GOD OF WAR

And finished. A little surprised at how short the main game is. The praise for the story is not warranted IMO, but I really enjoyed killing monsters. That is my review of this game of war called god of war.

So I'm not much of a gamer (haven't owned a system since NES), but back when I lived with some gamers I played God Of War I and II and had a blast and was thinking about trying to pirate one of these to help fill the quarantine time.
1) Which is the best of the series?
2) Am I wrong in thinking If I just get the right usb wireless controller I can play one of these off my PC, either straight up pirated or through some other <$40 means?

I'm a bit into this now and really enjoying it. It seems like a real technical marvel, but that's coming from someone who has more or less missed out on decades of advances.

The fingerprints of The Last of Us are all over this game.

I'm still enjoying this, though I can see why someone might not like this type of game. It's almost more of an interactive cartoon, but some of the puzzles and battles are tricky. Looks great throughout, of course, really impressive. The one problem I've run into (which I haven't yet tried to remedy, maybe it's easy) is sometimes I'll, say, open a set of doors that in turn seems to advance the story, but it then forces me forward when I was hoping to backtrack and get some other stuff/exploring done first. I think I'm still pretty early in the game, though, so I assume there will be time for exploration later. On the plus side (which again could be a negative for some) nothing is so difficult or confusing that I've had to look up solutions, so I've been playing it blind, which means I have no clue if I'm missing tons of stuff. I assume I am.

2) Am I wrong in thinking If I just get the right usb wireless controller I can play one of these off my PC, either straight up pirated or through some other <$40 means?

Still loving this game, tons of fun, impeccably designed and written so far, just challenging enough at times, but imo only when you want it to be.

Had my first valkyrie fight, which was pretty cool (and I understand they only get more difficult). I really like the writing in this, and heck, the relationship between bonehead and his kid; when Boy was awol I kinda missed having him around! But there are so many fun details, from listening in to Atreus yapping with the talking head to watching the boy waste time while I'm standing around, exploring, sliding across ice. A lot of work went into all of this, and if there is some degree of repetition in the battles and boss reskins, I'm not bored of them yet. The only drag is the fast travel system, which is (ironically) kind of tedious, but it's not the end of the world.

I miss Josh Plays Dark Souls

Bloodborne is in the queue! DS2 is not off the table, either. And Sekiro.

Nice. I think you would have the best time with Sekiro, since it's tuned for single player. Bloodborne is a little faster paced (aggression is encouraged), DS2 is slower paced (more similar to DS1 in that respect, although in every other respect its the odd one out - animations, mechanics, etc). And Sekiro has a very particular rhythm as far as defense and offense are concerned, but it's cool.

Second valkyrie down. I basically move the plot forward one step at a time, then spend a bunch of time on side quests. Only just now realized that I haven't been upgrading as often as I should, and that I haven't equipped some pretty powerful stuff I had in my arsenal. Dunno if it's my settings, but one thing I like that makes things easier is that when you die a few times in a row, it seems the next time you start the fight the enemies are already down in health a bit, like a handicap. Makes you feel less bad for being, like, one Sparta Fart away from beating a boss before dying, since you don't have to start from scratch the next time.

You've taken down more Valkyries than I have now!

This game could be called "God of Spam," lol.

I've not been following a guide for this one, because it's pretty straight forward, so I literally have no idea how far I have to go, but I feel pretty overpowered right now, which is still kind of fun. It could simply be because I did something out of general order and came back over-equipped or something. Also, only just now realized the neat trick this game plays with load times. It's all designed to look like one seamless interrupted "shot." That is, the only time the screen goes dark is when you die and restart. Other than that, the cut scenes and other stuff is integrated seamlessly and unbroken into the action, which is cool.

Oof, maybe I got lucky with those first two valkyries, because the next two I faced kicked my ass with "Dark Souls" expediency. That's usually a hint to come back later, especially when it comes to optional bosses.

Amusingly, I just finished the main storyline. I was convinced there was going to be some sort of bait and switch and final boss or something, but then the credits started rolling and I thought, huh. Oh well, there are still all these side quests and other things to do. And I find the writing and design and all that stuff absolutely impeccable, so I may stick with a bit longer, just for fun.

Anyway, that's the downside of not following any guides. Surprises abound, but no one to intervene and say, hey, you are getting close to the end of the game, maybe take a break from the main quest and go do all this other fun stuff first.

Did you see the secret ending?

No! But I leaned it exists when I googled to see if that was really the end.

Wow, full blockbuster tease! Surprised they didn't announce that as part of the PS5 thing.

going in

Who could care about Kratos at this point? He's an irredeemable asshole and he spends the whole game killing EVERYONE
― i'm gonna need a +1 so me & a friend can kick you in the balls (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, July 20, 2010 11:35 PM

yeah, this game is basically, can an irredeemable asshole be redeemed? should they?

paired with a nice subplot of "will i be able to sacrifice my chattering pre-teen to another god in exchange for a better weapon?"

You know he's thinking about it.

since kratos is the strong silent type, i made sure to speak for him throughout the game, firmly reminding my son that he would be traded at the very first opportunity for personal gain, and that my only remaining hope for my own life was to find that opportunity and take advantage of it

started God Of War this week. right now i'm paddling around a lake trying to shoot green parrots and grudgingly helping out spirits. fun game, even if it's a bit more 'on rails' than I'm used to. also Kratos is an absolute lunk who regularly refuses to do what i ask him. Atreus is a pain in the arse. beautiful game though, and never boring

what is the relationship between this and Horizon? is it by the same team in any way? so many similarities

no relationship other than them both being made by sony-owned studios

I am all over this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE-4GvjKcfs

That looks very good, although are those the PS5 graphics? I'm still struggling to see much improvement on PS4. Atreus especially looks like a talking dummy. I bet it'll be awesome though. Must go back and defeat those bloody valkyries one day.

they need to go on a quest... for winter jackets!!

Eh, they're Gods, they keep it cool.

xpost Yeah, I never finished with the valkyries. I find it hard to keep going once I finish a game's main storyline, plus they were significantly more difficult than anything else in the game.

As I understand it the biggest improvement on the PS4 (so far) is load-times rather than graphics. I mean, the last God o War looked great! I did see this trailer for some Chinese monkey god game in progress, though, and the fluidity and detail looked like an advance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOMIwsupy9k

Of course reviews of the new one (what little I've glanced at or seen excerpted) are over the top positive. This may end up the second AAA game I ever pay full price for.

My contribution to this thread will be GOD OF SNORE.

god of bore

woww

It's going to be an excellent playable movie with some frustratingly twitchy challenges, a decent but if action and some great voice acting. Got it on order

god of chore

Plod of Floor.

i never got past the first third of the last one so maybe i'll try SAD OF DAD 1 again

Too much brooding, not enough rage.

That said, it sucks you in after a while.

What’s the deal with these games, is it like an Uncharted mostly on-rails kinda thing

Hmm, there's a lot more to (the last) God of War than there is to Uncharted. There's some degree of freedom, in that you can determine the order you do stuff, there's exploration, discovery, travel between different realms, etc. Not nearly as linear as Uncharteds, in that you can pick the order of things, hop around do side quests and stuff. Also cool that it essentially plays out without a cut (cut-scenes aside). It's still linked to a plot/story, though, so all that stuff is ultimately in service of a set goal. And it is very heavy on character/writing/brooding as much as combat. So yeah, the combat is really cool and fun, but if you're not into the relationship between Dad and Boy it could be annoying. Personally I loved it and loved the writing. Can't wait to play the new one.

I like this game but I'm not in love with it yet, simply because so far it's exactly as I expected - a pretty-looking follow-up to the 2018 game with some very similar gameplay and challenges. It's still early days yet though, so hoping some curveballs and nice ideas come through.

I wish games like this would stop with the ",Wow look at that, maybe you can climb up there" handholding that happens before you've even properly looked at an area yet

pic.twitter.com/eTqqW9i0p6

— alright 🍊 (@ecnadolep) November 13, 2022

So annoying. Especially after having immersed myself in Elden Ring for the last several months.
It doesn't do anything to dispel the fact these games are very much on rails a lot of the time - the illusion of choice is hard to maintain when Mimir is constantly prodding you to stick to the path.
And that's a shame, because so much about this game is exceedingly well executed. I love how Atreus and Mimir will just start chatting to fill-out quiet stretches of the game. Sometimes I'm concentrating on getting my boat to steer the right way, so I miss what they're saying but it's a lovely touch.

The illusion of choice is one of my favorite things about games. I understand this one specifically has a million accessibility settings. Is there a way to make it harder/less hand-holdy?

People seem to be calling for an option to switch off the hints. I don't remember them being quite so frequent in the original game.

(Minor spoilers)
Another thing I'd like to see in a game like this (and Elden Ring maybe?) is a more populated world that isn't simply enemies + the odd NPC. When I heard we were going to a dwarven city, I got really excited. But as soon as you turn up, it goes into lockdown and you just end up wandering all-but empty streets. Don't know if that will change (I've only played a few hours), but I feel we're at a stage in gaming where we should be able to see a world that is truly lived-in, not just apocalypstic landscapes where anything that moves is programmed to attack you on sight. Witcher 3 and RDR2 did this very well of course. It would be really strange to see this in a Souls game, and I'm not sure FromSoft would ever do it, but it would have been a bold move to do this in, say, Leyndell. They hinted at it with the Radahn Festival.

That's one advantage to waiting to play a game, I guess. Heck, they're still tweaking Elden Ring. I've stayed spoiler free on this one, but googling your issue shows that people had the same problem with Forbidden West (which I also need to catch up on).

Uncharted 4 seems to be handling hints OK. Just vague enough, and then after a while it gives you the option of accepting a more overt hint. RDR2 didn't really offer hints at all, did it? I can't remember. I think games like God of War et al. the problem solving is really secondary to the combat, which is where the sliding difficulty kicks in.