”Let the rage of the gods drive your blades, Kratos”
Despite owning both a PS2 and PS3 and loving the PSP games, I’ve never touched the original God of War series, beyond playing III Remastered when it was free on PS+ a few years ago. Finally playing the original God of War nearly 20 years after its release, I find myself far more impressed with it than I am with GoW 2018 and Ragnarok. Don’t get me wrong, this game is worse in several respects that I will get into and I don’t mean to turn this into and an ‘old vs new’ thing, but I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I just respect this game’s ambitions more.
The new God of War games are one of the few things I’ll readily call pretentious, cloaking themselves in an air of maturity and prestige that comes across like a child wearing his father’s clothes. The original God of War series, on the other hand, is famously very juvenile, but also feels much more honest. It knows what kind of game and story it is and doesn’t pretend to be anything more than that. The narrative here isn’t exactly one of the greatest gaming has to offer, but it’s effective and I do like the way Kratos is portrayed here. He’s a compelling protagonist with sympathetic qualities, but he’s also not a good person and the game doesn’t even try to convince you otherwise. Kratos puts the ‘anti’ in ‘anti-hero’; he’s at best ambivalent towards the suffering of others and at his worst will readily sacrifice others to achieve his goals without a second thought or any hint of remorse. You can see a clear line from the anti-hero he is here to the straight up villain he becomes in III.
Where the game falls flat is unfortunately in the combat, it’s meat and potatoes. The actual combat system is great, the blades of chaos are tons of fun. The real problem is how the enemy encounters are designed. Fights drag on for way too long, each one feeling like it should’ve ended 3-5 enemies ago. There were so many instances where I was begging the game to just wrap it up already. This wouldn’t be such a problem if the enemies weren’t such damage sponges. Even the weakest most basic enemies feel like they take 10 too many hits to kill. Sure, using your magic abilities alleviate this a bit, but your magic bad drains quick and again, there are way too many enemies in each fight.
Unfortunately the combat isn’t where the frustrations end, as the team at Santa Monica had some really funny ideas of what constituted an enjoyable challenge when it came to puzzles and platforming. Many of the puzzle/platforming sections are much longer than they need to be and offer such little room for error that it makes them not just difficult, but frustrating. There’s one section where you have to slowly push a box uphill while enemies infinitely spawn around you and I refuse to believe anyone played that and thought it was fun. My own personal hell is just being forced to play the Challenge of Hades for all of eternity.
God of War is clearly a very rough game and while I can’t say my enjoyment outweighed my frustration, I’m glad I played it, if only so I could have the full context of the series’ roots. This was clearly the work of a team, with the next generation of gaming on the horizon, trying to squeeze absolutely everything they can out of the PS2 while they still can, and that’s very admirable.
Despite owning both a PS2 and PS3 and loving the PSP games, I’ve never touched the original God of War series, beyond playing III Remastered when it was free on PS+ a few years ago. Finally playing the original God of War nearly 20 years after its release, I find myself far more impressed with it than I am with GoW 2018 and Ragnarok. Don’t get me wrong, this game is worse in several respects that I will get into and I don’t mean to turn this into and an ‘old vs new’ thing, but I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I just respect this game’s ambitions more.
The new God of War games are one of the few things I’ll readily call pretentious, cloaking themselves in an air of maturity and prestige that comes across like a child wearing his father’s clothes. The original God of War series, on the other hand, is famously very juvenile, but also feels much more honest. It knows what kind of game and story it is and doesn’t pretend to be anything more than that. The narrative here isn’t exactly one of the greatest gaming has to offer, but it’s effective and I do like the way Kratos is portrayed here. He’s a compelling protagonist with sympathetic qualities, but he’s also not a good person and the game doesn’t even try to convince you otherwise. Kratos puts the ‘anti’ in ‘anti-hero’; he’s at best ambivalent towards the suffering of others and at his worst will readily sacrifice others to achieve his goals without a second thought or any hint of remorse. You can see a clear line from the anti-hero he is here to the straight up villain he becomes in III.
Where the game falls flat is unfortunately in the combat, it’s meat and potatoes. The actual combat system is great, the blades of chaos are tons of fun. The real problem is how the enemy encounters are designed. Fights drag on for way too long, each one feeling like it should’ve ended 3-5 enemies ago. There were so many instances where I was begging the game to just wrap it up already. This wouldn’t be such a problem if the enemies weren’t such damage sponges. Even the weakest most basic enemies feel like they take 10 too many hits to kill. Sure, using your magic abilities alleviate this a bit, but your magic bad drains quick and again, there are way too many enemies in each fight.
Unfortunately the combat isn’t where the frustrations end, as the team at Santa Monica had some really funny ideas of what constituted an enjoyable challenge when it came to puzzles and platforming. Many of the puzzle/platforming sections are much longer than they need to be and offer such little room for error that it makes them not just difficult, but frustrating. There’s one section where you have to slowly push a box uphill while enemies infinitely spawn around you and I refuse to believe anyone played that and thought it was fun. My own personal hell is just being forced to play the Challenge of Hades for all of eternity.
God of War is clearly a very rough game and while I can’t say my enjoyment outweighed my frustration, I’m glad I played it, if only so I could have the full context of the series’ roots. This was clearly the work of a team, with the next generation of gaming on the horizon, trying to squeeze absolutely everything they can out of the PS2 while they still can, and that’s very admirable.