Genre: Beat-'em-up; Sub-genre: Platformer
ESRB: M (extreme violence and gore, excessive use of boobs)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 9/4
Developer: SCE Santa Monica Studio
Here's the short version: play the first game in the series and then be done with it. It's a complete story with a definite ending. They must not have expected it to be such a big deal because now they've had to crap out 3 sequels (a couple more on handhelds, but whatever), none of which make any sense in regards to that first game. AND none of which are that different. The buttons change, the weapons change, the items change, but the gameplay is too close to the same every time. Hell, we're all horribly tired of quicktime events. But God of War 4 doesn't care, "Here's more overlong animations that require you to match buttons!" I've pretty much summed it all up, but I'll elaborate more anyway.
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| This image summarizes the plot of God of War 2 and 3. Now you're caught up! |
There's a point in this story where Kratos says that too much innocent blood has been spilled that day, so it's good that this game goes back to showing him as being some manner of human type of being. It's nice to think that this is someone that has some kind of goals and motives that fit into a coherent plot, but I can't give it any credit there. This game had me constantly asking questions: "Where am I? What am I doing? How does Kratos know where to go? DOES he know where to go? Where are the other people? Wait, how did a person get HERE? Does Kratos know these people?" It also didn't help that the story is arbitrarily told out of order. I couldn't help but notice laziness abounds: dialogue that was so to-the-point it sounded like a storyboard note, a shrine that was placed inside of a machine where no humans could possible visit it just to give Kratos a timely upgrade, and on and on. It's not as head-bludgeoningly dumb as the last two console sequels, it just feels like they didn't care. Like Santa Monica Studio just wanted to dump this game in our laps and move on to the next thing.
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| Naming a place? Just mash the keyboard! |
My own personal disappointment with this game has always been the gameplay. For being so hyped and triple-A budgeted, I hope for something like Batman: Arkham Asylum. That wasn't the case in the first game, and it never improved from game to game. Sure, each one has some fun and interesting gimmick, but zero polish and fundamental design changes have occurred. It's more than the average Dynasty Warriors sequel, but still in the "pointless re-arranging" design philosophy. Screw it, I'm just going to itemize the problems I have with the gameplay:
-Button lockup and timing (might be a PS3 issue). Not able to always smoothly go from one thing into the next.
-Dodge cancel is most reliable during first three square attacks. This makes them a million times better than all other attacks
-Weird jump arc. Kratos almost goes straight up and down and doesn't fully articulate his legs.
-Elements do nothing. Forget what Pokemon taught you, don't expect any depth. Ex: don't bother hitting icy enemies with fire or whatever. It's just to show off different graphical effect shinies and rewards different orbs based on element.
-Once again: button memory. Mash square ten times, Kratos attacks three to five times before noticing I'm pressing triangle. Do the thing assigned to the button I am currently pressing, please!
-What does rage mode do? (game hint: lightning element allows you to do an attack with invincibility frames)
-Bad footing detection.
-Bad grappling hook detection.
-Too dark to see at inappropriate times... which is a lot of the time.
-New Quicktime Events are just confusing; can't know when player is in control
-Using circle to climb down does nothing most of the time. It becomes entirely disabled.
-Amulet of uruboros item has bad targeting during puzzles
-Too many moves, most have no use.
-Camera is too far away!!!!
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| Borrowing from "Where's Waldo," apparently. |
I was actually super excited to try out the multiplayer part of this game. My understanding is it is PvE (player versus environment, the opposite of PvP) and I figured it might be the Beat-'em-up version of Mass Effect 3's horde mode! Sadly, I rented this title and the multiplayer requires an online pass to access it, so I did not get to try it. That's not entirely my fault, though, man. Games that do this usually let you try it out or get to like "level 5" or something. I blame Sony!
Conclusion:
Still a feast of a game for anyone who wants to control a man who punches mountain-sized monsters. Personally, I wanted to go lower than two stars but it is still a beautiful, ton of work to behold.
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