you were playing as Thor and using Mjolnir it was awesome.
The open world aspect of the game was somewhat weird, as while yes you have the freedom to explore the lake of the nine realms, when you are actually on certain story related quests, the pursuit to the end game is very linear and it actually reminded me of the dungeons in Skyrim in that respect. There is for the most part one path to take to get to the objective of the area you’re ‘exploring’ and then come the end of that dungeon there’s a fast route or easy way out which is very welcome to avoid back tracking through it all again.
In terms of the story the main goal that Kratos and Atreus set out to achieve should not have been that difficult or trivial, but with interruptions of Norse gods and their mythology brought into the equation the story soon kicks off and becomes one of the most captivating I’ve played in a long time. When journeying across the lake of the 9 realms and one your companions begins to tell tales of the Norse gods and their history this often prevented me from getting out of the boat when I’d reached my destination as I’d want to hear the whole story out just being blown away by it all. Being quite the Marvel Cinematic Universe fan, and quite enjoy Thor, hearing stories and items that I knew from these films and learning more about them was pretty awesome. I’m a little sad that it wasn’t longer though, in that regard Horizon still remains above God of War for me but it shouldn’t take anything away from just how god damn great God of War is.
Whilst playing through it I was constantly in awe at the visuals. Some of the most impressive facial animations seen on a game yet and the character movements of Kratos were stupidly good. As mentioned last week the switches from game-play to cut-scene are seamless, there were genuinely moments in the game where a cut-scene was occurring and Kratos would be walking to an object and I’d be holding the analogue stick up on the DualShock as I thought I was still playing the game and controlling him, seriously this did happen on many occasions.
Spoilers in the next paragraph about one annoying part of the game, It’s not any story spoiler, but a particular part of the game that I just found frustrating…..
SPOILERS START
The boat scene where you need to keep the 2 fires alight while trying to leave Helhiem. This scene just really frustrated me, while this particular scene actually kind of went back to the old ways of God of War, essentially being hack and slash, the continuous horde of enemies arriving to try and put the fires out was ridiculous. I wanted that part to be over quicker, there was no need for that many waves of enemies. That’s my one main complaint from the game and it’s a very minor one at that, it just wound me up.
SPOILERS ENDED
So with God of War essentially complete minus the side quests, the next game I’ll be picking up and hopefully later today will be Detroit: Become Human. Can’t wait for this one. PS4 certainly on a hot streak currently, what else is new aye?
– Murr
