God of War - What I Missed

This is the original God of War, and this is What I Missed.

God of War is a third-person action adventure, or “spectacle brawler” game developed by Santa Monica Studios and published by Sony. It was originally released on the Playstation 2 on March 22, 2005 here in the US. It was later re-released on the Playstation 3 in the God of War Collection in 2009 and in the God of War Saga in 2012, and was ported to the Playstation Vita this year.

This game is gruesome, gritty, and dark. It’s brutal and challenging but poetic. It’s sexy and badass, and yet smart. Despite what it may seem on the surface, God of War is not a dumb game.

That’s the opinion that I’ve been exposed to for most of the time that I’ve heard of God of War - that it’s just a “dumb hack and slash” game that focuses on nothing but gore and tits.

While there’s certainly a lot of blood, and a couple pairs of tits (but only a couple), this game has a well-developed world, complex puzzles, and an amazing adaptation and interaction with Greek mythology and lore.

Now, I did play through most of God of War 3 at some point (quite a while ago) on the Playstation 3. That was my first introduction to the franchise, from an actual player standpoint. I quite enjoyed my time with it. So I knew what to expect gameplay, wise, when I finally went back to the original God of War game.

The gameplay is about the same - you have quick attacks (Square) and heavy attacks (Triangle). You can jump, dodge roll, block, and use a large variety of combo moves, as you unlock them. You have a couple different weapons to choose from - which you unlock as the game goes on - but typically the one you start with, the Blades of Chaos, are all you need. You also have a selection of spells to choose from that use power from a limited Magic meter. You unlock more spells (and increase the size of your magic meter) as you play through the game.

The combat is fun and addictive, as all spectacle brawlers, or hack-and-slash… or action-adventure games (seriously, how the hell do you define these things??) typically are. The God of War franchise seems to have a certain specific flavor to its combat that makes it especially fun and addicting, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

My one complaint about the combat side of the gameplay is the dodge rolling. The dodge roll is balanced in a way that there is a slight delay before you roll, and you have a small amount of time where you cannot control your character after the roll. This is to balance it with normal running, so that you can’t roll infinitely and gain too much speed. However, it also leaves you open to attack. However, be it the inaccuracy of the PS2 joystick or the game (I’m not really sure which) the roll direction can also be pretty inaccurate. In pretty much all normal fights this is not a problem - the roll still gets you out of the way of the enemy swinging at you, so it works. However, in the battle against Ares at the end of the game, it can be quite detrimental to your progress.

In this battle, the final boss battle of the game, Kratos and Ares become the size of giant Rock-em Sock-em Robots in a tiny lake not suited for arena combat. The dodge roll being inaccurate can make the difference between you actually dodging a very important attack (you can’t just block them all) or just making yourself vulnerable to an even bigger combo.

The game isn’t just about hacking and slashing, killing and slaying, oh no. I’d say about half of the game is killing and the other half is puzzle-solving. There are many, many puzzles in this game - many of which really challenge you to think.

Certain puzzles give you very little hint as to how to solve them and you just have to figure it out (or look up a walkthrough), whereas others you know exactly how to complete, but they are set up in such a challenging way it may still take you 50 times to make it through it.

The Blades of Hades is an example of this. I spent way too much time trying to climb these damn columns, only to make 1 tiny misstep and send myself crashing to the bottom. Often on this puzzle, the hit boxes for the blades are quite a bit larger than you might expect, so even when you think you’re safe, you still get knocked to the bottom.

The soundtrack for this game is perfect for the environments and battles that take place. The voice acting is on point, and the characters feel genuine.

The graphics were great for their time. No matter what I do to upscale my footage, it just looks like a jaggedy, pixelated mess on YouTube, but on my 1080p monitor, upscaled via normal hardware, it looks great.

Overall, this game was a lot of fun, and I’m glad I played through it. However, the puzzles can be quite challenging at times. That’s not a bad thing, though.

Admittedly at times when I’ve had a long, busy, stressful day, I would have preferred a more simple game that was strictly focused on the hacking and slashing - but if I didn’t want to think, I’d just watch TV.

God of War is a great game and the start to what looks to be a full, great franchise. I’ve picked up the God of War Saga HD collection, which has the first 3 God of War games, as well as the 2 PSP-exclusive titles in it, and I’m looking forward to playing the second and third games, as well as those PSP games. Then I will go back to GoW: Ascension, which I briefly started, but never finished.