General Gaming enyone kno wy the discource around sigle take game is God of War when Half Life exists?

[unogueen]

Did I skip a stitch?

[Mr.Vic20]

[Bacon]

 

 

[TheLeon]

Where are you encountering this discourse? Back in 2018, when GoW came out? 20 years after Half-Life?

[Spork3245]

3 minutes ago, TheLeon said:

Where are you encountering this discourse? Back in 2018, when GoW came out? 20 years after Half-Life?

The ending of Ragnarok is apparently super divisive among the deepest pits if reddit.

[Keyser_Soze]

This AI needs a tune up, too many typos.

[Xbob42]

Even excluding Half-Life, there's also Dead Space, which is even more single-take than God of War since the menus are also in-world and don't interrupt gameplay. And I don't even think that's what the Dead Space devs were going for... they just did it.

[ShreddieMercury]

Yeah, the whole one-take angle was dumb with the original GoW and I'm guessing it's still dumb with Ragnarok.  It really has no meaningful effect on an experience that lasts for 20+ hours.  The problem with one-take anything is that you become quickly acclimated to it and it ceases to alter your experience.  If anything, it's limiting.  It reminds me a bit of the silent protagonist issue, where for some reason developers thought it would be awesome to "assume the role" of the character, but it sucked from day one and still sucks.

 

 

[crispy4000]

I don't think it's totally meaningless.  I always find it jarring in games when there's fade to black moment that cuts into gameplay.  Even more when they try to match the visuals at the end of the cutscene to when you take over.

 

Just recently Xenoblade 3 did it where you'll end cutscenes going directly into the battle scene.  I love that kind of thing.

[Paperclyp]

I think the one take thing is fine. I found the entire discourse about 2018 GoW to be riddled with hyperbole and caught up on the zeitgeist takes galore. 
 

The response to Ragnorok seems to be a lot more tempered. 

[BloodyHell]

16 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

I think the one take thing is fine. I found the entire discourse about 2018 GoW to be riddled with hyperbole and caught up on the zeitgeist takes galore. 
 

The response to Ragnorok seems to be a lot more tempered. 

I mean, hyperbole? It is one of the best games of all time. Ragnarok is no less loved.

[stepee]

We critiqued the hell out of GOW 2018 here as well. That game, and now the new one, tend to get a lot of verbal critique followed by “but still it’s fucking amazing” but it’s still critiqued for the things it doesn’t get right. Last time it was enemy variety and lack of set piece moments, this time it sounds like some people think there is just too much jammed in. 

 

As far as the one shot thing, it’s fine. I do agree that I’m not sure why anyone makes a big deal out of it, I could go either way with it myself, but it’s not a bad thing, just more of a “oh, neat” thing. It works for the game and it’s fine. 

[TwinIon]

I think the benefit of GoW being a continuous shot matters more in how the devs end up thinking about the camera than in the shot itself being unbroken. Kind of like how a lot of diets work not because a specific selection of foods is really better for you, but because people who diet watch what they eat more carefully in general. Forcing the whole game to be a single shot means the devs have to be conscious about the camera movements in every cut-scene, QTE, gameplay moment, and all the little bits in between. I find the camera movements in both GoW games to be so much more interesting and well considered than they are in nearly any other game, and I think having strict rules for what they will do with it helps make that difference. I love how the camera might float around a room to catch all the different perspectives of a conversation before again settling back on your character.

 

I don't think the style of the GoW games is necessary to get that kind of attention on camera moves, Horizon Forbidden West and the Last of Us games are excellent examples of games that care about the camera but don't subscribe to the same philosophy. Still, there is a huge gulf between games that do care about the camera and those that don't. Single take or no, having every conversation carefully choreographed and dynamic is so much better than you standard Skyrim static bore.

[Paperclyp]

1 hour ago, BloodyHell said:

I mean, hyperbole? It is one of the best games of all time. Ragnarok is no less loved.

Yeah that’s pretty hyperbolic for my taste. It’s a good game, I enjoyed it, I have no interest in tearing it apart, but I did not ever have the thought when playing it that is was in that rarified air. 
 

From what I’ve read, Ragnarok has been getting a lot more criticism than the first one. The constant chatter about how to solve puzzles in particular is a common complaint. But critics seem mixed on the story, it seems to really resonate with some and really not with others. The systems seem a bit convoluted / there’s too many of them. My memory of the first is very very little in regards of criticism of the game, at least in the first few weeks. 

[BloodyHell]

17 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

Yeah that’s pretty hyperbolic for my taste. It’s a good game, I enjoyed it, I have no interest in tearing it apart, but I did not ever have the thought when playing it that is was in that rarified air. 
 

From what I’ve read, Ragnarok has been getting a lot more criticism than the first one. The constant chatter about how to solve puzzles in particular is a common complaint. But critics seem mixed on the story, it seems to really resonate with some and really not with others. The systems seem a bit convoluted / there’s too many of them. My memory of the first is very very little in regards of criticism of the game, at least in the first few weeks. 

I mean, no. The general chatter is that it's a masterpiece, and it is. Its certainly the best playstation first party game in memory, imo, and its being incredibly highly praised. God of War 18 was absolutely criticized, but its still among the best ever.

 

[Xbob42]

2 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

I don't think it's totally meaningless.  I always find it jarring in games when there's fade to black moment that cuts into gameplay.  Even more when they try to match the visuals at the end of the cutscene to when you take over.

 

Just recently Xenoblade 3 did it where you'll end cutscenes going directly into the battle scene.  I love that kind of thing.

I think it works with certain scenes better than others. It's also bullshit because every time you teleport the entire screen goes white so it's been untrue since the first game. Your entire screen going white for a load transition is not a contiguous shot anymore than a full-screen equipment menu is.

 

To me it works really well for conversations, small areas, and some location reveals, but I wouldn't mind the occasional aerial shot to show the relative size of something. They could even follow a bird or something to make it work but rarely seem to want to.

[crispy4000]

20 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

I think it works with certain scenes better than others. It's also bullshit because every time you teleport the entire screen goes white so it's been untrue since the first game. Your entire screen going white for a load transition is not a contiguous shot anymore than a full-screen equipment menu is.

 

Eh, that's a minor gripe.  The 'big deal' is that you'd always start and return to player control without cuts in highly choreographed, single-shot cutscenes.

 

I don't think Dead Space stole GoW 2018's thunder in that.  Just how games with QTEs didn't necessarily negate Uncharted 2's impact.  But they aren't paradigm shifts either.

[Paperclyp]

2 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

I mean, no. The general chatter is that it's a masterpiece, and it is. Its certainly the best playstation first party game in memory, imo, and its being incredibly highly praised. God of War 18 was absolutely criticized, but its still among the best ever.

 

Not by the critics I follow! It is undoubtably highly praised but as I said before this time around there are very specific things (some of which I mentioned before) that people aren’t 100 percent on board with, not to say that they don’t like the game.  
 

Looking at my first post it’s probably inaccurate to say the reviews overall are more tempered this time, but again the circles I follow and trust are cooler on the game.

[BloodyHell]

11 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

Not by the critics I follow! It is undoubtably highly praised but as I said before this time around there are very specific things (some of which I mentioned before) that people aren’t 100 percent on board with, not to say that they don’t like the game.  
 

Looking at my first post it’s probably inaccurate to say the reviews overall are more tempered this time, but again the circles I follow and trust are cooler on the game.

But there were plenty of flaws talked about in the first too. Doesn't make it less of a masterpiece. 

I fought 100 troll bosses, and it was still the best game of 2018, and in any other year, this is my GotY. 

 

I don't know who you're following, but every reviewer/game influencer ive seen have spoken of its flaws, but still call it a masterpiece. None of them are "cool" on it. 

[Bacon]

Neither GoW is a masterpiece. I think I might prefer GoWR over Elden Ring, but without having beat GoWR, I'd give it a 7.9/10.

 

That sounds like a joke but it isn't. I am really digging the story and the combat (most of the time), but there is a lot of stuff I am just not a fan of. 

 

• There is the tedium of the fire zone combat challenges and having to redo the same ones over and over again to unlock the actual challenge you are going for. 
• There is so much backtracking due to the side content and the side content is dished out horribly and it is unclear when you have missed something or haven't progressed far enough into the MSQ.
• Of course, the NPC's shitting on you the instant you don't solve a puzzle. And I don't mean that you are stuck. I hadn't even seen where I was supposed to go yet and was getting told, "If you do this thing with that thing we might be able to get across." Like fucker, I hadn't even see what you were talking about, I was literally opening a chest. 
• The amount of delaying the player to their destination with frequent climbing, squeezing, or crawling  you have to do to get from one area to the next. 
• The over abundance of lootables and their animations. 
• The game is basically open world unlike 2018's world. 
• Main bosses are far too easy.
• Advanced weapon skills feel near useless, such as the hold R1 actions, and make you susceptible to danger. You really are better off mashing R1 or R2.
• Personal opinion, but I do not like the addition of more shields and their accessories.
• Another personal opinion, but the extra steps to solve the same "puzzle". Oh you can't just burn this bush, you gotta hit it with an arrow first and then burn it. Like, why?
• Vit seems like the only worthwhile secondary stat. I've ran high luck until I completed the combat challenges and then just switched to vit. 

 

There are improvements over 2018 as well. The biggest being enemy and boss verity. While you still fight the same bosses multiple times with a slight variation, there are way more different kinds that you fight over and over again. I've fought the Huntress boss like 4-5 times now, but I've also fought a bunch of other shit as well. Personally, I feel like they fixed most of the issues that 2018 had, but then created new issues 2018 didn't have. Some of their strengths became weaknesses. Not the story or characters which is prolly what people care about the most, but still. 

 

Really tho, giving this game anything less than a B feels slightly wrong. 7.9 is what I want to give it to send a message to devs that will never see it. I'll prolly give this game an 8/10 when all is said and done. It is a pretty great game most of the time, but it also really likes to fucking annoy me any chance it gets. 

[Paperclyp]

1 hour ago, BloodyHell said:

But there were plenty of flaws talked about in the first too. Doesn't make it less of a masterpiece. 

I fought 100 troll bosses, and it was still the best game of 2018, and in any other year, this is my GotY. 

 

I don't know who you're following, but every reviewer/game influencer ive seen have spoken of its flaws, but still call it a masterpiece. None of them are "cool" on it. 

Vinny Caravella is one of my favorite critics and he’s much cooler on it. 2018 was his top game of the year. Dan Rykert the same, called the first one one of the best games of the gen and is enjoying this one a lot less. I know my feed on a certain website that shall not be named has been populated by a lot of Luke warm observations about the game by people I always listen to but I’m not going to go back person by person to try to prove something to you lol. I’m not sure why you’re pushing back so hard. I’m glad you’re loving it, but it doesn’t need a 100 percent masterpiece record to be valid. 

[BloodyHell]

Its not pushing anything. The game is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and better than the first, by the vast majority of critics and fans.

 

Its fine not to agree with the assessment, but you're in a tiny minority. This is as good as gaining gets. The press and fans definitely haven't cooled on it.