This is getting good reviews, innit?
I'm currently fully invested in FF14, so don't have time to pick it up on launch,. Maybe if I find it for less than 40 quid.
But I'm very excited. And really intrigued by the 'always over the shoulder' thing – I imagine it'll get quite claustrophobic over the course of a whole campaign.
I'm very interested - God of War 3 was the main reason I got a PS3, and that was before it was even announced/confirmed - but I honestly don't know when I'll ever get to play it, what with all the avoiding violence around the sprog.
I'm very interested - God of War 3 was the main reason I got a PS3, and that was before it was even announced/confirmed - but I honestly don't know when I'll ever get to play it, what with all the avoiding violence around the sprog.
I remember the look of shock, horror and elation at god of war 2 that you had.
I just couldn't believe that the PS2 was actually doing all that.
Yeah it was kind of bonkers. The end of PS2 life cycle games looked better than early-to-mid PS3 games.
I never clicked with God of War's previous incarnations, and honestly the melancholy "but what is the true cost of violence" premise this seems to be going with feels pretty tired even before it's paired with the rampant carnage that YouTubelol clips seem to be entirely comprised of.
Can't deny that those scores have me intrigued, though.
It's a pity that I'm not able to borrow something like this from a friend to give it a shot; I might actually get on with it, but the full release price is too steep for a "maybe" and by the time it drops to impulse range the hype will have moved on.
The cheapest I've seen it is £46 in Tesco, but if it's as good as the reviews suggest (and the sales figures match), I'm guessing it'll be a while before the price comes down much.
I'm happy but not really that surprised it's getting good reviews. I don't have time to play it on launch and I wanna' save money.
I think these games are pretty grotesque. All that ripping, tearing and graphic violence really puts me off, and I'm not normally bothered by that kind of thing. It's just so gratuitous here, they take such delight in it. I'm passing on this.
I do think it worked better on PS2, where it was just cartoonish. 3 was pretty horrific; I particularly recall one section involving a titan's fingernails…
The cheapest I've seen it is £46 in Tesco, but if it's as good as the reviews suggest (and the sales figures match), I'm guessing it'll be a while before the price comes down much.
Smyths have got it for home delivery, 40.99. I've bitten at that price. Lots of reviews talking about how exciting the story is, so I'm now scared of spoilers if I wait.
They've bumped the price up since; it's £45.99 there now. Cheapest I can find now is ShopTo, £44.86. Amazon are just listing it as "unavailable", and have been for at least a week.
Apparently there's a problem with all Sony games on Amazon right now…
I don't have any time to play this at all. But I want to play it so much.
Ah shit. It’s gone all Dark Souls. I can’t beat like the fourth encounter.
It’s just an exercise in being hit repeatedly. (For me.)
Drop to easy difficulty. That's a piece of piss, but still a lot of fun. Really enjoying this so far. Not too much free time, but it's nice to have a good game to chill out with every so often.
I've got the hang of it a little more now. Stand back, throw axe. Attrition win!
It's all very pretty and exciting. The 95 metacritic is a little flattering, in my opinion, but it's a really fun game.
Just found out I missed an entire God of War game, Ascension? How did that happen??
There's a chance I'm just going mad and have played it…
Agreed. It's all very pretty, but the critical splurge seems excessive. That said, maybe it gets better as it progresses. I'm making very slow headway because of work, so I have no expectation of finding out if it does for quite some time.
Just found out I missed an entire God of War game, Ascension? How did that happen??
There's a chance I'm just going mad and have played it…
It came out at the tail end of the PS3, by a different studio. It has a multiplayer mode. I think it was a PS+ game at one point, so I'm pretty sure I have it, but I've never played it, either.
Hapimeses said:
That said, maybe it gets better as it progresses.
It gets better. But not so much that I'm in any way blown away. I mean, it's pretty an' all, the plot is solid, and the core systems are strong, but, so far, I much prefer Horizon Zero Dawn, another game I took a while to warm to, but one that completely gripped me by the end.
It gets much better. Really enjoying this now.
And done. Great wee game. Lots of puzzling fun and the combat has a great rhythm. The story and tone is limited in scope and more affecting that GoW has tried before, and that's good. Liked it a lot, and will chase some post-game goodies for fun, but I'm not blown away like I was with HZD when I completed that. Solid 8/10 actioner with heart.
I haven't played it but everything I've seen of the combat looks kinda…meh to me, I'm glad it's less of a 'DMC' type game in that regard and seems to have found it's own style (I'm not saying only DMC can do that style or anything) but all I see in gifs and clips is constant Axe throwing and some combos that seem kind of slow, I kinda' miss the uniqueness of the chainblades.
Willing to admit my views are wrong when I play it/or people insist it's really good, and everything else looks great but the combat hasn't really wowed me from the footage.
The combat has some really nice beats, especially once you start levelling up and opening different moves, some of which don't just rely on combos, but on pauses, too, meaning button mashing doesn't work as well as careful positioning and taps, for all it looks frenetic and OTT.
I can't really tag this spoiler as it's not broken into chapters. So probably just avoid until you've finished the game.
Spoiler - click to showThe Blades of Chaos introduction was brilliant, but just served to show they probably should have been in the game from the start. We would have missed out on that incredible, empowering moment where you lay waste to a field of ice zombies, but on balance I'd rather have been having that much fun in the previous 15 hours.
Just reply to he of partyhattedness:
Spoiler - click to showI personally wouldn't change it. It would have not only undermined the story they were telling, but would have also removed that moment from the game, which would suck because, as you say, that moment was brilliant on several levels. It was nicely built up, nicely executed, and left me re-enthused to play the game as my interest was beginning to flag, so was perfectly timed. Kept me going right to the end.
I'm playing this! Slowly. Very slowly.
It's not God of War, but I like it a lot all the same. I'm treating it like a different game, especially since I've just hit the bit where it opens up and you can go back and forth to different areas… as usual though, I'm ignoring the quest marker and doing my own thing.
I definitely appreciate that it's possible to get the Platinum on the lowest difficulty setting. I don't have nearly enough time to play stuff like this any more, so getting caught up on silly combat spikes doesn't appeal. Not convinced I like the boy though, he seems more of an annoyance than anything useful.
Yes, I mean the one in the game. :)
I recently (re)started the PSP one (Chains of Olympus?) on Vita. That's as close as I'm getting to new God of War for a while…
Weren't there two on Vita? One was really good - Chains, I think - the other was average/bad. I want to say Ghost of Sparta… the one about Kratos's brother. It wasn't great.
Dammit, I'm going to have to redownload it now, aren't I?
Yeah, Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta. I have both, and have done for years, but never finished either. Same with Ascension, the unnecessary 4th PS3 game.
I think this is possibly the best game I have played in years. Finished it in a reasonable time. The story still is phenomenal, I'm picking up back story as I try (I don't expect to be good enough at combat) to finish off the after the game stuff.
Started this last night. Too early to comment on the quality of the game itself yet (although it looks good) but I just wanted to have a quick rant about the new trend for graphics options on consoles.
Gone it seems are the days when you can just stick something on and play it. God of War at least has reasonable HDR settings (it looks fantastic on the default) whereas Assassin's Creed Odyssey had me tweaking sliders for days. But it also has two display modes on the PS4 Pro as well as a bunch of other settings and it took me an entire evening of switching backwards and forwards between them to find something I was happy with.
The default mode is Prefer Resolution, which runs in checkerboard 4K at 30fps, but there's also Prefer Performance, which runs at 1080p at what appears to be an unlocked framerate. The actual visual difference between them isn't massively high (you lose resolution obviously but the game's so pretty anyway and the HDR does all the heavy lifting so it still looks great) and initially I thought Performance mode was the way to go but then I wasn't so sure. The variable framerate is quite off-putting - although the game is noticeably smoother throughout, it swings backwards and forwards between about 40 and 60fps and has a slightly weightless quality to it. On the other hand the Resolution mode is significantly choppier with a gut-wrenching amount of motion blur every time you move the camera but holds a consistent 30 and feels more solid. In the end I settled for Resolution and toned the motion blur down a lot and I'm happier with it but I know I'll spend more time fiddling with it when I should just be enjoying the game.
Also my PS4 Pro is incredibly loud these days when the fans spin up. It was never exactly quiet although I'm sure it never used to be this bad, but anything running in 4K makes it go berserk. I though Santa Fortuna in Hitman 2 was as loud as it gets but God of War ramps it up still another notch. I'm going to have to pull everything out today and give the vents a good hoover, see if I can reduce the decibel output a bit.
Honestly we're ready for the next gen now, we've reached the point where the ambition of games is somewhat outstripping the consoles' ability to deliver them. This'll get a full 60fps remaster next gen, guaranteed, and it'll look glorious.
Weird; I've had zero issues (that I've noticed) with framerate or performance on my PS4 Amateur.
Yeah. I think sometimes the fact you've got two modes to choose from exacerbates the problem, as you switch between them trying to choose your favourite. The default Resolution mode would have looked perfectly fine if I didn't have a smoother Performance mode against which to directly contrast it.
I do think the motion blur is seriously overdone by default in this game, though. It's never been my favourite effect anyway but here it's very soupy. Glad you can turn it down (and annoyed with myself I didn't notice that earlier).
I'm the other way, I'm always slightly disappointed when there's no option on the One X to switch between performance and resolution.
They all favour resolution as standard, because 4K was the selling point of these new consoles. But without exception, I'd always choose 1080p on my 4K TV with a higher framerate. Forza Horizon, Tomb Raider etc at 60fps are drool-worthy.
A 4K image is a small upgrade, whereas higher performance can be a game-changer. (Although I haven't seen God of War's fancy modes. And I do agree that if it's dropping to 40fps lots, that's pretty annoying.)
Generally I'd agree with you and I think the One X does a much better job of hitting 60fps in its performance modes - in those instances I think I'd go for performance over resolution any time.
Most of the PS4 Pro's performance modes though (thinking here though of God of War, Monster Hunter, Hitman 2…) tend to go for a variable frame rate and can't sustain 60, and that makes it a much tricker game-by-game choice.
I've resorted to playing this with headphones now. The noise the PS4 Pro makes when playing this game is astonishing - not all the time, and not necessarily when you'd expect, but when those fans do kick up it's loud enough to make the dialogue hard to hear, even with the game running as loud as I dare. I've hoovered the vents and even propped the PS4 up on blocks to try and improve the airflow around it, but nothing silences that beast. I guess it's pushing the machine harder than anything else I've played.
It's a shame not to run it through speakers because the sound is absolutely superb throughout, and the use of the subwoofer is the best I've ever heard: it adds real weight to the attacks, and the sheer blast of noise when the World Serpent made its appearance was quite extraordinary. But it sounds damn good through the official PS4 3D headphones too, and at least I can hear what everyone's saying without it sounding like Kratos left the hairdryer on.
Amazing game though. This kind of point-to-point linear game isn't usually my thing but I've never seen anything quite so spectacular, and it never lets up. Also the whole "single shot" thing is a marvel to behold, it's quite something that they've taken one of my favourite cinematic techniques and applied it to an entire videogame. I'm very, very impressed.