{"id":484,"date":"2018-04-27T23:46:11","date_gmt":"2018-04-28T03:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=484"},"modified":"2018-04-27T23:46:11","modified_gmt":"2018-04-28T03:46:11","slug":"game-ramblings-70-god-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=484","title":{"rendered":"Game Ramblings #70 &#8211; God of War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/godofwar.playstation.com\/\">More Info from Sony<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Genre<\/strong>: ARPG<\/li>\n<li><strong>Platform<\/strong>: PS4<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>TL;DR<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Phenomenally well made game that brings the series out of its brawler roots and straight into a full blown action RPG.<\/li>\n<li>Well written characters and story, to the point where they effectively make you hate the son when he&#8217;s acting like an ass.\u00a0 Does a good job blending in Norse mythology to what was previously a Greek-focused series.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>God of War<\/em> is one of those series that screams Sony first-party, but it&#8217;s been eight years since the Greek timeline games ended.\u00a0 Ya we had Ascension, but that was a prequel and even that was give years ago.\u00a0 After such a long gap, announcing a Norse reboot \/ sequel was already a head turner.\u00a0 Announcing it as a drastic genre departure was another, with this game now being very much an action RPG with all the free roam trappings that come with it.\u00a0 Side quests, item collection, crafting, upgrades, skill trees and more are all there.\u00a0 Despite it all, this is both extremely fitting for the series, and quite possibly the best entry of them all.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_485\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-485\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_son.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-485\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_son-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_son-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_son-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_son-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_son.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-485\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The entire game is the story of Kratos and his son&#8217;s travels, and that&#8217;s where the differences begin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>This first screen shot says a lot about the differences in this game relative to the original.\u00a0 For one thing, Kratos now has a son and he hasn&#8217;t managed to accidentally kill him in a rage.\u00a0 Beyond that though, you start to see little details.\u00a0 The son brings in a set of ranged combat possibilities that add some new depth to the core combat.\u00a0 Kratos is wearing gear that was crafted at a vendor.\u00a0 We&#8217;re clearly no longer romping around in Greece.\u00a0 On the far left, Kratos is using an axe instead of blades (although the blades come back later).\u00a0 Basically, this is still God of War, but it&#8217;s not quite what we&#8217;re used to.<\/p>\n<p>The combat front straddles that line between familiar and new in a really good fashion.\u00a0 This is still melee-chain combat, but it&#8217;s not quite as high speed as the original.\u00a0 You still have your light and heavy attacks, but there&#8217;s a much larger focus on parrying and dodging.\u00a0 Later on in the game, you end up juggling between frost and fire weapons based on the enemies that you are attacking, so there&#8217;s some built-in strategy.\u00a0 The skill tree that is there brings in some familiar special attacks, but the risk of being hit during them is much higher, so their timed use becomes much more important.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the son that ultimately brings in some of the big changes.\u00a0 While his positioning isn&#8217;t directly controllable by the player, his basic move set is.\u00a0 He&#8217;s got arrows that can be fired at enemies, sometimes for additional damage, sometimes for the use of crowd control, sometimes for the use of stunning to allow Kratos to get damage in.\u00a0 He&#8217;s also got some special attacks that can be triggered on cooldowns.\u00a0 However, it&#8217;s his passive skill growth that becomes the most useful.\u00a0 By late game, he&#8217;s got skills that allow him to engage in melee combat more often, including things like hopping on enemies backs as distractions and doing his own quick hitting melee.\u00a0 Basically, as the son grows as a plot device, he becomes inherently more useful as a combat device, and it eliminates the frustration that typically comes with escort-based secondary characters.<\/p>\n<p>Now, that&#8217;s not to say that moving to more of a core RPG combat has removed some of the flashiness. Case in point:<\/p>\n<div class=\"twitter-tweet\"><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" align=\"left\" data-lang=\"en\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Holy FUCK<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/xXmV2Nk4U5\">https:\/\/t.co\/xXmV2Nk4U5<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/c7GgicGWvI\">pic.twitter.com\/c7GgicGWvI<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Dan Weiss (@schenksmill) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/schenksmill\/status\/988980681979125761?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 25, 2018<\/a><\/blockquote><\/div>\n<p>The big flashy scenes are largely reserved for finishers in battle, and more specifically generally against bosses and minibosses.\u00a0 Stun kills on trash enemies also have mini-cutscenes, but these are quick hitters and don&#8217;t try to keep you out of combat for very long.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the changes, the flow of combat feels phenomenal overall.\u00a0 Most engagements are going to be a heavy mix of attacking, watching for enemy tells to parry, or really large attacks to dodge.\u00a0 Its a system of constant movement, rather than a system of waiting for moments, and it really works well.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_486\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-486\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_boat.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-486\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_boat-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_boat-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_boat-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_boat-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_boat.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-486\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">If you want to, you can spend a lot of time in boats exploring<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>If you really have that RPG itch though, this is also a great game for that.\u00a0 Beyond the main story line, there&#8217;s side quests and collection galore.\u00a0 For the most part, these simply exist for purposes of getting more gear, but that becomes important for the post-game content.\u00a0 The end boss is by a long shot easier than some of the creatures out in the world and some of those fights are among the most fun in the game to engage in, so you have a lot of reasons to get out there exploring.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re a lore or collection nut, there&#8217;s also a lot there.\u00a0 Shrines, treasure hunts, rare ingredients, dragons to free, and more are there for exploring.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re really feeling brave, there&#8217;s also two realms that exist purely for the sake of side quests.\u00a0 Basically, once you finish the game you aren&#8217;t really finished if you think you want to get a bunch of hours out of this one.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_487\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-487\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_mountain.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-487\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_mountain-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_mountain-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_mountain-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_mountain-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/godofwar_mountain.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-487\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">At this point in the game I wanted to kill the kid, and that&#8217;s a lot larger of a complement to the developers than it sounds.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>However, the thing that kept me coming back is that this was a well told story.\u00a0 The interplay between Kratos and his son starts off as somewhat hilarious on the surface as Kratos pretty much spends hours yelling BOY GET OVER HERE.\u00a0 However, once the boy finds out what he really is, he becomes effectively a pompous ass for an arc of the game.\u00a0 The fact that I was legitimately pissed at the kid says a lot about how effective their writing was.\u00a0 The gods they meet throughout, the secrets beneath the surface, and to the end of the game the little plot twists that were thrown in were all part of what would make this one great, even for folks watching it like a movie alongside someone playing.<\/p>\n<p>So, I guess I&#8217;m somewhat surprised even if I shouldn&#8217;t be.\u00a0 The <em>God of War<\/em> series has always been somewhat of a hallmark for the quality of Sony&#8217;s first-party teams.\u00a0 However, it always was kind of a brawler with a cool theme, and not necessarily a super deep experience.\u00a0 This one turns all that on its head, giving us an extremely deep action RPG that still feels familiar despite all the changes.\u00a0 The fact that they so fundamentally evolved this series is a phenomenal achievement.\u00a0 This is the type of game that turns other platform traditionalists into PlayStation owners, and I can&#8217;t recommend it enough to go out and play it now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More Info from Sony Genre: ARPG Platform: PS4 TL;DR Phenomenally well made game that brings the series out of its brawler roots and straight into a full blown action RPG. Well written characters and story, to the point where they effectively make you hate the son when he&#8217;s acting like an ass.\u00a0 Does a good &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=484\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Game Ramblings #70 &#8211; God of War&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":488,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,6],"tags":[48,150,29,151],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arpg","category-ps4","tag-arpg","tag-god-of-war","tag-ps4","tag-sony"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}