Mr Durand Pierre
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I'd hate to say it, but God of War is a pretty disappointing game.
After hearing all the rave reviews, and seeing the pretty videos and screenshots, God of War had nearly already secured a place in my mind as one of the best games of its generation. And after only a few hours of playing it, it retained that position. But after finally beating it I can say that it's all glitz and glamour with little to show.
First off I should mention that I think God of War is THE BEST looking game on any console today. Better than RE 4, better than Jak 3, better than Halo 2. This is made all the more impressive that it's done on the weakest of the 3 consoles. Furthermore, the game has extremely little load times. They'll pop up rarely and last usually about one second. And as far as I can tell, there was no slowdown whatsoever. On a technical level, this game is a tour de force.
But what would good graphics be without art good enough to match? And God of War excels in that regard as well. There's a good handful of truly awe-inspiring sets that really take advantage of the ancienct Greek mythological setting (though Hades, is a curious dissapointment.) The enemy design is great as well, using the mythological creatures that we all know and love, and tuning them perfectly to fit the tone of the game and not look too cliched. When you beat the game you unlock some behind the scenes, documenteries about the creation of Kratos, the enemies, and the sets. You'll even get to see some old character models that got scrapped, mostly with good reason (though I deffinitely preffered some of the sketches to how Ares should look vs the final product. I didn't care for the fiery hair and liked the ominous masked sketches more). The world in which God of War takes place in is one of the best I've seen in a videogame, and I almost wish that God of War was a completely different kind of game that was more exploration heavy ala Zelda or Metroid, because this world just becons you to go out and see more vs sticking to one set path the designers laid out for you. But I can't really fault the game for being linear, since they're just two different types of games, one not better than another. Linearity is fine, provided that you've got the gameplay to back it up.
And that's where God of War fails. The core flaw with the game is its combat, which is about 90% of the game. The combat starts off amusingly enough, while you watch the beautifully rendered animations of Kratos ripping harpies to shreds, and dealing out a good deal of punishment on armies of undead soldiers. You may be nearly button-mashing your way through it all, but the combat system at least appears to have depth. But by about midway through the game you realize how unbalanced and pointless a lot of the moves really are. You'll find yourself essentially relying on the old 3 button combo of square, square, triangle FAR too often. And maybe to mix it up a bit you'll throw in the ol' hold-L1-while-hitting-squre combo, that is, until you replace it with the similar move with the triangle button. If you haven't played the game that may not make much sense, but what I mean is this: the moves aren't balanced. They're just not. As you buy upgrades and new moves they render the old ones completely useless. Even worse, there were a lot of moves were I just plain didn't understand the difference between them. Like the vertical "helicopter" move vs the horizontal similar move. Either you mash your way through the game, or you end up using the same combos ad infinitum. To make matters worse, the controls felt a bit "gummy" to me. By this I mean that the animations, while EXTREMELY nice, take too long to pull off, so you'll often find that what's going on on-screen isn't keeping up with what's going on with your fingers on the control pad. And often you'll be in the middle of doing a move and unable to block. After playing Devil May Cry 3 (which came out a month earlier no less) where moves can be strung together much faster, and you have greater weapon selection, and the moves are all different and balanced, God of War's combat feels clunky and pedestrian.
I didn't even find the combo system to work very well. Sure you can rack up a ton of hits with some of those special moves, but to what end? You may get a few more orbs, but it all feels pretty pointless, and it seemed to me that it was often luck whether or not you'd be able to string another move into a combo, or not. As I stated before, the controls feel a bit too gummy, and some moves take a long time to pull off and nearly kill your "flow." At first the number of hits tally in the corner is amusing, but I completely ceased to care after awhile.
There are a few other complaints I have about the gameplay. For one, I HATED the single-button mashining finishing move to the minotaurs. For some reason I could do it early on in the game, and couldn't later. Did they get harder, or was there something psychologically going on inside me disabling me from being able to pull it off anymore? While there are many schools of thought on the matter, I believe that 90% of button-mashing is innate. You can improve, but only a little. It's like the 100 yard dash; a short guy couldn't beat a tall guy. In a marathon that might happen, but in the 100 yard dash it often comes down to the length of your legs. And my legs weren't good enough to hit the circle button fast enough. And before you get on my case for being a sissy, may I remind you that I beat Devil May cry 3. But even on normal mode, these minotaurs were messing me up big-time. And given that I find mashing to be an innate ability rather than a learned skill, I think it is the single worst concept to ever hit videogaming, and I'm in awe that designers are still using it today.
I also wasn't a fan of the power-up or health system. Here's what I mean: there's a finite amount of both in the game. Now I beat the game with TONS of chests left over, but if I were to play on hard mode that wouldn't have been the case. And often you cannot backtrack to where your old chests were left due to crappy design choices (like gates closing behind you without warning, for instance). Occasionally the enemies will give you little bits of health, but not much. See, I'm not a fan of games where you can back yourself into a corner. Games where you have to keep multiple save files open in case you mess up on one. I like games like Metroid, where enemeis respawn, but give you health, or where the save points replinish your health, so there's never any concern as to whther or not you should save. Given the type of game God of War is, I would deffinitely have opted for the latter. That way there'd be more structure as far as what you're meant to have going into battle. A lot of games are like God of War in this regard, so it's not exactly game-ruining, but it is an old cliche that it's high time gets the shaft. The currency system is similar, since enemies don't respawn you can only collect so much money (or scrolls, though those red orbs sure don't look like scrolls to me) with no option to go back and get more. I like Devil May Cry 3 more in this regard, where you could replay earlier missions to bulk up your character, if neccessery.
And despite what every review I've read says, I wasn't a fan of the bosses in God of War. There's only 3 of them, and the Hydra has way too simple an attack pattern, and the final boss I found to be pretty stupid. I won't give it away, but due to some quetionable design choices, you are granted fewer moves for it. The middle boss to the game fares better than the others, but even he takes a bit too long to fight. The bosses aren't exactly horrible or anything, but there's just generic patterned videogame bosses. Nothing special at all about them besides how cool they may look.
Now, none of this would be so bad if the game relied less on combat. If the game was half combat, and half Prince of Persia-like platforming or Ico-like puzzle solving, it would have been alright. But the "puzzles" are few and far between (and often very straightforward at that), and the platforming could use a bit more polish. The part where you're climbing those spiker rotating towers out of Hades was a particularly great idea with poor execution.
So is the game still fun? The answer is yes, but not for the right reasons, and not for very long. See, after while I found myself simply tollerating the combat because I wanted to see what new cool location the designers had in store for us. There's too much imagination at work in this game to simply give up on it. But chances are you'll never revisit it once you've seen all there is to see (and if I'm not not mistaken I think I found all of the secrets in the game). And despite all my complaints, the game is still fun for awhile, and easily worth a rental. But I can't see much reason to justify it as a purchase. Not while it still retails for $50 anyway.
Pros
-A technical tour de force
-lot of imagination
-some well designed combat scenerios
-it's fun for awhile
Cons:
-the combat isn't good enough to sustain a 10 hour game, let alone any replay value
-not enough puzzles or platforming
-dated health system
-rapid button-mashing
-generic bosses (and in such small portions).
For gameplay I'd give God of War a 7.0, but as a whole package it's deserving of an 8.0.
After hearing all the rave reviews, and seeing the pretty videos and screenshots, God of War had nearly already secured a place in my mind as one of the best games of its generation. And after only a few hours of playing it, it retained that position. But after finally beating it I can say that it's all glitz and glamour with little to show.
First off I should mention that I think God of War is THE BEST looking game on any console today. Better than RE 4, better than Jak 3, better than Halo 2. This is made all the more impressive that it's done on the weakest of the 3 consoles. Furthermore, the game has extremely little load times. They'll pop up rarely and last usually about one second. And as far as I can tell, there was no slowdown whatsoever. On a technical level, this game is a tour de force.
But what would good graphics be without art good enough to match? And God of War excels in that regard as well. There's a good handful of truly awe-inspiring sets that really take advantage of the ancienct Greek mythological setting (though Hades, is a curious dissapointment.) The enemy design is great as well, using the mythological creatures that we all know and love, and tuning them perfectly to fit the tone of the game and not look too cliched. When you beat the game you unlock some behind the scenes, documenteries about the creation of Kratos, the enemies, and the sets. You'll even get to see some old character models that got scrapped, mostly with good reason (though I deffinitely preffered some of the sketches to how Ares should look vs the final product. I didn't care for the fiery hair and liked the ominous masked sketches more). The world in which God of War takes place in is one of the best I've seen in a videogame, and I almost wish that God of War was a completely different kind of game that was more exploration heavy ala Zelda or Metroid, because this world just becons you to go out and see more vs sticking to one set path the designers laid out for you. But I can't really fault the game for being linear, since they're just two different types of games, one not better than another. Linearity is fine, provided that you've got the gameplay to back it up.
And that's where God of War fails. The core flaw with the game is its combat, which is about 90% of the game. The combat starts off amusingly enough, while you watch the beautifully rendered animations of Kratos ripping harpies to shreds, and dealing out a good deal of punishment on armies of undead soldiers. You may be nearly button-mashing your way through it all, but the combat system at least appears to have depth. But by about midway through the game you realize how unbalanced and pointless a lot of the moves really are. You'll find yourself essentially relying on the old 3 button combo of square, square, triangle FAR too often. And maybe to mix it up a bit you'll throw in the ol' hold-L1-while-hitting-squre combo, that is, until you replace it with the similar move with the triangle button. If you haven't played the game that may not make much sense, but what I mean is this: the moves aren't balanced. They're just not. As you buy upgrades and new moves they render the old ones completely useless. Even worse, there were a lot of moves were I just plain didn't understand the difference between them. Like the vertical "helicopter" move vs the horizontal similar move. Either you mash your way through the game, or you end up using the same combos ad infinitum. To make matters worse, the controls felt a bit "gummy" to me. By this I mean that the animations, while EXTREMELY nice, take too long to pull off, so you'll often find that what's going on on-screen isn't keeping up with what's going on with your fingers on the control pad. And often you'll be in the middle of doing a move and unable to block. After playing Devil May Cry 3 (which came out a month earlier no less) where moves can be strung together much faster, and you have greater weapon selection, and the moves are all different and balanced, God of War's combat feels clunky and pedestrian.
I didn't even find the combo system to work very well. Sure you can rack up a ton of hits with some of those special moves, but to what end? You may get a few more orbs, but it all feels pretty pointless, and it seemed to me that it was often luck whether or not you'd be able to string another move into a combo, or not. As I stated before, the controls feel a bit too gummy, and some moves take a long time to pull off and nearly kill your "flow." At first the number of hits tally in the corner is amusing, but I completely ceased to care after awhile.
There are a few other complaints I have about the gameplay. For one, I HATED the single-button mashining finishing move to the minotaurs. For some reason I could do it early on in the game, and couldn't later. Did they get harder, or was there something psychologically going on inside me disabling me from being able to pull it off anymore? While there are many schools of thought on the matter, I believe that 90% of button-mashing is innate. You can improve, but only a little. It's like the 100 yard dash; a short guy couldn't beat a tall guy. In a marathon that might happen, but in the 100 yard dash it often comes down to the length of your legs. And my legs weren't good enough to hit the circle button fast enough. And before you get on my case for being a sissy, may I remind you that I beat Devil May cry 3. But even on normal mode, these minotaurs were messing me up big-time. And given that I find mashing to be an innate ability rather than a learned skill, I think it is the single worst concept to ever hit videogaming, and I'm in awe that designers are still using it today.
I also wasn't a fan of the power-up or health system. Here's what I mean: there's a finite amount of both in the game. Now I beat the game with TONS of chests left over, but if I were to play on hard mode that wouldn't have been the case. And often you cannot backtrack to where your old chests were left due to crappy design choices (like gates closing behind you without warning, for instance). Occasionally the enemies will give you little bits of health, but not much. See, I'm not a fan of games where you can back yourself into a corner. Games where you have to keep multiple save files open in case you mess up on one. I like games like Metroid, where enemeis respawn, but give you health, or where the save points replinish your health, so there's never any concern as to whther or not you should save. Given the type of game God of War is, I would deffinitely have opted for the latter. That way there'd be more structure as far as what you're meant to have going into battle. A lot of games are like God of War in this regard, so it's not exactly game-ruining, but it is an old cliche that it's high time gets the shaft. The currency system is similar, since enemies don't respawn you can only collect so much money (or scrolls, though those red orbs sure don't look like scrolls to me) with no option to go back and get more. I like Devil May Cry 3 more in this regard, where you could replay earlier missions to bulk up your character, if neccessery.
And despite what every review I've read says, I wasn't a fan of the bosses in God of War. There's only 3 of them, and the Hydra has way too simple an attack pattern, and the final boss I found to be pretty stupid. I won't give it away, but due to some quetionable design choices, you are granted fewer moves for it. The middle boss to the game fares better than the others, but even he takes a bit too long to fight. The bosses aren't exactly horrible or anything, but there's just generic patterned videogame bosses. Nothing special at all about them besides how cool they may look.
Now, none of this would be so bad if the game relied less on combat. If the game was half combat, and half Prince of Persia-like platforming or Ico-like puzzle solving, it would have been alright. But the "puzzles" are few and far between (and often very straightforward at that), and the platforming could use a bit more polish. The part where you're climbing those spiker rotating towers out of Hades was a particularly great idea with poor execution.
So is the game still fun? The answer is yes, but not for the right reasons, and not for very long. See, after while I found myself simply tollerating the combat because I wanted to see what new cool location the designers had in store for us. There's too much imagination at work in this game to simply give up on it. But chances are you'll never revisit it once you've seen all there is to see (and if I'm not not mistaken I think I found all of the secrets in the game). And despite all my complaints, the game is still fun for awhile, and easily worth a rental. But I can't see much reason to justify it as a purchase. Not while it still retails for $50 anyway.
Pros
-A technical tour de force
-lot of imagination
-some well designed combat scenerios
-it's fun for awhile
Cons:
-the combat isn't good enough to sustain a 10 hour game, let alone any replay value
-not enough puzzles or platforming
-dated health system
-rapid button-mashing
-generic bosses (and in such small portions).
For gameplay I'd give God of War a 7.0, but as a whole package it's deserving of an 8.0.
ing awesome though, even though the escape from the hydras mouth move was a total rip off of Ninja Gaiden-- you do the same exact thing on the golden dragon you have to fight. But it's such a cool move that it deserves to be in every game ;-)
