Played as part of the God of War Collection on PS3

ALERT - if interested, please play this game through any [LEGAL] method but the HD Collection as this port contains 1-2 game breaking bugs that occur after obtaining Pandora’s Box wherein the MacGuffin either goes missing or wherein the cutscene of Kratos bringing it out of the dungeon doesn’t load and consequently freezes up the game. I experienced the latter and, as a result, was unable to complete God of War (and I have no intention of buying and replaying it in its entirety at a later date). As a result of this annoyance, I have knocked down .5 star from the final tally.

Despite playing the vast majority of the game, my inability to finish it does mean you should not take this as a serious review, but more-so a set of observations

Long before the 2018 reboot(+), God of War was best known as a pioneer in the hack-and-slash genre: a hyperviolent excursion built around fluid combat, epic visuals, and a loosely mythological story.

As such, when I booted it up, I went in expecting another poorly-aged release from the PS2’s dark-and-edgy era best left forgotten by contemporary audiences. And yet, to my delight, the opposite nearly happened; God of War won’t win any awards for its storytelling, however solid frays and a surprising amount of gameplay variety make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

As stated earlier, God of War was instrumental in the mainstreaming of slash ‘em ups, and it should thus come as no surprise that its melee fighting, to this day, remains the strongest facet. Kratos only has access to two weapons (the famed Chains of Chaos for long-range hits and, later, the Blade of Artemis for close-quarters dicing), yet both are excellent, equipped with unique animations in addition to their own set of hard/light combos. However, where God of War truly excels is in its enemy gravitation, or the movement between thugs. What I mean is, we’ve all played games where it was a bit of a chore to swap between multiple foes, and a lot of that has to do with the game having trouble recognizing player input vs camera direction. Well, whatever spell Santa Monica worked has done wonders as you’ll never run into that issue here whilst slaughtering monster-upon-monster.

Unfortunately, I can’t say everything is great, starting with the airborne wrangles. Maybe I was just doing something wrong, but I found most attempts to transition from ground-to-aerial combat to be especially cumbersome as Kratos would often not move in-sync with any bodies sent up for dispatching. Next, God of War throws in quick-time events for a number of finishers that not only distract from what is occurring on-screen, but can be unnecessarily vexing by way of short margins for error, either time or input-based (regular creature QTEs may be ignored, but the same leeway is not available for bosses). Third, the integration of spellcasting is sloppy: the powers themselves are pretty sweet, however, they don’t lend themselves organically to whatever dance you’re engaged in, forcing you to awkwardly discharge any in the midst of a combo. Finally, I was not a fan of the stun lock that occurs whenever a bigger enemy knocks you over- I get this was done to discourage, you know, getting hit, but I felt the damage inflicted should’ve been enough of a deterrent.

Like I mentioned before, God of War surprised me with its implementation of other genre fare, namely platforming and puzzle elements. If you’re going into this game wanting a pure action romp you’ll be sorely disappointed as at least one third of the final product involves Kratos having to deftly maneuver his way through a mini-course and/or resolve some long-dormant enigma. The quality of them definitely varies: some can be excellent, others exercises in tedium -- one of the worst parts of the game, for example, occurs in the very beginning wherein you’re tasked with kicking a fragile box across a deck whilst being swarmed with arrows; yet one of the best has you rebuild a wall using specially-carved columns.

Regardless, I ended up enjoying each version to one extent or another due to them breaking-up the combat monotony that flooded every other part of the story. Seriously, as much fun as it is spilling senseless blood, God of War can get really tiring courtesy of the sheer amount of enemies thrown your way, and while a fair chunk of these sparrings are optional(++), it doesn’t stop their cretins from being potential hindrances on your path to victory -- you’ll frequently run into foes on stairways, in front of ladders, scrummaging on climbable walls, etc….and it becomes annoying having to cheese around them just to avoid a pointless fight.

There is a bit of an RPG system here in terms of gathering experience orbs to funnel into your numerous offensive schemes, though, all cards on the table, I found swords to be the only rewarding investment as your mana meter runs out too quickly to make sorcery worth relying on (+++).

Regardless of my qualms, God of War was a thoroughly-addicting affair: for the first time in a while, I found myself wanting to do multiple sessions in a single day, and I recommend playing it solely for those gameplay quirks as the story itself is not very good. On the surface you’ve got a typical Greek tragedy involving a mortal’s manipulation at the hands of the Twelve Olympians, yet even this premise is botched through an easily-avoidable mistake: making Kratos an @sshole. I don’t know who on the development team thought this was a good idea, but it boggles my mind that it ended up being accepted as standard operating procedure. The idea of an anti-heroic or even outright evil protagonist isn’t inherently wrong, but it requires charisma and affability, two things far removed from the Ghost of Sparta. Kratos is definitely a victim of the gods, but not once did I feel sympathy for him on account of his vile backstory and present-day immoral actions. Throughout your quest you’ll either kill innocents and/or let them die, and without a proper justification for such transgressions (or at least a sense of remorse), Kratos is left inherently unlikable; an ugly vessel for the player to indulge in hapless violence.

By ugly, I’m of course speaking in metaphorical terms as, visually, God of War is a stunning title. Although I only played an HD port, such a remaster demonstrates the vast power gap that existed between the PS2 and PS3 eras via its sharpened polygons, looming vistas, limited loading screens, and fully-realized models. Gone are those awkward triangles/blocks you’d often see on sixth generation appendages/material respectively, rendering the innumerable sites you visit, from Athens to the Underworld, gorgeous hollows. In particular, I was especially impressed by the sharp shadow mapping for weaponry, as well as the incorporation of reflective surfaces on marble floors: two aspects that were reportedly hard to program back-in-the-day.

Cutscenes are hit-or-miss in quality; similar to Darksiders, any pre-rendered cinematics remain pristine; however, the original in-game ones do look overly grainy owing to the inability of the devs to boost them (meaning the standard gameplay honestly appears better). Besides that, though, it’s hard to find faults in God of War considering the hardware the OG version was built-on. You can tell Sony put a ton of money into this exclusive on the basis of the sheer amount of mileage Santa Monica stretched from its Kinetica Engine: the suffocating winds of a desert, lumberings of the titan Kronos, spawning of multiple enemies/large devices on a single screen (with little lag!)- all remain points of awe for what is ultimately a 2005 release.

If I had to harp on one negative, it’d be the minimal amount of finishers. Enemies are beautifully designed, yet generally only have 1-2 methods of pre-scripted execution, the second only opening itself up mid-flight (a tactic that, per the aforestated complaints, is hard to achieve), meaning you’re going to be seeing the same scene per a monster type again and again and again. More particular effects from strikes would’ve also been welcome as you primarily get the same generic blood splatter whenever an enemy (or Kratos for that matter) is gored.

Speaking of the leading chump, he’s brought to life by Terrence C. Carson, a man who does a mixed job (and who would go on to be screwed by Santa Monica during their reboot++++). When Kratos is vocalizing softer speech or subtle anger, Carson excels; when he’s being a loud pr!ck, Carson can’t help sounding like a stereotypical angry black man over vengeful hellenist.

The rest of the voice acting is surprisingly good; a game like God of War could’ve easily fallen prey to hackneyed portrayals of thespian actors, but Santa Monica evidently wanted to go the serious route here and they largely succeeded courtesy of some solid castings for all the bit parts. Tragically, where they dropped the ball is with Ares, and it’ll come as a great shock when you learn the person behind the titular antagonist: the great Steve Blum. I don’t know what Blum was going for here, but his choice of accent/inflections is half-growly/half-stereotypical angry white man, making the God of Courage sound like a garbled Wolverine. It brings me no pleasure to state this given my love of Blum, but let’s just say you’ll be glad he only speaks in the final part of the game.

Luckily, the music has no such pitfalls, with the seven(!) credited composers filtering Greek-styled melodies (lutes, lyres, drums) through an adrenaline junkie motif endemic to action titles of this nature. It’s not an OST you’ll be listening to post-game, but it does befit Kratos’s adventure as a whole.

SFX is hard to discern in a title like God of War due to its indulgence in loud dins that mask the micro sonority. For instance, a lot of the spells and puzzle-based machinery are vividly aural, as beseems their deific origins; however, I honestly couldn’t tell you whether there were any audible differences programmed into your weapons on enemy impact.

For what it’s worth, nothing was distracting and I had a good time, which is a great way to summarize God of War as a whole. This is a really fun game that’s aged uncommonly well, both visually and playably. It’s a shame I experienced that game-breaking bug as I would’ve loved to have completed Kratos’s peregrination towards revenge (and experienced the infamous Spiked Columns!).

Don’t mistake me- there are times when you will get frustrated and want to bite your controller to bits! But with an astute checkpoint system and sense of progression, they weren’t enough to bring down the product as a whole (particularly on easy mode!).


NOTES

-Speaking of easy mode, there is no way to change the difficulty. When you die enough times, a prompt appears allowing you to switch to said easy mode; however, you cannot change back. A bizarre decision, as was the one where upgrade orbs are slowly siphoned into their respective port instead of all-at-once (like most normal video games).

-No subtitles

-Whoever decided to map opening doors to mashing the right back bumper on the DualShock 3 deserves a swift kick in the groin. For the uninitiated, the DualShock 3 had notoriously awful bumpers, which made one puzzle, in particular, infuriating (you’ll know it when you see it).

-The absence of armor for Kratos is pretty disappointing, especially given his Spartan background and the consistent emphasis on him being a mere mortal (though even that wouldn’t have mattered considering Greek Gods could be hurt by manmade weapons, at least in the Iliad). While the physics for the loin cloth are on-point, I do feel his model is an example of hypocritical male objectification that wouldn’t have been tolerated had it been a female MC instead.

+To clarify, it was a soft reboot, meaning the events of the previous games are canon.

++Yes, I know killing anyone yields the aforementioned upgrade points but, unless you’re playing on the higher difficulties (which I do not recommend), you really don’t have to go out of your way to farm them.

+++Yes, I know you can upgrade it through collecting feathers. However, not only will most gamers not find them all, but the majority of spells still drain a significant chunk of mana, leaving a few outright unusable even with a decently-filled bar.

++++Kratos was recast with Christopher Judge, which was fine given the mocap cinematography Santa Monica wanted to go with. However, to not grant Carson a cameo, let alone inform him he was being recast, is completely disrespectful.

Recentemente adquiri um PS3 usado e o primeiro jogo nele não poderia ser outro, essa obra prima dos hack and slash é simplesmente um dos jogos que mais definem minha paixão por videogames. Rejoga-lo agora após mais de 10 anos foi uma experiência nostálgica demais, e, esse é um dos casos raros de jogos antigos que não sofreram com o tempo, sua gameplay frenética e balanceada são atuais até os dias de hoje, e a história então eu nem preciso falar nada, Kratos do velho testamento poucas idéias mostrando que a vingança é plena, não mata a alma e não envenena.
Falando sobre alguns aspectos técnicos, por ser um port de PS2 para PS3, a taxa de FPS está consideravelmente mais estável e a resolução está muito melhor do que no original, dois pontos muito positivos levando em consideração que alguns ports dessa época não mudavam quase que nada.

Replaying all the games again to prepare for Ragnarok



Idk what I was smoking a year ago, this game is fucking awesome

While it was great to see the origins of Kratos, this was a product of its time that aged poorly. I found I died more to the fixed cameras and the god-awful and punishing platforming. There is a part of me that wonders whether it would have been better to watch the cutscenes instead, but things like this are better experienced to completely appreciate just how far the series has come and why the recent games are so revered. This was my first time using the PlayStation streaming service, and I've tried to not hold it against the game itself.

this was such a revelation.
i havent really touched this franchise at all until now, only having played god of war 3 at a friends house years ago and remembering basially nothing about it except that the boss fights were HUUUUGE.
and i really dont regret looking into it
god of war 1 has an absolutely amazing world design, the different parts of the world we explore here feel alive (as much as it can be while people are dying all over the place), feel different from each other. they even look spectacular still to this day in some shots. the entrance to the architects tomb for example really blew me off in some way, the whole poseidon challenge, the ship right at the beginning of the game. i really, really liked how these felt. how many different platform ideas were put into it, how from hack and slash to puzzling everything felt just right and the right amount of hard and easy.
i enjoyed this game a lot. i still think its really enjoyable and lacks nothing too important.
some jumps can be a bit tricky but other than that i had absolutely zero problems and found the gameplay loop and different upgrades you get just enough to make it not too boring.
#kratosstannumber1

All that finnicky beam-balancing is so much fun, right? I can't in good conscience say I find this as refined, atmospheric, or memorable as Devil May Cry - of which this clearly takes heavy inspiration. Crummy hitboxes (those goddamned blades...) and serious repetition here. That being said, the thing still glistens with that alluring PS2-era texture: locations look good (The Path of Hades in particular) and Kratos is one hell of a protagonist. It's refreshing to see a game make no apologies for its depraved (anti)hero - a game that just downright revels in being mean, with an authentic grimdark atmosphere that flaunts some nice splatty violence where it counts. Looks even better on the PS3 HD collection, keeping the original gameplay/aesthetic experience intact just with a more attractive sheen over the top. Wish more remasters did stuff like this. The "Challenge of the Gods" are still some of the downright least fun postgame content/rewards ever programmed, though.

I like it, it's pretty good.

Considering this is a PS2 game remastered for PS3 from 10 years ago, I expected it to have felt more dated and aged not greatly, but to my surprise, it holds up quite well.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of the cutscenes look like absolute shit but the game itself looks and handles pretty well.

The story is entertaining if not incredibly basic.

The combat is mostly fun and intuitive, with them throwing new abilities at you every other hour to keep things fresh which I appreciated. However, damage-scaling was out of whack quite a few times, I was either 3 shotting enemies or taking 5 minutes to kill one of them. I wouldn't say this game is outright difficult, in fact I found most of it fairly easy, but they tend to throw a lot of enemies at you constantly, and once you think you've killed all the enemies in a room, and entire new wave spawns and it just becomes really tedious after awhile.

The best part of the game is easily the boss fights, unfortunately there are only like... three. They all slap, but I wanted more. Good thing there's three more main games after this one lol.

I really liked the world and set-pieces too, you don't go to many places, in fact most of the game takes place at Pandora's Temple, but the world design is great, especially for a PS2 game.

I'm a big fan of Greek Mythology as it is so seeing these places and characters show up, I felt like a die-hard MCU fan anytime something cool showed up, I was like "Yoo it's glup-shitto"


The level-up system was annoying though, you can't just press a button and level-up your weapons etc, you gotta hold the button down and watch the meter go up, that was annoying.


Anyways, good game, I liked it. It's aged fairly well, I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who wants a fun hack and slash game or just a fun greek mythology game.

I am hype for the next one.

Immensely disappointed that the final battle with Ares wasn't this ambitious Shadow of the Colossus type battle but instead possibly the easiest & dumbest boss battle I've ever played in my many, many years of video gaming. Never mind technological limits of the time (if that would've been a problem), it really feels like they ran out of money and patience with how quick and lazy it feels. All that build-up for a battle that's no different from the hundreds of other enemies I hacked & slashed to death in the exact same way? Some of those respawnable enemies somehow being much harder than this battle with the actual God of War??

10/10 first 1/3rd of the game and then I kind of checked out after that. Lots of stuff here that deeply annoyed me but the scope of this one is pretty insane. Plenty of memorable images here that will be burned into my brain for a long time; highlight being your first time seeing Ares, the giant, in battle as you gaze at him from a mountain in the distance. Just a wonderful, wonderful image and no doubt a highlight of the PS2 era (that I'm playing an HD remake of for the PS3 on the PS4 but still!). While I'm not a fan of this I certainly liked it enough that I'll check out the sequels sometime down the line.

An adequate starting point for the series, but not the greatest aged game of all time. Some great storytelling throughout and overall fun gameplay, however not enough is done to keep the gameplay loop fresh. This is particularly evident in combat and enemy variety, with a lot of mini-bosses returning as basic enemies time and time again. There is a lot of fun to be had upgrading and testing the skills and different combos however, more often than not you'll find yourself sticking to a set few which are most effective. Puzzles ranged from either intricately designed with incredibly satisfying solutions to frustratingly tedious with no clear solution at times but overall there was an enjoyable level of charm and challenge in solving them. The final Boss was quite fun however with so much narrative build up I can't help but feel a little disappointed by the lack of new mechanics or challenges presented by it.

This game kicked off the massively successful franchise that we have today and it's really cool to look back at where it all started. I really enjoyed my time with the first 2/3 of the game; the story was gripping, the characters were interesting and the puzzles were challenging. However, towards the end of the game, its enjoyability begins to suffer. Without going into spoilers, the focus on gameplay seemed to shift from puzzles to platforming, and the platforming was nowhere near as engaging as the puzzles were. As well as this, the enemies and boss fights were pretty awful. Throughout the game, you'll encounter mini-bosses who reward you upon defeating them, and then they'll begin reappearing as regular enemies, providing a lack of enemy variation and devaluing the mini-boss fights. The final boss fight feels extremely scripted, I didn't feel like I had much control over how the fight went, as long as I attacked the boss when the game allowed me to, and the gameplay throughout this whole segment is just lacklustre and can get really annoying at some points.

The combat in God of War is quite enjoyable, you can upgrade your weapons to unlock new moves which are fun to try out and learn. You also unlock magic abilities granted to you by different Gods throughout the game which I think is a really cool concept since it constantly freshens up the gameplay, however, the balancing between each ability is poor as you'll find yourself sticking to the same couple weapons/abilities as they're infinitely more useful.

Zerando de novo esse delicioso jogo, como tudo aqui funciona bem mesmo jogando hoje em dia, em dois dias terminei de tão gostosinho é esse jogo, terminaria até em 1 dia se eu virasse o dia tranquilamente, a trilha sonora é marcante demais, espetacular, a história é simples mas funciona pra mim, uma tragédia grega muito legal de acompanhar, o protagonista é simplesmente um dos melhores que ja existiram, kratos consegue ser cativante sem precisar ser o protagonista brincalhão engraçado, pelo contrário, ele é uma pessoa completamente torta, com arrependimentos e isso o torna muito interessante. Pra quem nunca jogou, vale muito a pena.

Forgot how damn great this game is and I basically played through the whole game in one 7 hour sitting yesterday because I couldn't put it down once I started. This is a game I played a lot as a kid and it definitely left a huge impact on me because even 15 years later I still remembered almost every single thing about the game from the level design to the puzzles and story as if I had just played it yesterday.

God of War is a game that wears its influences on its sleeve proudly taking elements and ideas from series like Prince of Persia, Devil May Cry, Onimusha and ICO and God of War was described by David Jaffe himself as not being developed to be innovative or unique. Yet the funny thing is 17 years later and God of War is a game that has become so iconic and influential due to how it masterfully blended all its influences into a whole new breed of action adventure game unlike anything seen before that it spawned an entire generation of games that desperately wanted to be the next God of War.

Like I said, God of War is such an iconic game and franchise that it is so ingrained into gaming culture to where I don't even need to do a super long review on it because you'd be hard pressed to find someone who isn't familiar with the game or Kratos as a protagonist, but I'm still going to do it anyways just because it is a classic and deserves to be talked about in depth.

God of War is a dark and tragic filled modern take on a classic Greek odyssey that follows the story of Kratos, a once great commander in the Spartan army now a very broken and troubled man looking to find peace from the nightmares of his countless unspeakable crimes that haunt his dreams, Kratos is tasked by Athena to kill the God of War Ares and promised to be absolved of his sins if he completes this task.

Right from that very first iconic opening cut-scene of Kratos jumping off the highest cliff in Athens attempting to end it all, the story instantly pulls you in and the plot is slowly revealed with some thoughtful twists and turns as you make your way through the game. This is a simple story compared to many nowadays, but it is also a timeless one that focuses around the themes of vengeance and anger and I think that's exactly what makes it so memorable and effective.

Now I'm not going to say Kratos was the first anti-hero in video games, but I will say he was one of the first to popularize this style of protagonist and back in 2005 there really was no one else like him which definitely helps set the game apart from its contemporaries. Kratos is a brutal, ruthless wrathful man who has killed many in his past, will stop at nothing to achieve his goals and he's not above sacrificing innocents if it benefits him. Everywhere you go characters in the world recognize Kratos and are terrified of him, but even with all that said there's still an air of tragedy to his character, this is a man who lashes out at the world through rage and hate simply because he doesn't know or understand any other way and you can't help but feel sorry for him and wonder if there could've been another way.

Gameplay is primarily divided into two sections. You've got the core combat which is the bulk of the gameplay and while it feels a lot more barebones compared to many games nowadays, it's still a fun and fast system with plenty of weapons, powers and combos to chain together and accommodate different playstyles from Kratos' main weapon the whip-like Blades of Chaos to the AOE spell Poseidon's Wrath or the ranged spell Zeus' Fury there's a little for all occasions. While not in combat there's plenty of well crafted platforming and puzzle sections to make sure the combat never becomes too monotonous.

God of War is a game that is notable for its cinematic presentation. While most other games suffered from immersion-breaking loading screens back in the day, God of War's story mode switches seamlessly from the title screen to FMV sequences, to gameplay, and back, with very little load time. I read that David Jaffe took inspiration from Indiana Jones while making the game and I believe it because God of War is an epic journey like no other, from fictionalized versions of the real-world Aegean Sea and city of Athens to the Desert of Lost Souls, Temple of Pandora and even the Underworld itself, God of War features plenty of grandiose locations to explore. The fixed camera angles and bombastic film score OST really help to enhance the cinematic qualities of every new area Kratos visits while on his adventure as well.

From its fast and fluid combat to its dark and mature story of vengeance and tragedy alongside its sprawling grandiose locations to explore, God of War is truly a timeless classic and even 17 years later it is still one of the greatest action adventure games ever made. This quest to kill a god is one you don't want to miss out on.

Ué aqui no site não tem a versão de PS2? kkkkkkkk

Sem dúvida o início da minha franquia favorita, me lembro de ficar maravilhado já na parte do barco com a luta da hydra, sem falar o momento que ele rouba a chave do pescoço do marinheiro e deixa ele cair na garganta dela BAITA DE UM PAU NO CU KKKKKKKKKK.

As várias lutas com o chefes, os cenários hora tranquilos e hora sombrios e a extrema ganância do Kratos em busca de poder, e consequentemente o que isso custou pra ele, e pra fechar aquele final épico contra o Ares, quem diria que a espada que era uma ponte até então se tornaria a arma para matar o lazarento, surreal!