i really wanted to love god of war 2018 (GoW18) but it's riddled with terrible design choices that only happen in modern AAA games or games that for some reason want to be like that. i first want to ashamedly admit that this was my first god of war game and since I've always heard about the combat in god of war that was what i was looking most forward to. in that department, the game almost gets it right. many of the moves you can do with the axe and blades feel very cathartic. the weight of the metal is tangible with how hard kratos swings his weapons. my favorite part is when im able to launch enemies up into the air, calling back to the combo action of old action hack'n'slash games like the dmc games or the original god of war titles. but that's pretty much where the good ends. the camera in this game is absolutely terrible for the enemy encounters. many times you'll find yourself getting swarmed and getting hit from almost always behind the camera. it's so antagonistic to put such a claustrophobic over-the-shoulder camera in a game where you fight hordes of enemies. this is made worse when fighting faster, more dangerous enemies like the valkyries. yes, the valkyries are optional, but why should that excuse the terrible camera? enemy variety is also another issue with the combat. lots of the enemies amount to just being different colored humanoids that deal different elemental damage that corresponds with their color. green = poison, red = fire, blue = frost. most enemies can be dealt with in the same manner: brutal violence. though i do appreciate how you're incentivized to switch to the blades when dealing with helwalkers and to be more patient with the revenants. even if they are a pain in the ass. in the end, i found that the combat was my favorite part of the game. when it worked, it WORKED. it was so satisfying comboing specials, parries, axe throws, atreus' arrows, and every other attack i could into a tornado of death. the worst part to me is the level design and exploration.

GoW18 will not shut up about how you should explore the game's beautiful locales. yea, i really dig what you did with the place santa monica. jormungandr surrounding the lake of nine, thamur's giant corpse, the fiery mountains of muspelheim, the environments don't hold back. sucks that they're all either gorgeously dressed hallways or vast empty planes. the game is pretty much a hallway or rock-climbing section, then a bigger area with enemies, and maybe a puzzle with some "secrets" strung along the way. a couple of secrets were decently hidden, but they're mostly just go opposite of the direction to progress. then there are some larger areas that are just large for being big. these areas are gigantic, the most notable being the lake of nine. its sense of scale is awing, but it also makes exploration in the early game such a drag. for some reason, the devs thought it would be a smart decision not to allow fast traveling to every found fast travel point until you reached a certain point in the game. if you're gonna give fast travel, go all the way. please don't make me boat across a lake for hours to the point where the npcs run out of dialogue to entertain me. and to make it worse, when i do get full fast travel, ive still got to travel across the lake by boat because, honestly, that may be faster than the fast travel system.

the fast travel system is abysmal. sure it was cool to walk on a branch of yggdrasil, the world tree, for the first time when fast traveling but having to do that EVERY time i fast travel is just plain annoying. why do this? is it to pad out an already decently long game? there's no reason to do this. i get making me have to walk on yggdrasil if the npcs have dialogue but if i just need to get from point a to point b and there's no new dialogue, just let me fast travel between places. i dont want to run around in a circle in silence every time i want to fast travel!

continuing on mechanics that really just had me scratching my head is the implementation of a crafting and loot system. having an upgrade system for character progression is good, i like that, but why make it this unnecessary crafting system when finding that upgrade as an item in the game world is just as good, if not better? why is there crafting in god of war? oh yea, it's a AAA game made in 2018. AAA gaming bingo: open world, crafting, rock climbing, "cinematic mature" story, color-coded loot... BINGO! we have a winner! kratos seems to also be having a fashion dilemma. he can wear full-on breastplate, his usual shoulder pad, some pauldrons, and varying wristbands and waistcloths if he wants to. again, not a concept i hate. it's some cool variety, progression, and player expression. however, the armor boils down to picking which armor makes kratos the highest level he can be. think of destiny's light level system: its like that in this game where the higher the level loot you use, the higher the level you become so you can fight higher leveled enemies. that is just HORRENDOUS. especially for a singleplayer rpg where grinding isn't a part of the gameplay loop. a traditional leveling-up system would have been way better, i mean theres already xp in the game. or why not make the levels of enemies tied to the level of your weapon, making exploration more incentivized and also so that there's not a stupid light level armor mechanic thing? why make players believe the armor system is flexible when all that matters is if the big number in the top right of the screen goes up?? at least finding different weapon abilities and even runes/enchantments didn't bother me entirely. i found those to be fine since they actually had an impact on the gameplay and playstyles as compared to the armor.

i guess the last thing to talk about would be the story and writing. it's alright for the most part, even reaching good or close to good at times. kratos and atreus have some great bonding moments that feel almost genuine at times. but they also have a lot of weird quick bonding moments that don't feel genuine. the writing has some odd pacing. sometimes it takes its time, but then it'll hastily speed things up in an instant, making some moments feel inorganic. at least the characters are mostly well-written. i enjoyed seeing a lot of the interactions between characters and hearing the dialogue between a lot of them, mimir has some great banter and stories. all the gods have great personalities, too. whether they're rowdy or more reserved, they all had unique voices that made them stand out on their own. speaking of the gods, i think this game actually does a solid job at presenting norse mythology. It's almost like they did some proper reading on the stuff the game's based on and have the gods appear more like they are in the prose edda and poetic edda. i feel like most people associate thor nowadays as marvel's cocky semi-goofy brick head who's all about being the good guy. same with odin being good since he's thor's father. the truth is how they're presented in GoW18. the aesir, and a whole lot of other people/creatures in norse mythology, are selfish greedy bastards. they couldn't care less for midgard's inhabitants. thor really was a bloodthirsty giant killing drunkard, usually killing giants if they did a little bit of trolling or if he simply felt like it. odin is also just as greedy and thirsty for knowledge as he is talked about in GoW18. odin really was a police-state-esque figure who meddled in the lives of everybody and everything, paranoid at what he didn't know. im just mostly glad that they didn't present the norse gods as some black-and-white entities since they really are more of a gray area when it came to morals (though i'd be lying if i didn't say there was some black-and-white morality sprinkled throughout the mythology).

overall, GoW18 has me so conflicted. i see glimpses of an amazing game, but that's stripped away from me because of the terrible design philosophy that so many AAA studios have become enamored with since ever. i want to attribute this design philosophy to naughty dog with uncharted, but i could be wrong. games becoming "mature" don't have to be so terrible in gameplay and cinematic in their stories. we don't need another "games grew up" situation in the industry. we just need fun games with a good story if possible. i mean resident evil (2002) has engaging gameplay and cinematic cameras. doom eternal is violently fun and cinematically ridiculous. max payne is all about having fun shootouts like if you were in a john woo flick. in terms of generic AAA games, this is on par with its peers but not atrociously incompetent. it could have been amazing if designed differently, but here we are with the current state of the AAA design philosophy.

i think i'll eventually get to GoW Ragnarok, but that'll probably be in 200 years when it's not costing an arm and a leg.