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.

Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale (PS3): Super Sony Brothers Brawl

My disconnection with Nintendo is pretty well documented at this point. Just after the SNES they really started to let me down on a pretty consistent basis. I'd get a few things I'd really like but for the most part I bought all that much. But one game that would sort of bring me back was Smash Brothers. I didn't own it or often play it, but I'll be fucking damned if my friends are going to be better than me at a game. So I got good with one or 2 characters and if a friend fired it up I wouldn't be totally lost.

So I had to laugh when Sony decided to throw their hat in the ring with, let's be honest, a complete knock off of the concept so long after Smash Brothers had already become the standard. Reviews were lukewarm, the price kept dropping, but I never bit on this one. I don't have friends over so it never seemed worth it. But it finally got marked as a PSN freebie so might as well download it to see what it has to offer.

PLAYSTATION ALL-STARS BATTLE ROYALE

As you might expect, this game doesn't have much of a story. Games that tend to be mash-ups usually don't and when they do they are typically pretty abysmal, (honestly Cross Edge still gives me nightmares). But to best summarize the stories of the game, you basically get a miniature telling of the story or something akin to it from the protagonist of that game. So when I first fired the game up I instantly gravitated to Nariko of Heavenly Sword.

She gives a small monologue and some stills of introspection about her and the power of the Heavenly Sword, much like she did in between the chapters of the actual game.  It runs for about a minute or two and then plunks you right into the game. You get an animated cutscene between her and another character near the end of the game (in my case, Dante from DmC: Devil May Cry {which confused me, Kratos would have made more sense.}). After which you fight some floating digital head things for a final boss, which rings a little familiar to Smash Brothers giant hand. The closing is a few more stills and another monologue. It's nothing flashy but I suppose it works.

Sorry longtime DMC fans. It's the skinny andro-prettyboy Dante.

I was curious to see if this was the norm for the game's standard, so I fired up a 2nd game this time picked Nathan Drake of Uncharted. Much like the previous playthough, I was treated to a handful of stills of Drake and Sully sitting at a table on a beach discussing a map that Drake has found, and that how a map this detailed has to lead to something. I'm curious how that will work for characters like the Big Daddy or Sackboy, but I guess to give the single player mode some substance it works.

I guess the first thing that I noted about the game is how......unpolished, it felt. The opening menu is just a flat background with some menu options. It's functional, but boring. The music that plays during the menu also just felt kind of uninspired and generic. I don't think I could hum the Smash Bros. menu to use, but I know it has a very boisterous and dramatic feel to it, and it's notable enough that I distinctly remember it. Even the character select menu has a boredom about it. Two lines of portraits with a bigger selected one on the bottom. Again, it's functional but lacking a bit of pizzazz.

Not a whole lot to it.

Then we have the actual game, and it functions in that same kind of platform fightery way you would come to expect. You are placed on some notable level from the of the character's respective games and you are to duke it out with one to three other characters on screen at any given time. The story mode seems to be the same each time so it usually opens up with Chop-Chop Master Onionhead's dojo from Parappa the Rapper. This will eventually fall apart to have I believe a metal gear firing rockets at you from the distance. 

This brought me to my next point of contention. The controls of the game felt very loose, nothing ever seem to react for me as immediately as I wanted it to. Now, this might be something that is kind of the norm for Smash Bros. players, but it never felt right to me. I assume the control schemes are similar: You have three attack buttons and jump button, each of them providing different attacks depending on the direction you are pressing when you attack, and item to pick up items, and your "super" button. 

How the game works differently to Smash Bros is in Playstation All-Stars is you don't have the running percentage of damage taken. In this, the more damaging your attacks are the faster it fills up your super gauge. You can still score kills for knocking somebody off the stage, but the fastest way to do so is to rack up specialty kills. Admittedly, this takes away some of the feeling of danger and might make you more likely to dive headfirst into combat because if nobody has a super charged, you are not in a lot of danger to be killed.

To give you context, I started playing my story mode with Nariko and much like her original game, the Heavenly Sword breaks apart for fast chain blade combos. So it was very easy to wailing on the square button and let her start to liquefy anything in her path. But these are light attacks so my little gauge would bump up in increments to 5 or 7. If I ventured over to the other buttons they would do slightly more damage depending on the move.

By concept alone, some characters are just more fun to play than others.

Once I would hit one full bar, I could trigger a special where Nariko summons Kai and blows up a barrel. If enemies are caught in the blast I am awarded a kill. At level 2, Nariko produces a cannon like on the castle battlements and can fire off shots at the other players. The aim is minimal but you get a few shots and any that connect score a kill. At level 3, gets that heavenly glow, and her chains extend to full range and enemies who are caught are quickly ended.

It was an interesting way to try to have the same feel of a Smash game but without directly copying the system. The problem I have with it is I don't feel that it really emphasizes the tension you get when the battle sways. When you see that percentage staring to climb, you really get the weight that you can be blasted of at any moment. In Playstation All-Stars I might have occasionally checked to see if some else had a charge up. I barely touched the dodge/block button because I never saw the need to. I never had some eminent feeling of being threatened.

The only time things really kicked up was a later stage matchup where I noticed one of the computer players actually ringing up a number of kills, and there was concern that it might take the round. Due to some last minute heroics on a level 3 special I managed to pull that one away, but it was the only time in the entire play though where I felt things got a little a tense.

Is there no truly notable villain to be the final boss of this mess? Is just random
geometric face the best they can do? It's pointless and stupid. 

I think one of the other drawbacks to this title (and probably why it took so long for it to be produced) is the overall roster. Some of these characters make sense to me, but some of them don't. If we are looking at legitimate stars exclusive to the console, then guys like Nathan Drake, Kratos, or Jak & Daxter make sense. But people like Raiden, the Big Daddy, or Dante don't make sense to me because their games cross platform. Sure some got their start on PlayStation but hell, Bioshock came to the PS systems last.

And then you have the reaches, Kat from Gravity Rush was in a single game on a console that didn't sell well. Fat Princess you play a character who is ultimately nonfunctional in her own series and is more or less offensive to an entire gender. I would argue that Cole McGrath from Infamous absolutely deserves to be in this lineup, but putting in both an evil and good version of him feels like you are padding out space because you just don't have enough "branded" characters to put in the game. Although in Sony's defense, Nintendo has pulled this shit too. (Looking at you Star Wolf and Lucas). The bottom line here that Sony doesn't really have enough independent notable properties to really flesh out a roster like this.

This roster forced me to give credit to Nintendo. They may just put out the same few
games every year, but they managed to flesh out a pretty meaty roster for Smash.

There are a smattering of other game modes such as a training mode, a challenge mode, and naturally a multiplayer mode. None of them are remarkable or interesting enough to even bother to comment on other than "hey look, there they are"

I'll give credit that the alternate costumes are kind of cool. I don't know why but I have always been a fan of alternate costumes in games and love to try to unlock them, but absolutely started to loathe it once they started putting DLC tags on them. They really should be rewards, not costly extras.

Ultimately, Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale pretty much was exactly as I expected it to be: a flat, uninspired knock off of an immensely popular game that has been done already more competently in previous installments. I'd be hard pressed to say it's a bad game because it's at the very least functional, but I personally didn't have much fun with it. Maybe I would enjoy it more if I played it with friends but I honestly don't think it will be in my memory enough to even bother to try it.

The game is currently free on PSN for PS+ users and I've seen it for 20 bucks otherwise. If you need to get Smash out of your system without owning a Nintendo console this is probably a reasonable sub, but honestly I wouldn't blame you for skipping this one. Free was fine, I wouldn't pay 20 for this.

God of War: Ascension (PS3): Alright already, knock it off.

I didn't really like God of War at first for some reason. I tried the first one and it did like nothing for me. It  was strange because it should have. It had: violence, boobs, Greek mythology, fast paced skillful combat, good voice acting, good story telling. Should have been at the top of my list right from the start.

It wasn't till I played God of War: Chains of Olympus that I really started to get into the lore and universe of the God of War franchise, and now that I've become invested in the characters its made the game more enjoyable for me. It seemed to come up to a fair and logical closure point in God of War III but for whatever reason they can't let sleeping dogs lie, so we are going to take one more spin in the world of Greek mythology in...

GOD OF WAR: ASCENSION:(PS3)

Our tale opens up with a bit of back story delving into the creation of earth in a time before the gods and titans. During this earlier time, a war raged for aeons between the Primordials. These creators of earth engaged in battle so long that it completely reshaped the earth, and in turn brought about the creation of the Furies. These Furies are self proclaimed guardians of honor, and punish those who they deem traitors.  When Aegaeon the Hecatonchires broke his blood oath to Zeus, the furies tortured him and turned him to stone, making him their prison for those they punish.

Flash to the inside of the prison, we find longtime protagonist Kratos bound and being tortured by one of the furies. Fueled by his unstoppable rage he manages to free himself and tries to make his escape from the prison. We find that he was captured by the furies for attempting to break his blood oath to Ares, the first god of war and that Kratos is seeking an answer to the illusions that haunt him. In freeing himself from these illusions he hopes he can completely sever his ties to Ares. 

"It's not nearly as sexy when it lasts for eternity..."

That's about as much of the story as I can make sense of, as this game jumps from perspective in the time line a couple of times and it makes it a little tricky to follow. And as much as I love the lore in these games, in this 6th installment of the series it really is starting to run together as the same story to me. There are huge gaps of game play between cutscenes so if you miss part of the tale, you get to eat shit. Switching to a  prequel makes sense, because its pretty much the only way to keep the story going since the end of God of War III was left ambiguous but left to think that the series was over.

When I heard it was going to be a prequel, I was expecting to to go further back in his origins. maybe just spend some time as a plain mortal in the service of the spartan king, witness his loss in the battle with the barbarians, witness the scene where he pledges himself to Ares. That would have been interesting and made more sense. This edition seems like it was shoehorned in where they could to squeeze out 9 more hours a gameplay, and is loosely connected to the story at best.

I will say in its defense though that the voice actor of Kratos, Terrance Carson, did a very good job of dialing back the raving psychopath we've come to know and love. Kratos at this point in the tale hasn't completely lost his mind, so for the first time in a long time he appears human. Has some rational and reason, manages to actually befriend someone during the course of the adventure. There is a scene with a small subtle gesture with him and his family where he shows the capacity to love, which actually caught me off guard and gave me a "huh, how about that?" kinda moment. it was the only real highlight in the story for me and was the only thing I felt I'd never seen before.

I honestly can't think of another time I saw Kratos crack a smile...

Much like the story department, this edition of God of War is pretty much unchanged from its previous installments. If you have played any of the other editions of the game, you won't be lost here. Same fixed camera angles, same blades of chaos, same quick time event structure. It really makes me wonder what exactly takes so long from release to release since the only things that change are the locations and story.

Actually, perhaps that's not totally true. This is one of the first times in the God of War series I actually would look at the Kratos character model and realize how realistically human he looked. His curse to be covered in ashes actually comes across clearly now when the camera is very close on him. It actually looks like he's covered rather than just having pale white skin.

The level of detail has never been better.

And this might be the first time I've ever really sat and took stock of how impressive the visuals in this game get. Some of the monsters and set pieces in this game are friggen massive much like they were in God of War III. Yeah a lot of them have the Quick Time Event finisher, and a couple of them are rehashes of the ones you've already seen in the series, but quite a few times I'd be doing some invasive brain surgery on a Elephant demon and just thinking to myself: "Holy shit, that was bad ass."

Some of the monsters have some different looks to them, and there and handful of new enemies to fight but for the most part the fodder enemies are pretty much the same ragtag band of monsters you've fought before in the previous God of War titles. I will say I'm happy I'm not stabbing the same goddamn Minotaur in the mouth. The only real plus I'll give in this area is I get regular boss fights again. No life bar, no excessive quick time events, Just me and my skills against a really tough opponent. I have to finish it with a QTE but I'm totally ok with that if it means I actually have to test my skill more than something dashing into a wall and then wailing on them.

The kill on this baddie is probably one of my favorites.

Speaking of that, is it just me? Or is God of War: Ascension hard as fuck? There have been a handful of points where I come to a gated door and get a new element ability, then have to go through a battle of attrition against of slew of regular enemies. I start off ok, but after a matter of minutes the sheer number of them starts to put to boots to me. I don't think I got past any of them on the first go. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the ratcheted up difficulty. If the game is gonna feel the same in all the other aspects, then increasing the challenge is the least they could do.

The big change to the combat, and probably the thing I am most thankful for, is the aforementioned elemental abilities. Instead of bogging me down with stupid additional weapons, this game keeps you handcuffed to using the blades of chaos. In addition to that,  you gain elemental abilities of the various gods which change the move sets for the weaponry that can be leveled up. They can be switched on the fly from preference, but from what I've noticed the elements don't appear to correspond to enemy weaknesses.

Combat also features the Rage Meter from previous games, but now it activates as soon as it is full which unlocks a number of the higher level combos some of the God of War faithful will remember. In doing this it gives a much tighter focus to the game instead of where to level up all the souls you collect. I like the change to the rage meter as well because it forces to perform well to get the heavy hitting attacks. To be honest, you can ■,■,▲ and pretty much mow through everything until the gauge fills. I basically spam the big spinning moves.

The game's largest change however, has nothing to do with the campaign. For the first time in the series, God of War will now feature an online multiplayer mode. You know, because every fucking game and their brother needs a multiplayer mode or game devs shit their pants in fear that their game will not sell. Seriously, fuck multiplayer games. If I wanted to be insulted or treated poorly while I play a game, I could hang out with my real friends. I at least kind of like most of them. Not every game needs to have multiplayer in it.

The 4 player maps are huge. They all have their own flavor with cool traps
and side objectives. In this map you get big points for killing the cyclops.

That being said? I actually really enjoyed the multiplayer in this game. The majority of game modes I played seemed to be some kind of strange variant on Capture the flag, where my team of guys could run around the map and capture bases to earn points. You can also get treasures or thrash the opposing team  to boost your score. First team to hit the goal or have the highest by time ends wins. There is also death match modes as well, but for the most part they are all pretty cut and dry.

I like this one better than most multiplayer because it actually relies on my skill to fight one on one. Not because some shitdick douchebag is at level 50 and has the most broken high powered weapons that can snipe me from the moment I respawn. I can approach someone, and even if I have weaker gear I can go toe to toe and fight them using my own abilities and come out the victor. Or, if I was getting outclassed there were ways to get points without having to fight by setting traps or getting chests. I didn't seem to experience any lag issues and call me crazy here but it actually seemed kinda balanced. Weirdest thing yet, it was fun to play. Madness right?

What I did not like was a little card that came with my game. One of those little cards that say "oh you want to play our online feature? Did you buy it new? Oh you didn't, well that sucks for you. You need one of these handy ONLINE PASSES to play our game, and its only 10 more dollars!" Sony? Eat a fucking dick. I expect this shit out of EA and Ubisoft. But you guys have always preached about your free online with an option to pay for a better service. Yeah I bought it new so I got a pass, but its a principal that pisses me off. Go Screw, Sony.

So can I give God of War: Ascension a recommendation? Ehhh... I suppose so. This is an example of a game just going through the motions. It still looks cool, and the combat is still skillful and fun to play. But honestly, for a completely new and original story it felt like I've heard it all before. Its gotten old. The only real saving grace to this installment is the addition of a fun, innovative, and balanced multiplayer. If that didn't drive me to keep playing the game, I might not of have turned it on enough to finish it.

Much like many other games that reach 6 or 7 installments, I feel that God of War has kind of run its course and they are starting to write themselves into a corner. I wouldn't be surprised that after the initial run the sales on this one grind to a halt. Which isn't to say that the game is bad, its just more of the same. I've played this game already, I've played it 5 times in fact. So charging me 60 bucks to play it again is kind of a bullshit move.

Two things should happen if they are going to bring out this tired horse one more time. One: There needs to be a new protagonist with an all new story. Try switching mythologies, you can keep the combat engine but I'm ready for something new. A new story and a new hero to get behind.  But if you can't shake from this story, then Two: Make Kratos the antagonist (If he survived 3's ambiguous ending). This could be a move that would shake the game to his core, and all the fans have seen what atrocities for his selfish ambitions he has done for 6 games. He basically destroyed the entire world in 3 just to make himself feel better. He deserves to be stopped at this point.

Bringing up a new hero to try to take Kratos down would be an interesting twist and I think would bring new life to this series. It may be a polarizing move for a lot of fans, but this series needs something to keep life into it. If Santa Monica studios has the balls to make that move, then I'd be down for one more trip of God of War. If not, they probably should put this series to bed while we still have fond memories of it.

Fond memories of horrible snuff....
Fuck, what the hell is wrong with me...