God of War (PS4): An Interesting Development.

So I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm totally aware of how behind I am getting on updates on this thing. This is mainly because when I started working on it I was on a very part time schedule. This allotted me a lot of time play games and subsequently write about them. Now that I have pretty regular employment, I barely I have time to finish or even start the games I am buying. I know I am dropping the ball on this, and I'm trying to keep up. But for those of you who actually wait for updates, I apologize.

I can't believe I forgot to write about this one. So as you know from some of my earlier reviews, I didn't initially care for this series, but after playing through one of the prequel games, I suddenly became a lot more invested, and it allowed to carry through every installment of the game. I left this one pretty satisfied.

But then an E3 trailer came out, showing a much calmer and aged version of the protagonist. He was accompanying a small child and the combat and camera looked much different compared to others. The biggest change however was that a game that was knee deep in Greek mythology, had made a polar shift to Norse mythology. Now THAT had my attention. So it was with little hesitation I plunked down my reserve on....

GOD OF WAR(PS4)

So to recap the story, the dramatic finale of God of War 3 culminates our favorite indestructible psychopath Kratos literally punching Zeus to a horrifically bloody death, and frees the powers of Pandora by sacrificing himself, instead of giving them to Athena. He was left bleeding out and dying, but in the post credits we learn that he managed to leave, and his whereabouts were unknown.

God of War picks up a significant number of years after this event, and it unlike previous games where we start off right in the action this one starts on a somber note. We are with a older, more tired Kratos as he hacks down a specifically marked tree, and begins to drag it home. He is with a young child named Atreus, and we come to learn that this is actually his son. There is a coldness to their relationship, as we see that the two of them really don't know how to speak to each other about the loss of their mother and wife, Faye.

After taking the tree home they prepare her funeral rights and collect her ashes. Her last wish was to have her remains taken the highest point of the nine realms and have them spread to the four winds by the two that she loved. 

Wow. Talk about "press X to pay respects", right? But right out of the gate you can see a number of things in play here that show us this is not going to be one of our normal God of War romps. First and foremost, and in my humble opinion probably the most important, in a matter of moments we see something we have not seen from Kratos in seven previous games: growth and development as a character.

He's not the shouty "slaughter first, ask questions never" rage beast he has always been. He is quiet, reserved, perhaps a bit cold but probably more accurately lost in his thoughts. We see in the first few scenes that he does love his son, but he doesn't really now how to display the affection. He's always been a warrior first, and the bridge that connected him to is son is gone now.

There is a scene very early where he tries to just put his hand on Atreus' shoulder and falters. This honestly to me shows more development than I have ever seen in him, because I actually believe his internal conflict to be real. As opposed to earlier games where he is claiming that he is still the same mortal man with a family but vengeance justifies his actions, and then uses a helpless innocent to viscerally gum up a door mechanism by jamming her in the gears. It rang laughably hollow before, not so much now.

We also notice a significant change to the visual art direction of the game and cinematography. Obviously with the transition to Norse mythology the scenery was going to change, but more notably the game has gone away from its far angled crane shot gameplay to the much tighter and much closer over-the-shoulder third person gameplay. This is significant because it completely changes how we used to approach the God of War style combat system.

Originally, it was designed so you could dispatch a large number of baddies at one so it would pan out so you could see them all, punctuated with larger than life mini bosses that can literally be the size of buildings. So the camera would pan out very far away from Kratos to give a sense of the massive scale of enemies.

There are still big enemies in the new God of War but everything is much closer to scale and enemies are roughly the same size as Kratos is. The game is essentially shot as if the entirety of the game done in a single take, as the game never makes a hard cut to another camera angle. It just kinda moves out of the way of the actors while keeping them in frame, so to speak.  This causes the camera to be much tighter and close up on the action. You might still find yourself dealing with a number of enemies at once, but I found myself feeling reminiscent of HellBlade: Senua's Sacrifice as I played through and hacked with my ax.

Because of this change in perspective, the combat feels drastically different now. I've used this term before but there feels like there is a lot more weight to my actions. I'm not just swinging around the Blades of Chaos and reducing everything to red paste.  Now my ax swings feel harder, slower, and more realistic. When you connect there is a recoil on the enemy as well as the impact of the weapon bouncing back. You can still mash if you want to, but the combat now feels more methodical than it used to.

I hesitate to use the Dark Souls comparison, but it would make sense a little bit because the control scheme in this game has drastically changed as well. Before it used the standard spectacle fighter control scheme with the face buttons like you might expect from Devil May Cry or Bayonetta but now it uses the right shoulder and trigger to attack and left to block. This is a convention that From Software's Demon's Souls basically created, now with the face buttons having different supplemental effects like dodging  and controlling Atreus.

You could argue that this fundamentally changes everything that a God of War is, and I know a number of people didn't like it but I personally liked the new direction it took. When God of War III or Ascension came out, they games were fun sure, but it ultimately felt like a rehash of all the games I played before. This made it feel new, different, and on the whole a lot more skillful. And sometimes changes like this are necessary to keep a game fresh. Think Resident Evil's jump from 3 to 4. That's basically what is happening here.

This game is visually stunning, top to bottom. I don't have a PS4 Pro or a 4K tv but this is one of those games where I just find myself marveling at the environments, skin textures and animations of the characters, and so on. As a whole, it is done in a very cinematic "single take" camera styling. Meaning that from the moment you press start (or options I guess), The camera continuously pans and zooms in, out, and around the action as you play. There is no hard cuts, no transitions really. Just a fade to black or two that comes right back in the same position we left in.

And honestly? For the overall tone and pacing of the game, it fits on a very significant level. I don't know what it is but something about the single shot makes everything feel more dramatic.  From tight frame ups during conversations between characters, or slow pan-arounds for a one character introspective moment it just feels like I am watching a  movie. Whoever directed the cinematography and blocking on this one needs a raise.

I do have to say that I was disappointed when I found out they changed Kratos' voice from long time role owner Terrance C. Carson. He WAS Kratos. But Christopher Judge did an exceptional job with the character. The change in voice honestly feels like it reflects in Kratos' change of demeanor. Oh yeah, we still have the occasionally bouts of "Shouty Kratos", but for the most part Judge's depiction of him is generally softer, more somber, and dare I say "smoother?" Inside of a few the first few "Boy's" I honestly didn't even notice the change in voice anymore.

Very well voice acted all around, too. From serious characters to more comedic types, nobody felt overly hokey or out of place. Well, maybe not nobody. The primary antagonist of the game really has some very over the top lines and reactions, but part of that is because of the nature of his character. He is a god who is essentially cursed by his blessing, and naturally the madness from it has affected him. So when he banters with Kratos, he comes off as playing crazy a bit too hard for my liking.

At the end of the day, It's still God of War so its combat cinematics are still insane and over the top.

Now, while I do feel that this games pacing fits for it on a thematic level, I did find this edition of God of War to be a bit slower than they usually are. Half of this is because it has has somewhat moved to semi-open world style of gameplay instead of its typical level style progression you might recognize from previous iterations of the game. Midgard is your main sprawling open world that you get a pretty good deal of freedom to explore, and its in these quiet boat travels from area to area where you get a lot of the interaction between Kratos and Atreus. And while it is interesting, it really does slow the pace to a crawl when traveling from place to place.

Then you have the separate realms you can take Yggdrasil for, and these would always annoy me because they fucking take forever. You have to enter, wait for the root bridge to form, use a slow moving dial to select your world, wait for the teleport light show loading screen barrage to end, and then wait for a second root bridge to form before finally exiting to this new area. And sadly, many of these new areas really only consist of one to get in, do your mission, and then leave.

The difficulty curve is a bit wonky too. As mentioned before if you have played any of the previous games this isn't the same control scheme, and it throws a lot of mechanics at you. It took a bit of time for me to get all the intricacies of timing my blocks and learning the correct set of button prompts to combo or execute my moves correctly. They don't really explain the block mechanic at all except for what button does so. But it has this closing ring mechanic which I understood as it closed it was my timing. But It would shift from red to green, which made me assume blockable and unblockable.

While this is true, it never really explains this. So while you spend time trying to get the timing down, it basically allots you enough time to make mistakes and question if that's actually what is happening here. I distinctly remember looking online for an answer, then asking a friend who was farther than I was, THEN going back to the game and still getting the blocking wrong somehow. How about not tutorializing walking and cutting the tree down for the intro cinematic, and actually tutorializing the main fucking component of your game?

And MAN, some of these optional boss fights would kick the ever loving shit out of me. During the course of gameplay you have these optional Valkyrie boss fights you can do that are scattered across the map. A number of them aren't too bad but holy shit, as you get to the last few of them they just completely grind you into paste and smear you off the carpet. Some of these will excruciatingly test your patience. I can't even imagine trying them on a harder difficulty than normal.

This particular move is fitting a Valkyrie, because you usually have to pay for a woman to step on your face anyways.

It takes a bit to get into the rhythm of combat in this game too. Basically you are adjusting to a new tighter camera angle, different combat controls, and a much more precise difficulty. It makes the earlier stages of the game when you are still feeling out how to play a little bit frustrating and annoying. I often would find myself not bothering to waste any healing items because it was just easier to take the death and get the full health recovery from a checkpoint instead.

There was at the time I played it a mild lack of polish to the subtitling as well. As I was playing through the earlier stages of the game, you often cross paths with a major support character who assists Kratos and Atreus a number of times. But before they actually reveal who she is, one set of subtitles actually gives her name as she says goodbye. It made me happy because she ended up being one of my favorite norse goddesses, but it kinda spoiled a reveal that was going to be happening later. It wasn't a big plot shifting reveal or anything like that, but it did kind of bury the lead.

My last two complaints of this game are a bit spoilery, so feel free to skip this section but the game has been out for a while now so I'm gonna talk about it. First off, the antagonists. Or rather, the antagonists that they lead up with that basically never appear. Throughout the entirety of the game you find yourself learning a lot of the lore about a number of stories in Norse mythology, specifically about Odin's interactions with Thor, Tyr, the Freya, and the Frost Giants. The game basically paints for hours what unruly and savage dicks Odin and Thor can be, and by the end of the game only one of them makes an appearance for less than a few seconds.

This infuriates me because it basically took what was otherwise a pretty good experience and tells me that this was a game meant solely to set up the next game in the series. A teaser is fine and all, but it basically made think that this whole game was meant to be a teaser, and that is a little a bit annoying. Primarily because it ultimately withheld a lot of the big names of Norse mythology out of this one and saved them for another game. These games are getting longer and longer dev cycles, and I don't know how much more waiting I want to do.

But the biggest one is a major story pivot. This games big underlying theme is that Kratos has moved on. Everything is different. He found a new love, has a new family, has a new life. He fights with different weapons, has a different personality. Everything about this is supposed to be a new beginning, but midway through the game they send him back to face his old life. Sure enough, this causes him to go back and bring back the Blades of Chaos, the iconic chained twin swords Kratos is known for using.

Fucking, Shit. Why did these come back?! I know they are iconic to who he is, but the moment I equipped them and the tutorial on how to use them came back, it felt like I felt like I was playing the same old tired God of War that I have played for close to a decade. I didn't want to play this version of the game. I was having fun playing the new one, learning its intricacies and mechanics. As soon as I start to get into the groove of using this new system it throws me right back to the old one, and I'm effortlessly mashing the same combos I've done before, practically neutralizing the challenges I was overcoming prior. It really was a huge letdown for me.

While a cool story moment, just like that we are back to same ole tired God of War classic combat.

Ultimately, these are minor niggling complaints on an otherwise fantastic experience. I know a lot of reviewers were talking game of the year with this one when I came out. But I feel this is a situation much like Breath of the Wild where pedigree is inflating the perception. It's a radical and much needed set of changes to the God of War franchise, and I would certainly say that its probably one of if not the best installment in this franchise.

But game of the year? Ehhhh, I would say pump the breaks on that one. It's absolutely worth your time and its absolutely worth the full retail experience. It's a visually stunning game with some superb voice acting, excellent story tellings, and a fun combat mechanics. But just because it's a God of War game doesn't immediately mean that it is perfect.  As I've learned with Tales of Berseria last year, games that come out in Q1 of the year are a little soon to start heralding as the best the year has to offer.

God of War (2018) is an incredibly solid addition to this long running franchise, and makes the necessary changes it needed to become fresh and new. It suffers a little bit from pacing, curving difficulty, and ultimately is just a set up for a future release but this does very little to mar the overall experience. I give this one a strong recommendation.

I will not be happy if one of the characters in this one

is a boss in the next one. I don't want to fight them.

Please don't make me.