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| Source // PlayStation |
I've never played a God of War game. Not even that God of War. I might have dabbled with a demo here or there, but for whatever reason, at no point during the last fifteen years did I feel the need to see what it was all about.
I knew enough to know that they star Kratos, anger incarnate, on his relentless quest to murder seemingly every God there was in Ancient Greece, and that the games are full of epic spectacles that have you sleigh beings hundreds of times your size. I know that they're quite hack and slashy, and have quick time events dotted throughout.
Beyond that, I'm not really sure. And I own a few of these games across multiple platforms. Time to finally get stuck in.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
Fun Times
Remember the time when the PlayStation 3 lost its backwards compatibility, and trilogies of great games from the PlayStation 2 started to get remastered and released as HD Collections? Metal Gear Solid, Tomb Raider, Splinter Cell, and many more besides? Well, I for one am thankful they exist, because it's the God of War Collection that's allowing me to play not only God of War but God of War II later on, too.
What's that? There are two more God of War Collections for the PS3? Including a complete collection with five whole games? Nuts.
Our hero Kratos has just jumped off a really rather tall mountain in an attempt to die. The Gods have been using him as a puppet for far too long (ten years, gosh), and he's had enough. But our tale begins three weeks earlier, in the stormy seas, on a vessel overrun with horrible, zombie-like soldiers.
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| Source // MobyGames |
The deck of this ship serves as our tutorial, where we get to bash the crap out of our foes with presses of the Square and Triangle buttons for light and heavy attacks. Mixing up the inputs and, eventually, modifying them with some shoulder buttons will give anyone looking for some Devil May Cry-like action a smile. That's basically God of War - lots and lots of fighting.
Your chain swords slice through the air, tearing opponents up all over the place. You can't control the camera to get your own view of the action, but the camera does a decent job of showing you what you need to see, freeing up the right analogue stick for a handy dodge in any direction button.
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| Source // MobyGames |
It is thoroughly satisfying to cause carnage on mindless foes. Mindless, but not harmless. They'll knock you off your feet if you don't block with the L1 button in time, and as the game goes on, different enemy types will require various methods of dispatching them efficiently.
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| Source // MobyGames |
God of War feels nice and crunchy in its combat. It's not the most realistic feeling game outside of the conflict, but Kratos can climb, double jump, push, pull, and kick objects, and you'll be using a variety of skills to make progress through some puzzles later on.
With the orchestra and choir blaring away in the background, everything is given grand importance. Given the story involves a man killing Gods, that's completely understandable.
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| Source // PlayStation |
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| Source // MobyGames |
It's not long before Kratos has some bigger fish to fry. A hydra, in fact, and all its many heads. One of them introduces you to the quick time aspect of God of War, where, when an opponent - big or small - is suitably stunned, you can press the Circle button to grab hold of them, and a few quick time button inputs will see you slam them around the place in whatever method the developers saw fit. It's all very stylised, and entirely over the top, but the rewards are worth it - a defeated enemy, for starters, but also a shower of health, mana and orbs to spend upgrading your skills and weaponry.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // PlayStation |
Along the way, you are given extra abilities on the L2 button from a bunch of Gods. Poseidon here has granted me an area of effect attack that fries enemy soldiers who get too close. Great for giving you a bit of breathing room while you decide you to spam the Square button towards next.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
From the outside, players only see Kratos as the angriest man on the planet, capable of bloodshed on a scale you can't quite comprehend. The kind of guy you wouldn't want to see on a daylit street, let alone a dark alley. He's got the fire and the fury at his command.
But he's not just an incredibly successful killing machine. He doesn't just conquer if you know what I mean. He courts controversy. He settles down in some tricky situations.
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| Source // MobyGames |
Dudes not afraid to surround himself with tits is what I'm saying. You don't see this on the adverts. I was aware of there being some bare-chested ladies in the series but didn't expect to see them so soon. Or, it has to be said, in such detail. Three cheers for remasters?
To get a sense of how God of War is presented, this is what happened before the above screenshot: Kratos finds the captain, the key to his quarters chained around his neck. He is eaten alive by a Hydra. It's time for a boss fight. Two smaller Hydra heads impede our progress to the main boss, so we need to slice them up and pin them to the deck of the ship using two ruddy great big pins. Clambering up the rigging, we then have a fight on the mast, dodging teeth bigger than we are and, eventually, pulling out the Hydra's eyeball and skewering its head on the ships' mast. All of the ships' mast. Its mouth hangs open, invitingly. We venture down its throat where we hear cries for help. It's the captain, clinging on for dear life. Kratos picks him up, takes his key, and drops him into the gooey blackness of the Hydra's remains. The door to his quarters is unlocked and behind the bloodied bodies of defenceless civilians is a bed, with two naked women in it.
I suspect a Trophy may even have popped up at that point.
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| Source // MobyGames |
Breasts were not the reason I continued playing for an hour or so. God of War is just fun to play and keeps pulling you along into bigger and better playgrounds. You tear the head off of a medusa and get to use her skull as a paralysing ability, temporarily turning your foes to stone so that you can get in some unblocked attacks. It needs to be used in one room to have an enemy stand on a pressure plate long enough for you to get through a gate at the other end of the room. This room, incidentally, is in Athens, which is currently being destroyed by the literal God of War, standing ridiculously tall above everything in sight. Like, hundreds of feet doesn't seem tall enough. He must be a mile high. And eventually, we'll be fighting him.
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| Source // MobyGames |
Frustrations
There were some moments where I got a little frustrated. Some puzzles are a bit awkward to navigate, especially if enemies are firing at you from positions you can't respond to just now, and sometimes the route through an area isn't entirely obvious. Your weapons can destroy crates and pillars and so on, and progress may be behind a destructible object that you don't know you can destroy.
The R2 button interacts with the environment to lift gates open or topple statues, but pressing it multiple times on a PS3 controller, with its spongy, angled R2 button, can result in Kratos fumbling with a door, of all things.
Button mashing, in general, is a little annoying at times. Some enemies are finished off by hammering the Circle button faster than they can avoid being stabbed in the throat from the inside, which meant I had to switch up my grip to be able to press the button fast enough. Luckily, everything else waits patiently for you to finish one way or the other, so it's no big loss if you don't get it, I suppose.
Finally, some combos, notably used to break through shields, were a little tricky to pull off, despite being only three button presses long, simply because I didn't quite know when an attack animation had finished, or hit. Square Square Triangle is what I needed, but, like making sure your PaRappa the Rapper timing was on point, Square Square Square Square Square Triangle Triangle Triangle was the order of the day. It worked a couple of times.
Final Word
Through my odd grumbles, I had a damn good time playing God of War. The enemy variety keeps me on my toes, the scale of events never ceases to impress, and there are boobs around every other corner. I was a teenager when this was initially released, let me remind you, and I haven't gotten around to it until now.
As you might imagine, with its hyper-violence (though nothing like The Punisher, I suppose) and depiction of women, God of War wasn't without its controversies. It still managed to cause an issue a decade later with the naming of one of the trophies, 'Bros Before Hoes'. I haven't played or seen enough of it to know where I stand on the matter, but I likely won't care.
What I do care about is playing great games. That's the whole point of going through the 1001 list. Some I disagree with, obviously, but it's an excuse to play what I missed, and I missed out on God of War. All of God of War. I'm definitely looking forward to changing that sometime soon.
Fun Facts
The game "is not innovative or unique, and that's intentional" said creator David Jaffe. Fine by me.
God of War, developed by SCE Santa Monica Studio, first released in 2005.
Version played: God of War Collection, PlayStation 3, 2010.