God of War: First Impressions

I wasn’t planning on writing a first impressions post for God of War but after playing the game for 8 or so hours, I wanted to share my thoughts on the experience to see how or if my opinion on the game will change once I’ve completed it.

Why? Well, I hate to say it but my initial impressions are kind of . . . meh. God of War is a game that I’ve seen so much praise for. Overwhelmingly positive reviews. GOTY awards. But after playing God of War for 8 hours I’m struggling to understand why.

I was going to put together this post after 4 hours of play but I decided that was too soon and that my opinion might change quite dramatically as I progressed. But another 4 hours later and . . . nothing has really changed. I just don’t get it. Is this really the game everyone has been raving about? Now, don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not saying what I’ve played has been bad. No, it’s been . . . fine. Just fine. Okay. Nothing remarkable, but nothing terrible, either.

Visually, God of War is a good looking game. The music is good. Christopher Judge is great as Kratos. The combat has a nice sense of weight to it. I like the setting and all the mythology stuff. But what I’m really struggling to enjoy in God of War is the gameplay both in terms of exploration and combat.

The game opens with a very ‘cinematic’ boss fight. The way the game seamlessly transitions from gameplay to cinematic is technically impressive but I can’t say I found the fight particularly engaging. Just when I felt like I was getting stuck into the fight the game would take away my control and transition into another cinematic scene.

Following this fight I found myself traversing an incredibly linear path with frequent ‘cinematic’ moments and a lot of slow paced walk and talk. Granted, this is the beginning of the game and there’s plot related stuff to set up but, nevertheless, the opening of God of War is pretty damn slow.

‘Exploring’ the environments is also pretty meh. The paths are largely linear, with the odd branching path that either loops back to where you began or simply results in a dead end (because you lack the required story upgrade). And there are treasure chests f**king everywhere. I’m not joking when I say 2 or so hours of my play time has just been opening chests.

Why are there so many chests? It’s like the game is desperate to keep ‘rewarding’ you. But it’s not a reward when it’s not been earned. And very few – if any – of the chests I’ve opened have felt like a genuine reward for overcoming a tough optional fight or solving a neat environmental puzzle. The chests, for the most part, are just there, practically around every corner.

Atreus still hasn’t grown on me. There was a scene early on when I needed him to lower a chain so I could climb up but he kept stopping to mope. I got a button prompt to snap him out of it and continue, but he stopped to mope about three more times before I could finally progress. Maybe it’s meant to be ‘cinematic’ or something but I found it f**king infuriating.

And finally we have the combat which, as I said, has a nice sense of weight to it but it’s also pretty . . . basic? You have a light and heavy attack and a couple of special moves you can trigger on a cooldown, but even though I’ve now unlocked more combo moves and more special attacks (you can only have 2 active at a time) the combat still feels really simple and repetitive.

I could bump the difficulty up from Normal to Hard, but that’s not going to make the combat more complex – it just turns the enemies into even bigger damage sponges. At first, I thought God of War might be like a third person DOOM in the sense that there would be this brutal ‘flow’ to combat as you chain-kill your way from one enemy to the next.

But . . . there’s no sense of flow here. There’s no satisfying way to chain together a series of moves because your moves are intentionally limited – at least, they are at this point in the game and that’s something I’m really hoping will change. The enemies you fight aren’t particularly engaging or smart and there only seems to be one kind of cinematic ‘kill move’ for each enemy type.

That contributes to the feeling of repetition. I don’t care how ‘cinematic’ it is when I see the same animation play out 5 times in a row in one fight. The ‘lock-on’ system is also pretty hit or miss, which makes trying to chain together attacks even more frustrating.

Okay, I need to stop this here because this isn’t a review and I don’t know how things will progress. Maybe the exploration will improve. Maybe the combat will become more complex and engaging. Maybe there’s lots of stuff I’ve not yet seen or unlocked that will radically improve my opinion of the game. I’ll keep going, but right now, I’m not going to lie, it’s a bit of a slog.