Topic: God of War OT

@Thrillho I just realised that I’ll finally be able to get the GoW platinum with it being included in the PS Plus Collection. Finally it’ll be mine after it went off PS Now!

@nessisonett

@ralphdibny Very true, indeed. A lot boils down to mood and just good ol’ fashioned personal preference.
I have a slight unfair bias against older and retro games just because of my own predispositions. But sometimes there are older experiences that warrant replay and just flat out are spectacular on their own. Speaking of, I do need to do a re-run of the MGS games. I have that in my backlog list to do, except I’m not sure I can find a way to play MGS1

@Th3solution MGS1 just got added to GOG on PCs for a really quite low price and it’ll run on the most starchy of potato PCs. You could always play it there if you don’t have a PS3 or Vita!

@Th3solution @nessisonett that or a PlayStation classic which are often dirt cheap, over here in the UK anyway. Shame it doesn't support rumble for some of the fourth wall breaking shenanigans!

@ralphdibny @nessisonett I guess I can play it on the Vita as a PS1 classic if it’s available there. I knew there was a specific remaster collection of MGS2,3, and Peace Walker, but never thought to check the Vita store. I’ll have to look later.

@Th3solution Shame there’s no L2/R2 on Vita, swapping item/weapon is an absolute sin with MGS1.

@Th3solution How're you getting on?

@Thrillho I was just about to boot up the game. I didn’t have any gaming time this week, so hopefully I make some progress this weekend. I’m perusing my PS4 screenshot album for the competition and maybe I’ll be able to get some last minute GoW shots to submit; the game is friggin’ gorgeous but I’ve only done one photo so far.

I’ll probably post some thoughts later on though about how I’m finding the game in general. Excited to see what happens.
Question though — do you recommend I try to explore every nook and cranny in each area or just plough through the story and go back for clean up on side areas later? It’s an age-old problem for me to get too worried about finding everything before moving on because I don’t want to miss out on a key power-up or secret, but this Metroidvania style set up means I’m likely to waste time running around areas that I can’t access and will end up coming back to later, correct?

FWIW I remember that I got the platinum when I finished the game the first time, so I must have collected everything as I went. I played on hard, and the only thing I had to dip the difficulty for was the Valkyrie queen

@Th3solution Have you reached the more open area yet?

I explored every area as I found it but you don’t need to. It’s much easier to travel around the areas later on in the game. Some areas have enemies that will be over levelled to you but these tend to be in their own area rather than at the end of a long section (if you get me).

But play how you like!

@Mega-Gazz @Thrillho Thanks, guys. And no, I’m not at a really open area yet. I’m still
early on but there are little off-shoot paths here and there it seems. And Atreus is eager to say “Hey, Dad! What’s this over here?!” or “Why are you going that way? It’s over here!”trying to pull me to the next passageway to continue the mainline story path, but I’m finding if I just follow him that I would miss some chests. But I am also finding that some areas look like you should be able to go there, but Kratos’s inability to jump or climb (except in designated landmarked areas) means that the spot is unobtainable. But it’s good to know it’s easy to come back later if I miss anything.

@Th3solution When you do reach the open area, there are certain sections you won't be able to get access until certain things happen in the story.

I'm just about to start playing the original God of War and when I was looking up the order (I'm going to play them in release order rather than chronological order), I found out there is a mobile game called God of War Betrayal. Luckily its for java based phones and there are plenty of free emulators for Android so I've downloaded it and will add it into the playthrough!

Just thought I'd post about it in case there are other OCDers who want to play every reasonable game in a series that weren't aware of this footnote in the annals of God of War history!

@ralphdibny The first GoW is alright. Probably was more impressive back in the day but that’s true of a lot of games. The 2nd one is a big improvement imo so you should be golden after getting through the first one.

@nessisonett I looked at my old save and it had 8 hours 30 game time so I'm assuming it didn't save after i beat the game because hltb has it pegged at about 9 hours. I played it in 2012 interestingly so I guess it's worth a refresher after 8 years!

The game looks sharp in HD, unfortunately the cut scenes are like compressed videos of game engine footage so they look pretty harsh but I guess that's just because they upscaled the PS2 version which probably had the cut scene compression

Zeus just gave me a power up and I recognised his voice and it is the same person who plays colonol Roy Campbell in MGS!

@ralphdibny I love it when I recognize a voice from a video game. I just saw a mobile phone advertisement that had the voiceover done by Claude Wallace from Valkyria Chronicles 4! 😆

@Th3solution nice! Campbell plays the gravedigger in gow too but he's sounds a lot less like campbell in that role

I finished GoW now, I think it was slightly better than I remember it. I think my only real gripe with it is that it goes on too long. Like maybe the gameplay is a bit samey, I think I'm not a big fan of these kind of fight loads of enemy type games, third person brawler or whatever you call them. I know there's lots of combos you can learn but at the end of the day, you just do what works, which is "push square" a lot and then press triangle if there is a man with a shield.

Overall I think it is quite cool though, the big baddies were really cool, Pandora's temple on the back of that banished wandering titan was awesome. There's so much about it that is just really cool but it is spoiled a bit by it's repetitive gameplay.

I actually quite liked Kratos and his perseverance, he didn't come across as just one note angry. He had a reason to take revenge, he was obviously a bit of a bad apple when he made his deal with Ares but I still felt for him when Ares took advantage in the way he did. But I think I really just liked how he refused to die until he'd had his revenge and his ultimate fate (before the Gods intervention) was really the only really fitting way it could end.

Generally the game reminded me a lot of Mortal Kombat for some reason. I think the blood and guts, the sounds of squelching and crunching, the long combo lists in the menu, the setting and supernatural elements with a real world motivation kind of had that MK vibe.

In terms of platforming, the most annoying bits were:

And

And

These bits had me saying the F word a lot. They were kind of good but I'm not sure if I had enough interest in the game to be hit with that level of difficulty. At least it wasn't combat though.

But yeah, good game but a bit repetitive. I can see why I didn't carry on with the series when I first played it 8 years ago. My play time was nearly 9 hours but it just felt like a lot longer. I kicked off GoW 2 right away after I finished so I didn't get sidetracked by any potential disinterest this time though!