You know that games series, yeah that one, the one that everyone else in the world seems to play but for some reason you’ve never gotten around to? That one for me is God of War. Being one of the lifetime PlayStation faithful you’d think I would’ve tripped over it at one point or another, but for some reason I just never gave it a look in. That meant when the game underwent a soft reboot in 2018 I put it in the same place that I always did: the deep dark hole of games I’ll never play for no good reason. But that didn’t stop my only-discovered-gaming-as-an-adult mate who insisted, on multiple occasions, that I should play it. So I figured what the hell, the world seems to be celebrating the most recent release of this game in all ways imaginable, there must be something here right?
Yeah there is and the fact that a nearly 5 year old game still stands up today is a testament to just how good it is.
The pantheon slain, his vengeance wrought, the God of War has sought refuge in lands far away from his own in the hopes he can leave his past behind him and live a life free from the perils of godhood. This is what has brought him to Midgard, the ancient lands of Scandinavia where the Norse gods roam the lands. It’s there that he met his wife, Faye, who born their son Atreus. The game starts with you building her funeral pyre shortly after her death, starting your journey to carry out her final wish: to be scattered from the highest peak in all the realms. Such a simple task should be nothing for the Greek God of War, but the gods of these lands have different plans for him. The nature of his god-killer history coming back to haunt him, no matter how hard he tries to escape it.
As a late-in-the-generation game God of War certainly makes very effective use of all the hardware that was available to it at the time. This is made all the better by the enhanced performance mode that was made available to all PS5 owners, giving us a cool 60fps at 4K resolution. Combine that with my HDR TV and well, I’m goddamn impressed just how well a game like this can look. To be sure you can see small things that show the game’s age (like the weirdly visible pores all over Kratos’ body when you’re up close to hiim) but taken at face value I don’t think many people would pin this as a previous-generation game if they didn’t know anything else about it. The performance is also rock steady too, something which you’d definitely expect from a previous gen game on a current console, but I’ve been around long enough to see that’s not always the case. Santa Monica can claim all the credit for this too given they use an in-house proprietary engine.
Having not played any of the previous titles in the series it’s interesting to see what God of War is now. One one level it feels like it takes heavy inspiration from Arkham Asylum with it’s combination of beat ’em up gameplay mixed with a constrained world sandbox for you to explore. On the other hand the construction of God of War feels fundamentally different to the Batman series, leaning much more towards a more linear and curated experience overall. This is definitely not a bad thing from my perspective as a well crafted experience can be just as rewarding as one that lets you build your own narratives within it. However many of the core game mechanics will feel familiar to those who enjoy the genre: fast paced combat with brutal combos, progression systems that you can tailor to your liking and a sandbox world that’s there for you to explore but isn’t necessary if you don’t feel like it. Overall it feels like an exceptionally well balanced experience, one that’s definitely rewards players for the time that they spend with it.
Combat is definitely one of God of War’s standout features, following most of the standard beat ’em up tropes whilst also mixing in some of the series’ own distinct flair to make it interesting. The start of the game can feel a bit stunted, given you don’t have access to the wide array of different armour, augments and items that the game has to offer. As time goes on though you’ll get access to more wide and varied things that will allow you to create your own unique build that works for your playstyle. To be sure, you can look up “broken” builds if you want, but the game does a pretty good job of informing you of what everything does and how it’s best deployed. There will be times where you hit brick walls though as the game does not scale enemies to your level at all. This does make for some fun interactions where you’ll stumble into an end game arena far too early on, but it will become pretty clear you shouldn’t be there after the first 2 deaths.
Most of the higher end challenges are gated behind story missions though and, honestly, I think they’re timed perfectly for when they come into the game. It was about that point where I was starting to not see a lot of challenge in most fights, usually being able to get through all of them on first go without too much of a struggle. The Valkyrie fights though were great challenges, forcing me instead to be far more tactical about things and to seriously look at my build to see how I could optimise it for that specific fight. I see a lot of people describing all of God of War’s combat as soulslike but, in my opinion, it’s only those handful of fights that really are. The rest are straight out of the beat ’em up playbook which is far more fitting for the series.
Progression is an interesting beast, coming to you in the form of multiple different avenues which, initially, are a little bit overwhelming. It’s the age old problem of trying to min/max your character, trying to figure out if it’s worth spending the limited resources you have now on upgrading what you have vs waiting for the next level things to be available to you and buying them instead. If you engage in a little bit more exploration beyond the core story though you’ll quickly find yourself flush with materials, cash and XP to spend on…basically anything you want. In the game’s final 25% or so I was literally holding onto gobs of XP simply because I’d perfectly optimised my build and wasn’t interested in mixing it up any further. Which is great to me honestly, it meant that when I did want or need to shake things up I wasn’t hours away from achieving it: I could just dump a chunk of my resources into a rebuild and off I went.
The semi-open world was interesting, mostly because it made the game feel a hell of a lot bigger than it actually was. To be sure there’s definitely a lot of places you can go exploring if you want to, but if you time how long it takes you to get from one side of the map to the other it’s really not that long. What does sap your time is the typical scavenging, pack rat behaviour all us RPG junkies default to when exploring a world; something that the devs happily exploit by dotting hundreds of chests and puzzles just slightly off the beaten path for you to sniff out and waste 5 minutes on. It works quite well honestly, ensuring that even mild exploration is well rewarded which encourages you to do more, making the world seem a lot bigger since you take so much time to traverse it.
Of course this also means that the game makes use of the standard metroidvania trope of locking away parts of the map from you until you’ve got the required key for them from progressing the main story. I don’t think I’ll ever enjoy knowing that I’ll either have to revisit an area just to get a chest/collectible/quest/etc. or that I’ll be forced to come back through an area by the story due to said roadblock. That’s just a personal preference of mine though and typically one of the reasons why I avoid true open world or metroidvania games as I don’t enjoy asset reuse that’s hidden under the guise of gameplay.
God of War also takes a bit of time to really hit its stride, mostly due to you not unlocking all of the core mechanics until you’re well into it. This is always a big challenge for games that are both seeking to attract a bigger audience whilst retaining their current one: the former wanting to get more out of the game now whilst the former more willing to give the game space to breathe as they know they’ll get what they want eventually. But if you’re willing to give the game anywhere from 4 to 8 hours before you put it down you’ll have a pretty good sense of what it’s about and whether what you’ve seen is enough to carry you through the rest of it.
Coming into the series at this point I was concerned that, even though I knew this was flagged as a reboot, I’d be missing all the nuance that a long time fan of the game would have. So I went and watched this amazing recap of the story so far and, thankfully, it seems that for the most part the devs are looking to start a fresh story from here on out. To be sure, Kratos’ past plays a heavy role in all the things that happen, but I don’t feel like you’re missing a great deal if you haven’t played them. The focus is very much on Kratos and Atreus with a wide cast of supporting characters that are all given the attention they deserve.
Like all other elements of God of War the narrative is well crafted, following many of the Norse god mythologies and turning them into a modern tale that I think anyone can appreciate. Parents are certainly going to derive more from the parent/sibling interactions that Kratos and Atreus go through, as well as their respective character growth through those interactions. But even that’s just one part of a story that, whilst having a main driving narrative, has enough well developed sub-plots that involve the entire range of characters, will give you more than enough opportunities to soak yourself in the world should you wish to.
Coming into God of War this late I brought with me a whole bunch of preconceptions. I thought it’d be a dated, only bearable experience. One that I’d go through just so I could get to the real meat of the current title in the series. But what I got instead was a game that has truly stood the test of time, one that can be played and enjoyed today which will easily hold its own against many current generation titles. Further to that I got to enjoy the worldbuilding that God of War has gone through over the past couple decades, a series that’s drunk deeply from Greek mythology and now seeks to do the same in the realms of the Norse. I also get to go and play the sequel right now, something which I haven’t had the pleasure of doing in a very long time. Truly it looks like I’m starting off 2023 with a bang, and I never thought I’d be thanking 2018 me for it.
Rating: 9.25/10
God of War (2018) is available on PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 right now for $74.95. Game was played on the PlayStation 5 with a total of 21 hours playtime and 31% of the achievements unlocked.
