Sony Playing God of War for a second time solidifies how excellent a game it is

[SaysWho?]

 

 

 

I just beat the main story of God of War again and have more side things to do, but the replay solidified how excellent a game this is. It has so much going right and adds so much in comparison to the previous games. 

 

1) Exploration - The original God of War games had secrets to uncover, but God of War PS4 is more "wide-linear," where it's not completely open-world, but it does allow exploration, back-tracking, and the like. Interestingly enough, it utilizes everything to the max. Even in my first playthrough, by the end of the game I still stumbled upon places I missed. And while they're not marked on the map (which is great and I'd like to see more games do that), you can look at the map and go, "Hey, there's an area that looks like it can be entered," and go there, and yup, it's an unmarked area. 

 

Spoiler

 

And then there's the density of the areas. Look up and you'll potentially see items you can shoot down, and they're items you'll use. Find side paths to explore, and you'll find treasures (not to mention the treasure maps that you need to use environmental clues to find). And the treasures are usually new moves, enhancements or some legitimately decent armor. I was changing my Runic attacks throughout the game because I'd explore, I'd find a new, say, light axe attack, I'd notice I like the increase damage or increased stun characteristics, and I'd swap it out. You can just be rowing around the lake and find items in the lake, or permanent stat upgrades around the lake, and they make it very easy to get the items (Atreus mainly takes care of it). You can enter another area and find a mini-puzzle to solve that opens up to a new path.

 

There are just a plethora of goodies you can stumble across, optional enemy encounters, useful items, puzzles, you name it. 

 

2) Combat - I wondered if a story-focused God of War would make concessions in the gameplay department, but the gameplay is aces. It's far more deliberate in this game, I feel. There's more strategy involved, partly due to the new camera angle; you have to be alert to enemy placement, which is why spamming is far less useful to anyone who remembers the tried-and-true [] [] /\ combo. That combo is still useful, but I'm not winning battles spamming it.

 

I also like the use of throwing the axe because you can recall it to help knock away other enemies. You toss it at an enemy (and might be able to pin them to the wall), other enemies are swarming you, and you can line them up and knock them off-balance by recalling the axe. It ended up being a really cool weapon despite not being the iconic blades, and even after expanding my arsenal, I still used the axe. 

 

Then you also have Atreus, whose combat ranges from stunning and incapacitating enemies, to being commanded by you with a simple [ ] button. He can open up secrets, detonate explosives, and stun/electrocute enemies. Rarely do you have to save him from something; he can take care of himself.

 

3) Story and Dialogue - The game easily has the best dialogue in the series. Compare 3 to this game, and it's night and day. The characters all have distinct personalities, and I remember all of them and can describe them pretty easily. The humor... I didn't even expect there to be that much humor in the game, but there are a lot of funny parts, both in the main story and in normal conversation while traveling. The dwarves who sell you things, for example, make fun of the fact that they're everywhere; the game has a lot of fun with it. Many other games have utilized character dialogue while traveling to add to the story, add to the characters and make the walk more enjoyable since you're not engaged in combat. God of War I think pushes it to another level. This is a much more fully-realized Kratos. He's not one-note. He grows. He lack of a sense of humor is his humor. His son grows. The secondary/side characters grow.

 

All in all, I hope God of War PS5 takes it to another level. They have all the groundwork they need.

[atom631]

I think its going to be tough to beat God of War for GOTY. Really depends on how good RDR2 is.

[Biggie]

I need to play this more but so many damn games taking up my time. I’ve only scratched the surface. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

You just couldn't wait for New Game Plus to be released, huh?

[Anzo]

I look forward to going through it again when NG+ is released. 

[Hurdyb1]

if I wasn't running thru my backlog, I would have easily replayed this already. I will save a next play thru for NG+

[Kal-El814]

God of War is a really fascinating mix of incredibly realized and incredibly wasted potential.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

It's a great game, but I don't understand replaying it so soon. Too much else to play out there. 

[SaysWho?]

1 hour ago, SFLUFAN said:

You just couldn't wait for New Game Plus to be released, huh?

 

Nah, man. I wanted to try a higher difficulty and work my way up.  

 

2 minutes ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

It's a great game, but I don't understand replaying it so soon. Too much else to play out there. 

 

There are always a lot of games to play. I get the urge to replay games right after beating them after I've gotten used to the gameplay loop. I do it for many games I enjoy that are replayable (The Last Guardian I love, but it's not one to be replayed immediately after) and aren't extremely long (The Witcher 3 is great but I'm not replaying that right after beating it ). 

[StephenO1683]

1 hour ago, SFLUFAN said:

You just couldn't wait for New Game Plus to be released, huh?

Pretty much this.  I want to replay as well but am waiting for NG+. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

To each his own, I suppose. I was kinda glad to move on. :P 

[Nokt]

I actually stopped playing this. Not sure if it was a lack of interest or just in a gaming slump.

I should probably pick it back up in the near future to find out which.

[Emblazon]

I felt a little let down by the game, not so much because of anything in the game, but because of the design--it's significantly smaller in scale that the previous entries, and a lot more personal. It's the Logan of the GoW series. 

 

The entire game was to deliver the wife's ashes. I had always assumed that would be a stepping point that propelled the game to a larger story, but nope, that was it. When the story ended, I was just sitting there thinking to myself, "that's it?"

 

And it was a rather cheap decision to not unlock the entire world until after beating the story. 

 

God of War has always been as epic as the name implies... this entry simply wasn't. For what it was it was fantastic, I was just expecting more. 

[AndyD]

I want to play again but waiting to see if they do a new game + 

[SaysWho?]

13 minutes ago, AndyD said:

I want to play again but waiting to see if they do a new game + 

 

They're doing one.

[TheLeon]

I really loved it, but by the time I finished the main story (and a decent amount of side stuff along the way) I didn’t have any desire to keep playing. 

[NeoJoe]

22 hours ago, SaysWho? said:

 

They're doing one.

Can't wait! I would love to replay this game. I loved it and got the platinum.

[ALIEN-gunner]

I got bored of it rather quickly. 

[SaysWho?]

22 hours ago, NeoJoe said:

Can't wait! I would love to replay this game. I loved it and got the platinum.

 

Yup, there are some games that I can do everything and still want to replay it just because it's fun and a great experience. GOW is almost one of them just because I haven't gotten all artifacts/ravens yet (I'll likely do those in a future playthrough as I'm progressing). After doing the biggest side missions, it feels weird to go after Odin's ravens.  

[Biggie]

20 hours ago, ALIEN-gunner said:

I got bored of it rather quickly. 

Me too. Every area was sort of the same.  You’d always come across some sort of puzzle that needed to be solved to open a chest or find a new path. It was a closed off open world if that makes sense? Everything seemed like it was on rails. 

[SaysWho?]

11 minutes ago, Biggie said:

Me too. Every area was sort of the same.  You’d always come across some sort of puzzle that needed to be solved to open a chest or find a new path. It was a closed off open world if that makes sense? Everything seemed like it was on rails. 

 

The best term is "wide linear." You're not a complete open-world like Horizon or Zelda or GTA, so there's still a more focused thrust to the game, but it does make room for exploration. The Last of Us and Uncharted 4 and Bloodborne are examples as well as both allowed some exploration in wider areas to explore and pick up treasures/items, and in Bloodborne's case, allowed you to do side missions and optional bosses. God of War, likely with the increased power of the PS4 relative to the PS3, was able to take it to another level with more of a sandbox approach and a bigger world to navigate, but the areas were still more focused in level design.

 

This thread is from 2013 but does a decent job separating linear, wide-linear and open-world, I think.

[ALIEN-gunner]

5 hours ago, Biggie said:

Me too. Every area was sort of the same.  You’d always come across some sort of puzzle that needed to be solved to open a chest or find a new path. It was a closed off open world if that makes sense? Everything seemed like it was on rails. 

I do wish the game let me explore it when I wanted to instead of opening up after to finish the the story. The gameplay was kinda repetitive and the same. You go to an area, solve a simple puzzle, kill some samey bad guys then a mini boss. It's well made but way overrated. 

[Biggie]

40 minutes ago, ALIEN-gunner said:

I do wish the game let me explore it when I wanted to instead of opening up after to finish the the story. The gameplay was kinda repetitive and the same. You go to an area, solve a simple puzzle, kill some samey bad guys then a mini boss. It's well made but way overrated. 

Not GOTY that’s for sure. 

 

[Paperclyp]

I fell off the game hard. It starts slowly, to its detriment. I actually finally got to the good stuff, but the game wore out its welcome in those first few hours, so I just needed to take a break. 

 

I hope to go back soon. There’s a lot to it, but the hype didn’t prepare me for the beginning slog. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

I mean, kill enemies and maybe solve some puzzles is the key element of any action game. I'm not sure why people expected any different. 

 

The game is great, despite some flaws. 

[Xbob42]

I thought God of War was really awesome, the combat was super fun. The puzzles were okay, but not amazing. The dialogue and story in general were very enjoyable. The game wasn't without flaws, same as any game, but I do look forward to how it will be improved upon in the sequel. We do see a great of example of over-hype, though. Even if you believe the game is every bit as good as you say it is, that's always going to set someone else's expectations much higher than is realistic, and thus we end up with disgruntled people who are unhappy that it wasn't the perfect game they saw in their mind's eye.

 

It's easy to then think "Well that's their fault!" But is it? Part of the reason I think God of War is so good is because my expectations were it to be an okay Ubisoft-style game like Horizon was, and it was way better. Our expectations matter, a lot.

[stepee]

5 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

I thought God of War was really awesome, the combat was super fun. The puzzles were okay, but not amazing. The dialogue and story in general were very enjoyable. The game wasn't without flaws, same as any game, but I do look forward to how it will be improved upon in the sequel. We do see a great of example of over-hype, though. Even if you believe the game is every bit as good as you say it is, that's always going to set someone else's expectations much higher than is realistic, and thus we end up with disgruntled people who are unhappy that it wasn't the perfect game they saw in their mind's eye.

 

It's easy to then think "Well that's their fault!" But is it? Part of the reason I think God of War is so good is because my expectations were it to be an okay Ubisoft-style game like Horizon was, and it was way better. Our expectations matter, a lot.

 

So, I should stop telling people I think it’s one of the finest games ever made then? :P

[Xbob42]

6 minutes ago, stepee said:

 

So, I should stop telling people I think it’s one of the finest games ever made then? :P

Nah, I'm not sure what the solution to this little problem is. I think it's just part of the process.

[Rev]

I loved the story but wish there were better puzzles.

[eggydoo]

19 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

 hype didn’t prepare me for the beginning slog. 

For real?  The beginning was so intense I had to take a break from it when I finished lol.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

The beginning was definitely slow. Probably why it took me so long to finish the game, because I couldn't force myself to play for extended periods at the beginning. 

[SaysWho?]

20 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

I fell off the game hard. It starts slowly, to its detriment. I actually finally got to the good stuff, but the game wore out its welcome in those first few hours, so I just needed to take a break. 

 

I hope to go back soon. There’s a lot to it, but the hype didn’t prepare me for the beginning slog. 

 

The reviews prepared me quite well that it didn't start with some Poseidon battle from the get-go.  

[Paperclyp]

2 hours ago, SaysWho? said:

 

The reviews prepared me quite well that it didn't start with some Poseidon battle from the get-go.  

I didn’t need that, but it takes them so long to really even reveal what the game actually is, from both a gameplay and plot standpoint. Man it’s a slog. 

 

I was actually surprised to see any push back on saying it starts slow. 

[SaysWho?]

2 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

I didn’t need that, but it takes them so long to really even reveal what the game actually is, from both a gameplay and plot standpoint. Man it’s a slog. 

 

I was actually surprised to see any push back on saying it starts slow. 

 

A second playthrough honestly doesn't feel as slow since you quickly get to the first huge boss fight. The first playthrough is a big transition from earlier games, so even knowing that it started slow as reviews I read indicated, it's still a different kind of beginning that I wasn't used to at the time.

 

I thought the game was actually pretty quick with the plot: getting the ashes to the top. It's more character-driven than plot-driven. From a gameplay perspective, it works its way up with some smaller battles, a mini-boss, all the way to the first boss, so I didn't feel the gameplay reveal was slow at all? 

[Man_of_X]

People in this thread, holy fuck! 

 

I'm waiting for new game plus to give this another run. 

 

Game was fucking amazing from start to finish.