God of War

[magval]

I realised after four or five days that I wasn't interested in (or able to properly understand) much of the upgrade/runic attack system that I'd been slavishly roaming around side missions to try and improve, and decided to just focus on the story, and the game improved immediately and drastically.

It pushes you away sometimes with its insistence on Americanisms (me and the cub had a falling out after a pivotal story point and he wouldn't say anything but "whatever" until the next main part of the story. That's the only thing he would say, literally, for about fifteen or twenty minutes) but it's a bloody good game and without spoiling anything, it's clearly the first of a new run of Norse-based titles. Sets the future of the series up nicely but works perfectly well as a standalone game. Loved it. Like your man above said, it is absolutely a God of War game, just a little slower in getting there.

[madhair60]

Started playing this last night. Yeah, it's God of War as fuck. Loving it.

[Hank Venture]

While it's a really good game, it has some serious flaws in my opinion. One is that fast travel doesn't unlock until after the story is complete, for some reason. A more serious complaint is the lack of enemy variation. Trolls upon trolls as mini bosses, and not really any memorable boss fights either, apart from The Stranger. Who cares about 50 variations of trolls and ogres? The whole point of having it set in a mythology is that you can fight gods with name recognition. They've obviously saved all the good ones until later in the series, which sucks. Here you get some generic dragon fight, who cares.

[Paul Calf]

I agree. I think it's a bit monotonous.

Sorry.

[magval]

I used to binge games. There was a time where, so long as the game was halfway decent, my first session with it would routinely be at least eight hours in length. I'd usually wait for a weekend or ideally a week off just to get that first session in.

I can't do it any more unless I'm completely hooked, like to the point of not noticing the time going. As a result I've become much more relaxed about playing games. In the past, I couldn't stand the notion of not finishing something in two or three days and will now play like a normal person. As a consequence, playing this took me over a week, in bursts of one to at the most four hours.

Playing it like this, I didn't notice any monotony, but if I'd tried to play it for eight fucking hours, yes, it wouldn't have held up. I've only noticed that retrospectively.

I also had no idea how long I'd been playing it and how much was left, so it didn't occur to me 'til I'd finished it that the last boss was THE last boss, and I too was left thinking "well, where's all the other cunts?".

I still enjoyed it, and will enjoy remembering playing it, but I won't be doing any endgame stuff with it. Can't be bothered completing any of those ghosts' quests, like going round the little islands and sleeping in Lynn's dead mum's bed five times so Atreus The Little Cunt God can spare his conscience.

[wasp_f15ting]

Completed the main story.. bloody hell what a cracking game.
The sound design, the fighting mechanics, the graphics were all well worth the 40hrs I plunged in.
I still need to kill all the Valkyries.

If you own a PS4 you must get this game.

[brat-sampson]

Very near the end of this. I'll probably go through the last Dwarven side-quests first, check out Niflheim and maybe try a couple more Valkyries (of which I have managed to kill a sum total of 1. At this point I've pretty much come to terms with the fact that this won't be the game where we smash through Thor, Loki, Odin and the rest as the world descends into Ragnarok but the stage they've set for when that shit inevitably *does* go down is marvelous.

[Paul Calf]

And Atreus is pissing me the fuck off. I really wish the ranged attack cursor wasn't disabled for friendly fire because I'd send the little cunt plunging into a Helheim ravine.

Pretty but vacant is my summation. Parts of it are breathtaking but I'll probably bump it off storage not long after I've finished the main strand.

[Paul Calf]

Mere minutes after posting this, I hit a game-breaking bug that's going to stop me completing it and I'm not sure I can even be bothered reporting it. It's one of the few times I've felt cheated out of the time and money investment I've made in a game.

[Hank Venture]

Lol. What bug?

[Paul Calf]

It'd take ages to explain, but basically it's a sap wall whose crystal doesn't explode when stroppy cunt shoots it.

[bgmnts]

Git gud?

[Paul Calf]

No, it's a broken mechanic.

[magval]

I had a few times where the game glitched like that and restarting from the checkpoint in the options menu fixed it, try that.

[brat-sampson]

Yeah, sounds like reloading the area would fix it. Not exactly game breaking, more 'annoying'. Finished now. Can't decide if I want to plug through the optional realms/bosses... Part of me's tempted to give it a go, and it's better than following a walkthrough to grab collectables, but combat challenges have never been my thing, and I always find with games that regardless of how invested I feel while playing through, the immediate come-down after the credits roll leaves me with almost no interest in returning. Recent exceptions have been Mario Odyssey and Celeste, but GoW? Hmm.

As I said before, this caught me right when I was in the mood for a lengthy cinematic SP action adventure, and it managed to be exactly what I wanted. I liked the little exploration elements, the range of areas, the middle ground between linearity and open sub-regions with optional quests leading to entire areas you'd never have to go to if you just followed the main story, with additional lore and whatnot. The story was a little underwhelming, and I really would have liked a couple more Large-scale boss encounters, but the world design and table-setting they've done was all great and I'm looking forward to the next one. I think I felt similarly about GoW 2, where I was expecting the scale to shoot up suddenly and instead you spend almost the whole game on this one enclosed temple/island, large as it is. Then GoW 3 managed to meet and exceed all those expectations, so I know they're capable of pulling it off when they choose to. Here's hoping the sequel can tackle more of that kind of thing.

[Paul Calf]

Fuck's sake.

Mardy Bastard fires two different types of arrow. You can switch on the fly.

[Hank Venture]

lmfao idiot. more like god of bore and/or snore.

[Spiteface]

Had it over a week, not finished it and rather bored with it in places.

Trading it in for something else ASAP.

[The Boston Crab]

This is the most overrated game of the last five years. Boring as fuck. Really wish I hadn't been swept along by the bullshit. I swear Sony have these journo cunts in their pocket. Chode of War.

[Mobius]

Yeah once you get over how polished and slick it all is, it's very repetitive and has little replay value.

There's no reason to travel about and very few optional things to do. Same old loot system as any other game, simple combat and boss fights are lame.

I thought you would get to murder all the Viking Gods but you just clown about with your annoying son. Why does every game have to have a flipping kid you've got to look after.

[The Roofdog]

Haven't finished it. Don't think I'm going to.

[popcorn]

Hello I'm bumping this to ask a boring question.

I keep seeing things I'm fairly sure I'm supposed to be able to shoot with ice arrows, but seemingly I haven't got any ice arrows yet. The internet says you switch arrows with the d-pad but nothing happens when I do that. Am I supposed to buy some? Upgrade something? Do I come back to these bits later once I have them, Zelda-style?

[Bazooka]

Have you toggled on tank controls first?

There aren't ice arrows, think you are thinking about the light arrows, where you can make bridges of what look like mist. It's up on the dpad, the arrow symbol will be blue, been a while but the other is red? (shock arrows).  I think the witch in the woods gives you the ability for light arrows and you beat the dragon later for shock arrows.

[popcorn]

Have you toggled on tank controls first?

There aren't ice arrows, think you are thinking about the light arrows, where you can make bridges of what look like mist. It's up on the dpad, the arrow symbol will be blue, been a while but the other is red? (shock arrows).  I think the witch in the woods gives you the ability for light arrows and you beat the dragon later for shock arrows.

Oh the witch hasn't given me any arrows yet so I guess that's it, thanks.

I was a bit concerned because the game feels like a linear Naughty Dog sort of thing so it wasn't clear if i'd be able to backtrack with new tools or if I was missing loads of puzzles.

I am finding the game overall fairly boring - the writing is the sort of writing that thinks it's good but isn't - but hoping it heats up a bit.

[AsparagusTrevor]

Oh the witch hasn't given me any arrows yet so I guess that's it, thanks.

I was a bit concerned because the game feels like a linear Naughty Dog sort of thing so it wasn't clear if i'd be able to backtrack with new tools or if I was missing loads of puzzles.

I am finding the game overall fairly boring - the writing is the sort of writing that thinks it's good but isn't - but hoping it heats up a bit.

You definitely backtrack, once the story is finished the whole world is opened up, plus extra worlds that you don't visit in the story. There's actually a hell of a lot more to do after the story.

I loved the story but it all took a bit of time to click. I think it gets better when you meet Mimir but I won't go too much into that.

[brat-sampson]

Have you toggled on tank controls first?

There aren't ice arrows, think you are thinking about the light arrows, where you can make bridges of what look like mist. It's up on the dpad, the arrow symbol will be blue, been a while but the other is red? (shock arrows).  I think the witch in the woods gives you the ability for light arrows and you beat the dragon later for shock arrows.

Haven't touched the game for 2 years and it was on the second reading I decided this wasn't a troll post.

[magval]

Stuck this on for five minutes the other day to test my PS4 Pro and his cunt son had come out with two Americanisms in about five minutes. I'm just one of those cynical grumps who can't not hate a child who says "that's what you get" while stabbing a dead monster, I suppose.

Finished this in a day or two but don't remember one moment of fun in the whole experience and it put me off playing games for fucking ages. Gorgeous, massive, sparkly, luscious and empty. World Serpent is cool though.

[popcorn]

Stuck this on for five minutes the other day to test my PS4 Pro and his cunt son had come out with two Americanisms in about five minutes.

I think the dialogue just feels wrong and flat in several ways.

I hate the fact that Kratos doesn't use contractions. I totally understand why they've done it - it's because he's epic and so on - but it just feels so forced and self-conscious and lame-fantasy. If he said "I don't know" instead of "I do not know" it wouldn't sound stupid.

I hate that the kid is this all-American gee whiz boy scout but still calls his dad "Father", not "Dad". Again, it's because of the world and setting, but every time he shouts "Father!!" it sounds forced, it doesn't scan with his blandly cheery characterisation or acting. If he'd said "Dad" it wouldn't sound stupid.

I'm really struggling with this game tbh, there's nothing really exactly wrong or bad about it, it's just completely lacking in X factor. Just a slog. Going to take strength of will for me to keep going with it while Last of Us 2 is waiting.

[Noodle Lizard]

Was I right not to get this, then? The hype was unbelievable, but everything I saw of it made it look like an absolute slog, with all the fun of GOW 3 (the last one I played) removed in favour of a kind of The Last Of Us po-facedness which seemed completely at odds with the series' basic conceit (i.e. twatting mythological creatures in increasingly gory manners) whilst also retaining dull "gamey" mechanics like grinding for items and puzzle-solving. Bear in mind, I didn't really like The Last Of Us either for similar reasons - if you want to basically show me a film, stop interrupting it by making me figure out how to get up onto ledges.

[popcorn]

I'm still not far into it but so far it feels like Last of Us without the good writing and with a pile of stock fantasy and RPG-y elements. Menus where you equip amulets, witches that go on about the Bifrost Light of Alfheim or whatever. Might be the worst of both worlds for you.