Edit: My analogy isn't meant to say this game is bad. I'm sure it's fine, maybe even good. But I've played with enough of these zoomed in cameras and seen enough of this game to know it would have been better without. I also don't want the forced walk and talk crap in my God of War.
Well, guess what this new game plays like; God of War. Not The Last of Us, not even Dark Souls, but God of War. As "cinematic" as this game might appear, it controls just as snappy as the previous games in the series. This is why Naughty Dog had better bring something truly special to the table come this year's E3, because Santa Monica Studios just made a game that has story and character nuance of The Last of Us, but with the tense, snappy action content of Resident Evil 4, the world size of a Zelda, with the aesthetic of God of War dailed up to eleven.
The Last of Us had good characters but that was about it. Everything else about it except maybe the graphics was mediocre.
As to God of War 4, to claim that it's this perfectly in-line sequel to the God of War games before it is just complete nonsense. Just because God of War 4 shares a couple similarities with its predecessors does not automatically make it a God of War game.
CoCage said:
Oh, and I never liked NG II; it was too much a broken mess at launch. Not to mention there was a patch that made the game crashed if you downloaded a certain mission packed, and got to a certain boss and did not skip the cut-scene. THe other option was going in to your 360's hard drive and doing a certain button combination. After that I refused to play the game for a long while. Yes, it was eventually fixed with a patch, but the fact it took them so long to do it was a major eyesore. It's better than 3, but that is not much of an achievement.
I agree that NGII needed more polishing but regardless, it's still the best hack-and-slasher we've had since... Ever. Nothing has topped it, although NGB comes VERY close, but NGB and NGII emphasize two different styles of play, so they're hard to compare. The most egregious thing about the combat by far was the bloody Incendiary Shruiken Ninja. You had to spam I-frame moves just to survive their ridiculous never-ending barrage. However, even then, once you've mastered it, you could definitely deal with them.
God of Was has never technically been in direct competition with NG or even DMC. It's always been an action/adventure series. Those other games require twitch timing and memorizing spastic combos, whereas GoW's combat was traditionally more popcorn fodder than anything to stress over the execution of. The developers themselves have even admitted this, and had a running joke after Devil May Cry was released, saying "Dev's May Cry" because no one else could compete with it at the time. They chose to take a different route, and made the game about tying together story, puzzles, clever level design and set pieces to compliment an average combat system vs just making the game about the combat system itself.
The new game continues in that tradition, but with a new perspective, deepened focus on telling a mature story, and expanding the exploration aspect along with combat into something that may feel somewhat like a combination of SoulsBorne and TLoU when it comes to button assignment, presentation and weight, but plays like something else altogether. I'd have a tough time confirming if i-frames are even present with how deliberate and dedicated all of Kratos's actions are during combat. Everyone has a different take on it, but to me the combat mechanics work wonderfully within the rest of the game's framework. It's probably far deeper than it needs to be, but I welcome and appreciate the increased tactical nature of it, and how they gave it a layer of physicality that's absent from even the games it's drawn inspiration from.
As to God of War 4, to claim that it's this perfectly in-line sequel to the God of War games before it is just complete nonsense. Just because God of War 4 shares a couple similarities with its predecessors does not automatically make it a God of War game.
Well, I never used the word 'perfect', did I? I said it was a God of War game through and through. Similar to how Resident Evil 4 is very much a Resi game, despite being such a departure from the classic formula. Why don't you explain what exactkly makes it NOT God of War.
The problem comes when you change the body of a game in a series so much as to be almost unrecognizable from what it was. Then the relevant question comes to us. "Why didn't they just make a separate IP and put the mechanics and/or story they wanted to tell in that instead?" Because someone didn't want to risk selling the game without any brand recognition, and that's pretty much it. To say that we should just accept that a developer/publisher completely change what someone's favorite game series is all about is total shit.
Making a new IP is risky, I get it, but we don't need you shoving one game series that was made for one mold into an entirely different mold. We will accept and even adore innovation, even if it doesn't come in a familiar package. The thing is though that innovation alone is not gonna cut it. You have to make a good game around it. If you repurpose one game series for another, at best, you will split the fanbase. I've seen it happen with Halo 5, I've seen it happen with UT2004, and I've seen it happen with Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts.
The thing is, how exactly does one go bigger and better than God of War 3 if we're talking about that old formula? Sony Santa Monica seemed to have not a single clue, as their solution after the game's release was to go for prequels that would by necessity tone down the scale and stakes, since he wasn't slaughtering an entire Pantheon. I'm still not sure that this redesign isn't as much an admission that they had nowhere else to go with Kratos under the old design model, and it was either this or more prequels. It's not even that surprising, iirc the original God of War wasn't designed with the intention of having sequels at all, meaning Kratos as a character was never intended to function in a sequel, much less, what, seven games?
Sure, one might say 'Just Make It Like God Of War, Only With Norse Gods,' but to that I'd ask... why? If we're to keep the same core character motivation (VENGEANCE FOR REASONS!!!) and same core mechanics and basically just make the same game, why not just make the same game? We've already seen Ratchet and Clank, Shadow of the Colossus, etc get rebuilt from the ground up with cutting edge visuals, and I wouldn't necessarily count out the first two God of War titles from getting this treatment down the road. Why bring in a new mythology, (which would be a necessity, given what Kratos did to the Greeks,) new characters and new settings if it's going to be the same Point A to Point B meat grinder it was before?
And I actually would quite enjoy playing the classic God of War, I might play God of War 3 again after I'm finished with 4... I just don't see the point in making new games if they're just the old games. =P Narratively there's NOWHERE to go with Kratos in a sequel if we retained his Vengeful Rage Monster persona to its full degree, and God of War 3 already jumped all the sharks insofar as raising stakes and scale. Absent a fresh start, any true sequel would have inevitably disappointed compared to its predecessor.
This next part is spoilery, tags are for the sake of those playing the game.
To touch on your 'Every Zelda game has third person sword combat' thing, worth noting, God of War 4 actually DOES have the Blades of Chaos as full-fleshed weapons, acquired for story reasons about midway through the game, something that was kept on super secret hush lockdown all the way through release. They operate as crowd-control mid-to-long range weapons, much as in the classic God of War games. Of course, you don't get the extreme wide shots with the camera that you did in the original trilogy, (it does seem to pull back enough to make them viable, though,) but a bunch of the Zelda games are 2D and a bunch of others are 3D, so you CANNOT tell me it doesn't still count as a core mechanic. =P
On another note, there's something that surprised me. I had thought that the only way to truly break out of the 'prequel' rut that God of War was in, what with the world having been totally fucked in 3 and all, would have been a fresh start. New protagonist, new setting, set it hundreds of years later or whatever, never let Kratos near it because he'd literally break everything.
And yet, not only did they keep him, but I've actually found that his character is more compelling BECAUSE of his history in the prior games, and how it's influenced his behavior in this one. There's self-awareness there, a tired, burnt out old man with anger issues who nurses his old grudges but long since figured out that he's been part of the problem. Simply slapping the personality on a blank template wouldn't have that same impact, because a lot of what they imply and communicate via unspoken means would have to get spelled out instead, far earlier and far more often.
And believe me, I never expected that Kratos' narrative backstory in prior God of War games would actually be a BOON in characterizing him. o.o So have to give some props to the developer for pulling off that miracle.
On another note, there's something that surprised me. I had thought that the only way to truly break out of the 'prequel' rut that God of War was in, what with the world having been totally fucked in 3 and all, would have been a fresh start. New protagonist, new setting, set it hundreds of years later or whatever, never let Kratos near it because he'd literally break everything.
And yet, not only did they keep him, but I've actually found that his character is more compelling BECAUSE of his history in the prior games, and how it's influenced his behavior in this one. There's self-awareness there, a tired, burnt out old man with anger issues who nurses his old grudges but long since figured out that he's been part of the problem. Simply slapping the personality on a blank template wouldn't have that same impact, because a lot of what they imply and communicate via unspoken means would have to get spelled out instead, far earlier and far more often.
And believe me, I never expected that Kratos' narrative backstory in prior God of War games would actually be a BOON in characterizing him. o.o So have to give some props to the developer for pulling off that miracle.
That moment when he "returns home" is so powerful, not because of the object he retrieves, but because of how it presents him confronting his past sins and his true self. That whole sequence was freaking spine chilling.
I wasn't a huge fan of the original trilogy and was unsure how much I would like the game. Heck, wasn't planning on getting the game but decided to get it based on what I was hearing. As a God of War game, story wise it's the best but I still wouldn't call it amazing. However, despite a combat where you have to be more deliberate and careful, especially early on, it definitely has that God of War feel. It isn't gory, but there's that visceral feeling when an enemy is taken down, especially when you do a takedown kill. I like the customization options as well. My only complaint is how early on they don't teach you mechanics early on. The first encounter didn't teach me how to use the shield or dodge right away, so I died a few times until the hint screen told me about how to use the shield.
Have to agree with the post above with how the previous games actually helps with Kratos's character in this game. It's strange being able to like him and want to see him overcome his struggle rather than just be a body used to kill everything on screen.
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