God of War (PS4 game): The Good

The fact that this game was bundled with my PS4 as part of a promotion is what tipped the scale in favor of me finally procuring one. I have extremely fond memories of all the ones that came before and was really excited to get into this one.

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Prior to buying the system, I had read nothing about the game (not on purpose) so I was truly in the dark when the game fired up for the first time - I had no idea what to expect. I was surprised and happy by most of what happened with this chapter in the God of War saga, but I am not pleased with all of it. I will start with what is "Good" about this title.

Stunning visuals

This should come as no surprise. The GOW games have always been very graphically stunning on all the Playstation prior releases. I think it was PS2 but there were instances where the graphics really pushed the limits of the machine to the point where the game would actually slow down in order to process what was on the screen.

This hasn't happened in the latest God of War (to me, yet) and some of the battles are so visually amazing that they almost seem like cutscenes in their fluidity.

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Brilliant voice acting

Nothing can slow down a game quite like hiring terrible voice actors. Think Resident Evil (although it could be argued that much of RE's bad voice acting is actually intentional at this point.) Christopher Judge does the voice of Kratos and wow does he nail it. The other people whose voices we hear very regularly are his son Atreus (Sunny Suljic-who is in one of my favorite indie films "A Killing of a Sacred Deer.") Now while these guys aren't exactly Hollywood heavyweights, they are professionals and there are yet to be any "What is it?" moments in any of the game. Bonus points for understanding the reference.

most cut-scenes are interactive

Cutscenes, regardless of how beautiful they are, annoy me in games if they are too long. This is a BIG problem with many inferior games out there that focus entirely too much on making a short film instead of a game. GOW (and I know this was true in previous versions of the game) incorporate the player being involved in the action during the cut-scenes.

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I dont know if failing to hit a button can result in you losing a particular scenario because they seem to give you a really long amount of time to hit said button, but I do think the implementation is just right.

Inventive storyline

If you have been privy to the previous God of War games, you might be aware that they were kind of running out of material and / or gods to involve in the story. Despite the games being fantastic anyway, there is only so much mythology to go around and even though the games were great, they were starting to feel like they were re-hashing old stories. This must have been a difficult hurdle for the developers.

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Rather than continue down Kratos' path of death and destruction, he is portrayed as an average hard-working man with a young son who no longer wants his god-like powers and the responsibility that comes along with them. He is a farmer and lives a humble life with his son in the woods. They are content to remain this way until he is forced back into violence by the gods meddlesome ways.

The relationship between Kratos and his son is moving and wonderfully portrayed. If you had gone back to GOW 1 and told me "there's gonna be a sequel where Kratos is a family man living on a farm and he tries to install moral behavior into his kid" I would have told you to get outta town. They did it, and they pulled it off wonderfully.

Elements of open world

If you don't want to go on the pre-defined path you don't have to. God of War has a almost Skyrim type feel to it (but not exactly) in that you can go to, and revisit places you have already traveled to in order to unlock more secrets if you so choose. Returning to these areas unlocks new secrets and rooms that you previously didn't have the tools to enter.

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overall, I am extremely pleased with this game, but there are aspects of it that I find less-than-perfect and borderline annoying... and i will get to those later.... for now, this entry is long enough