God of War (2018)

In 2022 I decided to only play hack and slash games, in whatever order i saw fit to connect any threads I wanted to explore. This is one of the games I played during The Year of the Hack and Slash! I’m porting over this post which originally appeared as a thread on twitter in 2022.

Dad of War

As the year of the Hack & Slash comes to a close, I turned my sights to my new (to me) PS4 Pro, and a game that has received not only critical acclaim, but a critically acclaimed sequel. After playing GoW3 I needed to experience the follow-up to one of my least like games this year. I needed to see how the murdering, rage-filled monster Kratos, was turned into the darling of the AAA gaming industry.

When picking this game up at Gamestop the clerk said “This game is amazing, the stuff you can do with that axe is incredible.” I was already intrigued to see how we could take a mass-murderer and put him into a situation where I was to feel sympathetic towards his dad duties, but this line cinched it for me. The axe. In all the H&S games I played this year, I don’t think there has been one where an Axe was your central weapon. There were axes that you could switch into, but generally the starting weapon was a sword. The mechanic at the forefront of GoW4 is being able to throw the axe than retrieve it, much in the same way that Thor is able to call back his fabled hammer.

First, the axe throwing mechanic is flawless. It feels good to pull of a headshot or take the legs of a draugr out. But the game leans on this for enemies and puzzles, and since its basically the only mechanic, it wore out its welcome. Imagine a Zelda game where all you had was the boomerang.

The combat is okay. I found the way the camera attaches itself to Kratos in a weird way. You always face forwards, so if you pull back on the stick he just kind of jogs backwards. It leads to being vulnerable to enemies. Enemies, too, seem to be glued to Kratos, as he dodges their noses always face you, so unless you dodge perfectly to slow down time you’ll get hit anyway.

20 hours into the main campaign a regular, scripted story encounter with just medium level grunts put my ass into the ground because in order to upgrade your armor you need to do sidequests to pull in the enormous amounts of material. But the sidequests were so dull and same-y that I decided early on I wanted to skip them, so I kind of screwed myself.

The story is good, but its filled with so much Gen-X sad dad angst that some moments of poignancy were met with jaded groans. Riding around the boat and listening to Mimir tell stories about mythical fathers and sons felt forced. I get it, Kratos has daddy issues, just put your hand on your sons shoulder for god sakes.

And then, the story just sort of … ended. Chekhov’s Thor? Chekhov’s Odin? DOES NOT APPLY. I guess they were saving them for the next game. Kratos and Boy do finish the main part of their journey so we get a little closure, but still a lot of doors are left open.

I’m trying to hide my disappointment with this game but it really felt like a chore to get through. The controls, the combat, the convoluted upgrade system, it all felt like AAA bloat. This could have easily been a streamlined game with a linear path, a tight 20 hour experience that could have had more impact.

My last complaint, in the first hour of GoW 3, I fought a few bosses, some giants, some gods, crazy deities. In this game, I’ve really only had 2 boss fights, I guess three. But there are a ton of troll or elemental fights, and they are exactly the same every single time so it feels extremely repetitive. On the other side of this, Catrena told me this was one of her favorite games to WATCH me play this year, because it really is like a giant blockbuster. She liked the characters and the drama they are putting on, so it at least has that going for it. After all, it really does look phenomenal.