"God of War" Review - Mad About The Boy

Available for: Playstation 4

Reviewed for: Playstation 4

Having grown up with Nintendo consoles and the Xbox 360, and given the fact that I didn't ever experience the superior Playstation consoles until I purchased a PS3 for The Last of Us, it should come as no surprise that I came to the God of War party a little late. By the time I arrived, the music had been turned off, some folks were passed out, and I could hear the faint sounds of a girl crying and talking to another girl in the bathroom about her boyfriend, but man what a party it still was. My first experience with this legendary saga began when I transitioned to the PS4 and noticed a service called PSNow, which lets you stream some older titles. Among the library of possible older games to stream, there it was: The original God of War. I'd always heard that the games were fantastic, but...like, do you know people who aren't bad people but you never believe a word they say? The stoners who post articles from those clickbait science Facebook pages for people who flunked out of every science class they ever took, but still want to look intellectual? Those were the kinds of people I'd always heard about God of War from. "It's gory," I thought, "and that's literally the only thing they like about it." However, once I found God of War in that streaming library, I thought, "what the hades," and started it up. I was blown away by how satisfying the combat was, and when the credits rolled, I wanted more. Two games later and I'd finished the saga, and I wanted more. Then I played Ascension, and you know what? I wanted more. So I proceeded to play the (I think 3) console ports of the PSVita titles...and by that point I was content, but you get the point. While I may not be the kind of big fan that has supported Kratos in his deicidic mission from the beginning, I am the kind of big fan who scraped the bottom of the barrel in search for more content. When the announcement for the new God of War title came out, I was skeptical. On one hand, the potential that the new Norse mythological setting had was excellent, but as gameplay videos came out, the game looked so...generic. I was hardly alone in that fear as more and more gameplay was demoed. Then, recently, God of War was finally released to a chorus of 10/10s from nearly every major critical outlet this side of Asgard, resulting in a whopping 94 on Metacritic. At time of writing, I've finally finished this critical success, and so the question must be asked: Is God of War the 10/10 title that the world has been labelling it as?

Well, spoiler alert, no. However, it is great. We've got a lot to cover, so sit back, relax, get your axes and popcorn ready, and let us delve into this high-profile subject together. 

God of War takes place after the events of God of War 3. Iconic series protagonist Kratos has been living in Norse Mythology's Midgard, where he found a new wife and fathered a son. At the start of this new God of War, the wife (Faye) has just died and the son (Atreus) has already grown to at least middle school age. After building Faye's funeral pyre, Kratos and Atreus set out to fulfill her final wish: to have her ashes scattered from the highest peak in all the 9 realms. 

Let me just take a moment to step back and comment on this. There are times when In Media Res works as a storytelling base. This is not one of those times. When it comes to stories about the bonds of family, In Media Res just isn't the way to go. Many of you may be familiar with Telltale's The Walking Dead, the story of Lee Everett, who comes across a little girl during the zombie apocalypse and ends up as her protector until the end of the season. According to Telltale, the character of Lee was originally going to be Clementine's older brother. However, they decided against this because they didn't think the player would be able to truly feel the drama of the story if there were an entire history between Lee and Clementine that was unknown to them. As a result of this decision, our journey with Lee and Clementine starts at the exact same time as their history. Similarly, look at a game like The Last of Us. It's the same thing: They didn't start the game in the winter section and ask us to buy into the bond between Joel and Ellie. Rather, they let us experience it for ourselves, right from the start. Conversely, think back to The Walking Dead: A New Frontier. Were you as attached to Javier's niece and nephew as you were to Clementine? Discounting the fact that Clementine is cuter and just better written, were you more invested in the bond between characters when you were with them from the beginning or when they had years of history behind them that you weren't a party to?

Of course, not all stories have the luxury of being told this way, so it should go without saying that stories don't have to be told starting at the beginning of character bonds to be compelling and believable (think back to Half Life 2). It does, however, go a long way.

All of this is to say that, while it sucks that Kratos' wife died and that their little boy lost his mother, I can't really claim to have cared at the beginning. I didn't know Faye from Eve, and I didn't know Atreus from Adam. I knew Kratos, but not in the context of his marriage and parental life. As beautifully scored and directed as this opening is (and boy is it, no pun intended), it signaled the start of a journey that I just felt "along for the ride" on for the first half. I can't feel compelled to protect Atreus as if he were my only son when he's a complete stranger who's acting like a turd. I'll say this: the relationship between Kratos and Atreus is quite well written, and it evolves organically as the plot progresses. It evolves to the point where I actually did care about Atreus and about his bond with his father. However, this essentially means that the second half of the story is good, but the first half is a little slow and hard to get invested in. Investment is crucial for this story because, well...

This plot (as in, moment-to-moment things that happen, not the story overall) relies entirely on roadblocks. You'll end up progressing towards your goal slowly but surely, only to be punched in the stomach and told to turn around to find something over and over again. You'll be heading up the side of a mountain and suddenly encounter a black fog that you need the light of Alfheim to get past, so you'll have to turn and walk all the way back down to the central hub to travel to another realm. Then, when in that other realm, the bridge to where you need to go will suddenly be retracted and you'll need to find another way in. Then later on you'll be told, "oh, this isn't where you need to be! You actually need to go to this other place! Oh, and the only way to get to this other place is to get this thing from the complete opposite side of the map!" Every single time you have some semblance of progress, this game throws a roadblock in your way to pad out the runtime. I can't stand roadblock-based storytelling. It brings back unpleasant memories of a certain game whose name rhymes with schmioschmock schminfinschmit. At this point I've done nothing but rag on God of War's story, but trust me when I say that it's worth the frustration. For example, this forced backtracking means that you have the ability to tackle puzzles that you previously didn't have the tools for without having to make a mental note of where they were and go out of your way to reach them. Sure, the treasures you get from solving these puzzles don't have much worth once you've got the gear that you want, but it's still a good way to turn bad plot design into good game design. 

I was going to invest some time to further discuss the treasures and to touch on the crafting elements in this game...but I hardly ever crafted anything. I personally feel it's bare bones enough to not warrant elaboration and inoffensive enough not to warrant the subtraction of points. So, let's move right along to gameplay. If you've played a modern AAA hack-and-slash, you'll be familiar with the basics: You've got your light attack and heavy attack, mapped to the shoulder buttons a-la Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. In addition, you have runic attacks (special abilities mapped to your light/heavy attacks), a shield that can parry enemy attacks, and a ranged ability for both weapons you acquire on your journey. The second of your weapons counts as a spoiler, but when it comes to the weapon you have from the start, the Leviathan Axe, its ranged ability is that you can throw and recall it...not unlike a certain member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that I refuse to name because every critic under the sun has made this comparison. You have to press a button to recall the axe once thrown, which allows you to leap back into combat bare-handed (without having to wait for the axe to come back) for reduced physical damage but increased stun damage. When you deal damage to an enemy, it becomes more and more stunned, and if you get the stun gauge all the way up before killing the enemy, you can execute one of Kratos' signature brutal insta-kill animations. In this way, there's incentive to use your fists rather than the weapons if you're up to it. Though comparisons to Dark Souls perhaps no longer carry any meaning, God of War sports a similar "skill over stats" gameplay model. If you're good enough at the game to survive based off of inflicting mainly stun damage, then you can make combat a tad easier with insta-kills. However, it's demanding, hence the fact that you have two weapons with which to dispose of enemies with pure damage and be done with it. No matter what weapon you're using, combat feels satisfying, and there were a couple of occasions where I found that my hands were hurting because I'd been gripping the controller too hard, so intense is the gameplay on display. Is it as satisfying as earlier God of War titles? Not by a long shot, but rest assured: This is not the generic, clunky, watered-down action gameplay that it appeared to be in previous years' E3s. 

Earlier, when I said that God of War sports a "skill over stats" gameplay model, I neglected to mention this game's progression system. Sure, you could absolutely get through this game without leveling Kratos up, but God of War has perhaps one of the best character progression systems I've seen in recent memory. Why? Because though you don't have to really think about where to put your experience points, the rewards can be immense. If you just look at the skills on display, chances are you, like me, will think, "wow...a lot of these are totally pointless. When am I ever going to remember to pull off this move?" In spite of my doubts, I kept on buying skills like a good little sheep, unaware of the benefits I was giving myself. Near the end of the game, I was taking on one of the many Muspelheim challenges wherein I had to overcome a boss that was immune to damage whenever smaller enemies were around. I'd died in this challenge about five times and in this sixth attempt, I had the boss down to its last little sliver of health, but I myself was nearly dead. I was frantically trying to avoid death, and as I evaded a blow, Kratos ended up throwing his axe mid-dodge, killing the boss and winning me the challenge. It was one of those seemingly useless and hard to remember skills I'd purchased. It was there that I realized: "Holy crap! You're not supposed to remember how to do these!" The thing is, most of these skills are actually just attacks meant to be triggered more-or-less by accident during the normal course of gameplay. Once I realized that, I had so much more respect for the progression system here. Though it may be hard to choose which upgrades you want, you should always try to get new skills. You never know when they'll come in handy. I have to give major props to Santa Monica Studios for integrating progression so naturally into combat!

In that previous paragraph, I mentioned having been doing Muspelheim challenges, so it's time for a bit about exploration and side content. In the realm of Midgard, you have a central hub that expands exponentially as the story progresses. As the world opens up, you can discover unbelievable amounts of side content. You can find entire side plots, optional bosses, brand new areas with different scenery, etc., and it's entirely possible to miss all of it if you just stick to the main story. In addition to the central hub, you have access to a few of the 9 realms. Some are accessed as part of the story, and these are explorable as well, though there isn't quite as much to see in them. Towards the end of the game, you gain access to two other realms: Niflheim and Muspelheim. Niflheim, the realm of ice, functions as a roguelike challenge where monsters and traps reset with each visit. Muspelheim, the realm of fire, functions as a series of specific, increasingly difficult vanilla combat challenges (i.e. kill every enemy on screen within 2 seconds of one another, or they'll regenerate). In both these realms, your reward is the final piece you need to fully upgrade one of your weapons. But if that isn't enough optional challenges for you, God of War also features a slew of incredibly hard boss battles against corrupted Valkyries. Locked behind vaults, each valkyrie poses its own unique challenge, and they serve as the ultimate test of your mastery over this "skill over stats" model...I would know...since I only tried one of the battles and I got my big spartan tush handed to me too many times for my pride to admit. God of War isn't as expansive as your average modern AAA sandbox game, but it's filled to the absolute brim with content, and I can promise you that if you eschew the main plot for a little while and take time to explore, you won't regret doing so. For example, one evening I was exploring, and I came across a chained dragon. After going through the quest to release it, I was informed that there were a total of three dragons held in captivity inside this sandbox. I immediately set out frantically in search of the other dragons, wondering where in this intricately-designed world they could be. There was a sense of childlike wonder in my hunt for this additional content that I haven't felt since I decided to master all the disco songs in Yakuza 0. That's the kind of enjoyment you can expect to get from God of War if you allow it to whisk you away for a little while. 

God of War isn't as expansive as AAA sandboxes, as I said, so does that mean that it holds up better from a technical standpoint? For the most part, yes. In my time with God of War, I never noticed any texture pop-ins, bugs, or crashes (hard or soft). However, the framerate does tend to drop and the screen can tend to stutter when you turn the camera, and there were one or two times where I booted up the game and it ran at something resembling 2 fps for a solid minute. This didn't happen often enough to be a deal-breaker, but I did expect a little more from an exclusive made to sell Playstation 4s. 

On the positive side, however, God of War is gorgeous to look at. It isn't quite on par with the likes of Horizon: Zero Dawn  or The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, but it's easily a contender for best graphics this year. In addition, the stylistic choice to have the camera never cut away from Kratos (except upon death) lends a wonderful sense of continuity to the moment-by-moment action. You'd be surprised how subtle an effect such a choice actually has. Supplementing this cinematic camera work is a beautiful Skyrim-esque soundtrack from composer Bear McCreary. Much like the overall tone of the game, the tone of the soundtrack is less reliant on the brutality of war chants and more reliant on the down-to-earth grumbles of nordic vocalists, resulting in a score that compliments the story perfectly. If you aren't going to play the game, then at least listen to the soundtrack. 

If I've seemed a little schizophrenic in this review, there's a reason. I actually started writing this review during the first half of the game, when I was pissed off about not caring about the story, the stupid roadblocks, and thinking that the progression was useless. I literally wrote a full review at that point in the game, and was only progressing because I have integrity as a critic. Then, absolutely everything in the game started to pick up and I found myself having serious fun and loving God of War. With that in mind, I had to rewrite most of what I wrote and trying to write my criticisms in a way that came off as less scathing. I can't say to what degree my rewrite succeeded, but I at least get the sense that you understand that I recommend God of War, dear reader. Let's take a second to briefly go over my feelings. There isn't a single branch of the world tree in existence where a 10/10 for God of War is justified. God of War is fantastic, but it isn't a masterpiece. It starts off with no stakes to be invested in, relies exclusively on roadblocks to tell its story, and only really picks up the pace with the introduction of another weapon, halfway through. Though I didn't touch on it because it would've essentially been a two-sentence paragraph, the boss design isn't good. Nearly every boss (except for the few times you fight the main villain) is just a copy-and-paste version of a previous boss with a different color. However, if you can handle a flimsy opening few hours and some repetitive boss fights, I can promise that God of War will reward you for your patience. The journey that I started off not caring about eventually became compelling, culminating in a potential twist that had my jaw on the ground and my mind racing to interpret the new questions that sprang from it. The gameplay is solid, and exploration is worthwhile for the experience of it, if not for the treasures. I can tell you this much: Unlike just about every other critic (most likely), God of War will not be my GOTY. However, it's going to have to be a hell of a year to boot it from the top 5 at least. If you're a fan of the saga, a lover of action games, a lover of norse mythology, or even a complete newcomer, I believe you'll find something to love in God of War.

Let us review:

No stakes for first half - 0.5

Roadblock-based story - 1.0

Framerate trouble - 0.1

The final score for God of War is...

8.4/10 - Good
Good work, Santa Monica Studios, good work.