God of War - PC
This is a weird game in some respect. I'll start off with the weird part.
Level Design and World
The world was FULL of secrets to discover, puzzles to solve, treasures to find, paths to unlock. Which was great fun and absolutely addicting. Even in short bursts, there was always something to achieve and to do. Rewards around every corner, imaginative, creative, challenging, really great tbh. Every area was like a new little sandbox with content, which brings me to the weird part. The game has this beautiful and visually coherent world to explore, full of lore, atmosphere and adventure. But it's so extremely gamey with chests literally everywhere. The world and level design make absolutely no sense whatsoever in the context of the game, PACKED with puzzles, ledges and chests. For example, the changing water levels in the main hub area perfectly aligning with docks, perfectly unlocking new areas and paths is ridiculous. Some chests are being blocked by roots that are only around these few chest in the whole area, so you can come back with an unlocked ability later to open it. Like an area where only one chest has these roots around it and the roots being nowhere else to find. They make no sense.
Speaking of not making any sense. Most of the obstacles in your way are lazy and idiotic. Kratos is a god, strong as shit and so on. But man. I won't describe it, I'll show examples:
There was even a section where I had to throw boy up to a ledge, then push a big stone thing towards it, so boy could jump from the ledge over to the stone thing, to then jump to another ledge to open something..... But everything had the same height. I could've just thrown boy up the final ledge. It was even so low that Kratos could easily pull himself up there. But nope, game has its own incredibly stupid rules. In general, the game does a terrible job with his powers, it's totally inconsistent.
BUT they still pull it off that the world feels coherent, they make it work somehow. Maybe because of the high quality of the visual design and the sense of progression, it still felt somewhat believable to me while playing it.
You visit most places multiple times, with new abilities to unlock shit. There are even optional worlds with arcade like challenges and trials. Everything is pretty damn atmospheric and well designed. I didn't like the backtracking that much because I don't like getting teased all the time with content that will be unlocked later and having to revisit it every time you get a new ability. Yes, it's not mandatory, but I always push to have the best gear at any time, so that may be partly on me. Even though I didn't like the backtracking, I have to admit that the design of the levels was damn smart, multi layered and interesting.
Gameplay
Thank God for the FoV slider and 80+ fps. Combat and exploration felt claustrophobic in the vanilla version. +25% FoV was the sweet spot for me.
As mentioned above, the exploration aspect was sublime. Smart puzzles, interesting areas and endless stuff to find. Loved it.
Combat was very good, the axe is a fun weapon that feels satisfying to use. The combination with bare handed combat, the BOY bow, magical attacks, blades and the shield was really entertaining. The parry was responsive, felt good. Combat design itself was done right. With the enemy attacks being easy enough to read but fast and varied enough to be challenging.
The Valkyrie fight were a great example of this. All attacks had a certan wind up and good clues, these fights were challenging but never unfair.
But I had some issues with it as well. GoW went in the Assassin's Creed direction with toooooooons of STUFF. There was so much to unlock, upgrade, craft, so many different materials and resources, currencies, so many attacks, abilities, buffs, equipment options etc. Which by itself, yeah it's cool and fun. It motivated me. The possibility of having different builds for different fights provided depth. But halfway through the game, I realized that most of it was just unnecessary filler. Didn't need most of it. Many of the attacks, items, abilities didn't enhance the game but we're just there to be CONTENT. Should've been more streamlined in my opinion, it was too much.
Combat was unnecessarily cluttered as well. Spamming the square button every few seconds for the arrow attacks was tiresome and dumb. Special abilities with individual cool downs:
2x L1+R1 (for two separate weapons)
2x L1+R2 see above
2x L1+Circle see above
Pushing both sticks for Dad Rage
Holding square for BOY special ability
And of course countless attacks and combos to unlock, each again with different tiers, buffs, then runes and pieces of equipment with different effects. It was a lot.
Overall though, gameplay and combat were great and I enjoyed playing it a lot. Very motivating, well designed, deep, responsive, action packed.
Presentation
This is very clearly a last gen game, but made by extremely talented artists and devs.
Pros:
- Overall very good looking!
- Character models looked great.
- Very good and natural animations.
- Faces were able to convey emotions well.
- In general, texture detail was very good.
- Good looking effects, a lot of action of the screen.
- Beautiful environments. So well designed and atmospheric.
- Amazing sound design!
Cons:
- The vanilla colors were too green/yellowish. Thankfully, I found a reshade that neutralized it. Comparison below.
- Lighting in general was bad in most scenes. Some have been hand crafted and look good, most are just wrong. After some RT titles, the totally unnatural gamey presentation stuck out to me.
- Many objects look floaty, with bad AO, and look way too bright while being in the shadows.
- Effects and particles don't light up the environment. There is a blue magic effect for example that does nothing to the surroundings.
- Bad reflections. Often reflecting colors that just aren't there.
- Basically no physics for particles and effects.
- Overdone DoF. Everything in the distance is blurred.
Story and Characters
I was surprised by the rather small scale of the story, with Baldur being the main villain here and no active involvement of the other better known gods. But they did a good build up for the next game, especially with Thor, but with Odin as well. I liked the character development of basically all the characters. The little shit wasn't as annoying as I expected. As a father, the story and relationship worked well for me. Well written with interesting turns, enjoyed it a lot! LOVED the setting and the stories from Mimir.
Verdict
Fucking great game. While I have my nit picks and didn't love some aspects of it, they nailed the feeling and minute to minute gameplay. Everything was fun for me. I put a good 60hrs into it.
Strong GOTY contender for this year!