GOD OF WAR

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.

xp Skyrim managed that "living world" thing, as did BOTW, IMO

I'm hearing myself say "SHUT THE FUCK UP" way too often while playing this game. There is absolutely no need for Atreus to say "Looks like the main entrance to the mine is blocked, but maybe this enormous cave right next to it which is really obviously there and definitely the only feasible way forward". He tells you about stuff before you've even clapped eyes on it yourself. Maybe this is what like having a kid and visiting the zoo is like? I just want a minute to explore please.

Meanwhile, a lot of the bosses are really tough and once you're in the fight, you're locked in - you can't evade and go spend some hacksilver on power ups, no. You HAVE to fight the boss until you beat him.

And while the boss fights have been really tough and challenging so far, I'm quite bored of having to stop my exploration every few minutes to basically have the same kind of fight with the same kinds of grunts over and over again. They're not especially challenging, they're just inconvenient and take a lot of time to wear down because there are often loads of them.

I am enjoying the story so far though, and the audiovisual experience.

Speaking of haptics, anyone on PS5 find that your L2 makes a quite loud rattling buzz sound when you're aiming the axe? I'm don't think it was doing this yesterday, so I'm wondering if my controller is faulty

Maybe this is what like having a kid and visiting the zoo is like? I just want a minute to explore please.

― Urbandn hope all ye who enter here (dog latin), Monday, November 14, 2022 5:50 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

dad of war

i haven't played the new one yet but i'm hopeful because i've heard a rumor that it's the one in which Kratos finally murders his son

Atreus knows the narrator that tells everyone what to do as they hit the 10 second mark in trying to figure out what to do. they are best friends, and they are conspiring against you, protagonist Kratos

until they turn the hint system off, i'll pass

god of war VI: Kratos is very angry

Yeah they need to do something about it. The trouble is, the hints are rarely helpful because Atreus is usually telling you about something you haven't even come to yet.

I was in a network of mines yesterday, and naturally I like to have a good poke around before I progress down the main path. But Boy has already raced ahead and is telling me about how to open a specific door. Then 5 seconds later, Mimir is "brothering" me into doing what Atreus just said.
But by the time I've got to the bit they're talking about, they're both completely schtum

It's testament to this game's storytelling that almost every review I read focuses almost exclusively on the narrative and characters as opposed to the gameplay.

I think if I'd got this game earlier on in my gaming career, I would have absolutely loved it - all I wanted back then was a fun, playable movie. And that's what it is.

It's not that the gameplay is bad in any way, but there is a distinct feeling of repetition that sets in after a while. You follow the path, the characters fill in with some exposition, you come across a puzzle which usually involves aiming your axe in the right way, then you have to defend yourself from a wave of about 10 similar looking enemies, lather rinse repeat.

I don't know why I'm finding this a little tedious, as it's standard for games. Maybe if the enemies and combat were a bit more interesting? Or if the stakes were higher? Maybe I've just played too many Souls games recently but I tend to find the standard battles more prohibitive of my fun than actually fun because they can generally be won through brute force and a few easy dodges. And if you die, you just start again. There are loads of special moves to jujj things up but most of the time I'm just doing heavy melee attacks and doing the odd jump-dodge.

Perhaps I've also missed a plotpoint but the ultimate goal of Kratos and Atreus feels indistinct. Yes, Ragnarok is coming, which is about as apocalyptic as it gets, and yet there's little sense of agency, reason or imperative to this adventure so far - it's just "let's go check some stuff out and see what the craic is".

Update: I've all but given up on this. Life's too short. What eventually made me rage-quit was actually a story/pacing problem where an event in the story harked back to a piece of seemingly idle expository conversation that apparently I'd been having while negotiating a tricky bit of parkour about ten hours previously.

One of the problems with this game is that the characters insist on chattering away while I'm concentrating on steering a boat the right direction, or working out where to climb next. And it's not like this is taxing stuff, but these conversations go on a fair while and it's hard to know exactly how important they are: i.e. whether they're important to the story, or if it's just a bit of background flavour dialogue to pass the time. In this case, a major plotpoint just went totally over my head because I'd mentally skipped a conversation between two characters about another character during a mission about a fourth character.

My friend, who was playing at the same time as me, ended up putting it into story mode to get the endless ambushes out the way. That's the other issue: The fights and ambushes happen on the beat. You know exactly when to expect them, and they all turn out more or less the same. Thye end up bcoming a hindrance. You know like random encounters in old turn-based JRPGs - you're trying to get somewhere but everything stops to have a battle. And usually that's fine, because you know that fighting baddies is part of it, and there's usually a tangible reward at the end (like levelling up).

With Kratos, even though there are loads of different weapon and ability upgrades, I don't feel like they're exciting enough. A new axe rond? Why would I swap it for the one I've spent hours upgrading? It makes little difference - I'm still invariably hammering R1 with the odd shield block or dodge to spice things up. In short, I don't really feel the difference when I upgrade - it's the same thing.

Not too far into it but I'm provisionally enjoying Ragnarok more than the first game. I think it helps that it starts in a relatively less toxic place, while having more lols at the same time.

I'm playing a hell of a lot of Ragnarok now and I'm enjoying it way more than 2018 -- for instance, I didn't care enough about 2018 to fight more than a couple of the Valkyries, but I've beaten two of Ragnarok's version and am doing what I can to progress/level up enough to take on more.

That said, I have zero sense of space for any given level (I've definitely been using the accessibility option that points you towards your goal a lot, probably as a crutch), and I'm actually having difficulty catching the finer details of the story. For the latter, I think the gameplay narration is what trips me up -- when I'm moving my character around, I seem to have a pretty limited amount of mental bandwidth and that's largely devoted to where I'm going next and how I'm getting there and probably most crucially are there ravens to kill (i.e. collectibles), and so attention to dialogue gets very tenuous for me.

Been saving this one for a sale, since I know it'll be great and loved the last one. Just a lot on my game plate right now.

Just (barely) started "Ragnarok," and tying into our general PS5/console discussion, I can't imagine any game looking better than this one. Though it's kinda like the reverse of the uncanny valley, where the closer and closer it gets to looking "real," the less it really matters.

I'm actually having trouble getting my brain into gear for this one. I am still very, very very early, so I'm sure I will get used to it, but I feel like I am rustier than I should be, enough so that once or twice already I have appreciated some character going "you might want to hit that thing over there" or whatever.

You can change how quickly the hints come in the game settings, IIRC.

I think it feels balanced right now. I don't care too much about hints, because so many of the puzzles are less about real challenge and more about just finding the stupid thing to hit wit your axe. I do know the part I am at now just dumped a ton of favors and tasks to take care of.

I know this game is supposed to be long, so I think I'm still pretty early game, but I'm enjoying how funny the writing is, and starting to feel the stakes developing into something more compelling than this tentative start.

I've only been playing in fits and starts, so part of it is on me, but I just played a leisurely sequence involving riding a dream yak that made me think, nope, this game and its story still haven't kicked in yet.

I played a significant chunk of it and it felt that way for most of it.

The characters seemed to be ambling around doing "stuff" but the prime objective wasn't especially clear; it wasn't like they had to climb a mountain to bury Loki's mum, they were just sort of bimbling around, completing various tasks, arguing with each other and mostly doing stuff based on hunches.

But maybe that was down to me and my comprehension.

I got EXTREMELY hacked off when a major turning point was only explicable if one were to remember a piece of expository dialogue spoken hours before during one of those conversations they have while you're busy concentrating on climbing up a mountain.

To balance that, I will say its bloody gorgeous and the acting is fantastic and yeah maybe I'll just finish it, possibly on story mode so I can play it like a nice movie

I just hate that thing in games, and I guess movies and books too but it seems to be endemic in games (it happened a LOT in Baldur's Gate 3 too) where they're trying to solve a mysterious problem that no one can understand, and one character just goes:
"Hey, I have no idea why but it just came to me that we should ask the Great Wise Wizard about this, because he knows things. The problem is he's been missing ever since he went walking in the Shaded Woods twenty years ago. The path is long and treacherous, and he's probably dead by now, but if we could just find him I'm sure he'll give us some other quest to do until we figure out what this game is all about...."

I mean, I know that's how plots work to some extent, a sequence of problems and solutions, but this approach feels very tedious and gamey, with characters just working off hunches a lot of the time

This game is so pretty and full of wonders, but so far it's also very wheel-spinny and portentous without being particularly dramatic. That's why I keep assuming I am still pretty close to the start, relatively speaking. There's been so much talk of war, and choices, and prophecies, and there have been heavy moments and characters weighty with death and conflict, but so far just not much of anything moving forward at any particularly urgent pace. There's also a lot of that very YA gimmick of everyone full of secrets, creating problems that could be solved with just a conversation. But then there wouldn't be a story.

And yet, it is nice to look at and the acting is great, so I suppose I have no issues with the time I've been spending with it.

Yup

Checked in on a walkthrough, not for help but just to see what chapter I am on and confirm I have a ways to go. So far this game is pretty easy, but I just hit the first (fakeout) Valkyrie and thought, hmm, if the difficulty level spikes like this, maybe I should keep the settings where they are.

There was one optional area that involved having to fight a valkyrie in order to leave and she was so ridiculously fast and one-shot that after about 20 goes, I went back to an old save before I even went there

Don't really know what's going on, plot-wise, but the game does seem to be picking up. Or did, maybe, because now I'm hanging with Freya again, and they've thrown a ton of side quests at me that seem to be hindering the momentum. Which is not unique to this game, of course. "We have to get the magic amulet from Amfir before he destroys the world tonight! But first, can you help me find some lost chickens?"

OK, still puttering along, but I've got to concede, I just met the Norn, and the story remains intriguing, and the set pieces still surprising and compelling. So ... good things.