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dkirschner's God of War (2018) (PS5)

[January 3, 2025 09:31:53 AM]

This is a great reboot of the series, featuring Kratos and his son, Atreus. They took a little while to grow on me, but as the story gets going, I really enjoyed the contrast between the two of them. Kratos is Kratos—terse, no-nonsense, disciplined. Atreus is a kid. He starts off sort of mopey and whiney, but comes into his own as he becomes a capable warrior (though briefly becomes an immature jerk during his development). They also represent two kinds of gamer: Kratos wants to get straight to the point. Don’t help anyone, follow the objectives, let’s get this shit over with. Atreus wants to help everyone, explore, talk. I see gamer-David in both characters when they talk about what we should do next. Gamer Atreus-David does like to explore when the world is interesting, talk to everyone when the dialogue is good, and help everyone when the quests are fun and unique. Gamer Kratos-David likes to get to the point when these conditions aren’t met, but also feels the pressure to get to the point when he has signed up for a month of Playstation Plus and has six or seven games to get through. Luckily, this game has all those positive qualities and my Atreus side is more in charge. It was cool to see both characters grow. Kratos isn’t a rage-filled monster anymore, and by the end he’s down to explore and help other characters too, or at least supports those qualities in Atreus. There is another dyadic relationship in the game where two characters have strife, but then grow and resolve it. I didn’t expect the blue dwarven blacksmith in the beginning of the game to be an important character, but I ended up really liking him and his brother too.

There are a lot of things to talk about with God of War; it’s far bigger than I remember previous games being. It’s a bit open-world-ish. There are 9 realms, 6 of which are visitable, and one of which is the main “hub” that is explorable (the others are for story paths or optional with trials for gear). Midgard (the hub) is organized around a lake. You can paddle around the lake docking at beaches. I loved the anticipation of what I would find in each place. Sometimes there were rift tears (challenging battles with good rewards); other times there were devious puzzles where I had to put to use various abilities; or runes that Atreus could find and interpret; or a treasure map; or a mysterious locked mirror-door; or some construction of the gods, giants, or Valkyries; or a shipwreck with a vengeful ghost for a quest; or a canyon with a large area full of secrets on the other side; and so on. Going off the main story path was perhaps my favorite thing. The exploration is classic God of War, gated by progression items that you receive through the plot. You’ll dock on a beach early in the game and see chests covered in red vines, a green energy orb hanging from a rope, poison gas covering an area, and think, “What the hell is all this?!” Come back when you get the items that can get you past all that stuff. This exploration gating actually feels pretty natural. The example I gave is a rare one; you won’t go many places where you can’t explore anything or open any chests. Usually, you can do everything there, like, it doesn’t let you go there until you at least have most of the exploration items. There are two (?) points in the game where the water level of the lake lowers and reveals more beaches, which makes for some interesting semi-backtracking (row back around the lake, but there are new beaches, and you’ll have new items for old beaches).

A special shout-out to the puzzles in God of War. They are so good, often relying on perspective and a clever use of multiple abilities to solve. I can’t tell you how many times I walked through an area three or four times and noticed a new item or chest or lock every time I walked through. Or how many times I thought that I couldn’t solve a puzzle yet, only to end up 15 minutes later having figured it out. I remember one island with a chest locked by three runes (those chests have health and rage upgrades, which are very useful). In this case, you had to throw your axe at all three runes in quick succession, but one of them was behind a gate. I could open the gate, but only from the other side, which meant I couldn’t throw my axe at all the runes. I couldn’t figure it out. Elsewhere on the island was a gear covered in vines, and I didn’t know what that gear did or how to get the vines off. Usually, there will be a red crystal that you can explode, but I didn’t see one. So, like 30 minutes later, I’m on a nearby island, and I happen to look across the lake and see a red crystal shining on the side of a cliff amidst some vines. I hadn’t noticed the crystal earlier, even though I’d run by that cliff on the beach several times. So, I went back to the island and exploded the crystal, which removed the vines from the gear. I turned the gear, which cranked a water wheel at the back of the island. The water wheel had some rungs missing. Ah! There was a second beach at the back of the island and I didn’t know why they put that there because it didn’t lead anywhere different than the other beach I’d docked at. Turn the water wheel so that the broken rungs are level with the lake. Paddle your canoe through the water wheel (previously blocked before turning the gear just right), land your boat at the back beach, and then you can manipulate the gate from the correct side and shoot all three runes to get the chest. Yeah, the exploration and puzzles were absolutely my favorite part of the game.

It’s God of War, so there’s violent combat too. I have less to say about this. It was fun, fast, kind of button-mashy in a Devil May Cry way, but more precise than that. You have an axe that you can use as a melee and thrown weapon. There are entire move sets for both. Later, you get Kratos’s signature chains, and there’s a whole move set for those. Then you have Atreus, who uses a bow, and you can give him commands to shoot arrows, which can impart status effects on enemies and distract them. You can also use runic abilities. I really liked the axe and the strategy involved in using it in multiple ways. When you throw it, you actually have to recall it, which is its own skill. If you’ve thrown the axe, then you fight with your shield and bare hands. Recalling the axe can hit enemies and lead into combos. It’s all very smooth. My only gripe is that sometimes there could be too much going on on the screen, enemies on all sides of Kratos, and it could be hard to see, maneuver, and respond to what was going on. Combat is nice and challenging though, and there are a lot of optional hard fights, especially with the Valkyries. I killed three of them, and probably sunk 20 or 30 minutes into learning each one. I don’t know what my favorite fight of the whole game was. Probably the dragon, Hraezlyr. That was badass.

Toward the end of the game, I was very powerful. I’d acquired every skill, upgraded most of my gear to max (though I didn’t have all the best optional gear), and had a ton of extra experience and hacksilver (money). There are some optional realms you can unlock and visit for even better gear, though I’m not sure what you need it for. I imagine there are some even harder Valkyries or something (maybe I killed the easier ones?). Anyway, I stumbled on this awesome combo that could devastate most tough enemies. I could drain a Valkyrie to half HP before the fight even started. Step 1: use the runic ability that is like a sustained laser. Step 1.5: use Atreus’s summon crow ability, and from here on out have him fire shock arrows on cooldown. Step 2: Trigger Spartan Rage and, if you time it just right, you can hurl four giant boulders. Step 3: Use the item that freezes time. Step 4: Use the runic ability that imbues your axe with tons of extra frost damage. Step 5: Go to town on the enemy while time is stopped. At this point, they will get away from you, if they haven’t already, but the laser and Atreus’s summon are probably just about off cooldown again, so you can use those real soon. This combo absolutely wrecks enemies. I loved figuring it out.

I’m really looking forward to playing Ragnarok. Now that I have a PS5 (God of War was my first game on the PS5!! Technically a PS4 game played with backwards compatibility but still counts), I can purchase new games that my laptop won’t run well. I can play Ragnarok, Black Myth Wukong and whatever other AAA games have come out in the past couple years. God of War looked amazing on the PS5. I cannot wait to see how great real PS5 games look.