#nathan drake is literally my ideal man

[grnherbs]

kissing nathan drake so hard rn you don't even understand 🫶

[everygame]

God of War (PlayStation Vita)

Developed/Published by: SCE Studio Santa Monica / Sony Computer Entertainment Released: 22nd March 2005 (original) Completed: 26th April 2018 Completion: Finished it. Trophies / Achievements: 78%

How’s THIS for some SEO, eh? Everyone’s talking about the latest dadsoft, and here I am reviewing, uh, the original game in the series that originally came out on PS2. And actually because I lazily release these, it’s been a couple of weeks since you were all talking about dad of war, so it’s not even like I’ve really managed to hit the zeitgeist on the head, unlike all those other times I did that (not that I can remember any.)

God of War, then. You know, this isn’t actually the first one of these I’ve played. I actually—many moons ago—played all the way through God of War: Chains of Olympus on PSP. I’m… fully unclear on how I had a copy of that, I think it was on fire sale at EB Games or something. My main memory of it is that I played it through on a plane journey—I feel like to E3, or something—and literally the only thing I remember about it is one large section where Kratos had to tediously push boxes about and thinking “is this really how the God of War spends his time.”

Actually, that’s not true. I also remember a bit where Kratos is, like… running through the grass and his daughter is there? I keep thinking I’ve fully mixed that up with Russell Crowe in Gladiator, tho. You know that bit, yeah?

So turns out I didn’t like Chains of Olympus. But then it turns out that I have a copy of God of War Collection for PlayStation Vita, and everyone’s talking about dad of war… so why not get the second (or third, or fourth, who knows) best thing???

The official verdict is that God of War is, you know, fine. It’s… fine. I mean, if I was reviewing it for a top game publication [“ahem”—Ed.] a top game publication that isn’t this one [“better”—Ed.] then I’d probably give it a horrendously bad review based on the fact that it’s been put in widescreen without literally any effort so all of the UI art is stretched into 16:9, and I’m vindictive and never honestly got over that so it deserves like 2/10 or something. But let’s pretend that isn’t a huge glaring flaw.

If I do that, well, God of War is… a product of its time. It’s very… I mean, look. David Jaffe, he of Twisted Metal and basically about as broey as a game developer can get (if you can be arsed, look him up; I can’t be bothered to recount here) was the game director, so it’s… broey. All the ladies have their boobs out, Kratos can have sex a bunch of times for experience after level one, and all the violence is totally over the top. I must say, though, that the violence isn’t as crazy as expected. I’m someone who couldn’t watch Kratos murder an elephant man in just the E3 presentation for… God of War III (I think?) so the fact that the only really grody bit of violence happens in like the first level is actually kind of surprising. And actually that bit is pretty cool because he impales a hydra on a ship mast and it’s suitably visceral. There are few other big “set piece” moments, which is surprising really for a series that I thought was all about them. Maybe I’ve been mistaken!

In fact, God of War is mostly about Kratos going to a temple and doing some of your usual Nathan Drake/Lara Croft style tomb raiding, just with a lot more crowd battles with combos and that. Almost the entire thing is set in the one temple (well, it feels like that at points) so it all feels really very small-scale, something that probably isn’t helped by how dated it looks now in a way that I’d say Japanese games of the era don’t. It might be something to do with the lighting, or the character designs, or something, but you don’t really have that sense of timelessness that I get with Yakuza or something.

Oh! Also the battle system is pretty pants, really. It doesn’t teach you anything very clearly, and lots of enemies block, so you’ll probably find yourself spamming magic to get through the most tedious parts, or just learning to live with “slash slash, dodge, clank clank dodge, clank clank slash dodge” forever. I mean maybe there’s a reason to launch enemies high, to do with how much they block or something, but I never learned it, so!

God of War is very much a video game that exists. It’s kind of like… the platonic ideal of what a North America-developed game in the mid-2000s was. Boobs and gore with half-baked puzzles and combat, graphics that were probably vaguely impressive but don’t hold up, and promising an epic adventure but confining you to a samey temple for most of it.

Oh and there’s a bit where you go to hell and it looks like Earache Extreme Metal Racing or something.

Will I ever play it again? Nope. You’ll have to find out if I continue with the franchise I guess!!!

Final Thought: I feel like Kratos does less block pushing in this than he does in Chains of Olympus, so I’ll say it’s better than that. But then… it does have a couple of stupid difficulty spikes relating to poor level design (such as “you have a timer, but you’ll only make it if you do it exactly right” which I hate.) So maybe it isn’t. Maybe I don’t care. It’s not like I’m recommending you play this.