Topic: God of War OT

@Ralizah Congrats! It’s a great fight and cleverly done to use all of the abilities from previous fights. I have to admit to dropping the difficulty after many many attempts..

@Voltan @Thrillho Probably would have been easier if I'd bothered to upgrade my health and rage more first.

Yeah, I do like how she combines the mechanics from the fights with the previous Valkyries with a gigantic health bar and really fast reaction times.

Dropping the difficulty just wouldn't have been satisfying at all.

@Ralizah Well done! Glad you made it past her. That fight is definitely a culmination of all the Valkyrie fights that lead up to it and is so satisfying to accomplish.
Having made it past that, now you have no choice but to find all those infernal Ravens and get the platinum 😜

@Ralizah @Th3solution I thought the ravens weren't that bad. It tells you on the map how many remain in each region. A few of them can be tricky to spot but hey, that's what guides are for on the interwebz

@Voltan Actually, I think it was one Jotnar Shrine that ended up being my final collectible that was a pain to go back and get. Seems like it was one of the earlier ones in the opening area that I somehow missed and couldn’t be reached all that easily and took me a while to find. 😅

@Ulythium so I finally got to a point where I could unpack my games (sorry for the delay mate, it's been crazy)... sadly my copy is the PS hits one dude 😔

@Ulythium have you got a cex local to you... or anyplace that sells second hand games?

@Th3solution @Voltan I've actually been killing them since discovering they're part of an area's given 100% checklist. Still annoying busywork, IMO, but busywork I'm more inclined to engage in. Small QoL features go a long way in games like this.

Although now that the Queen is dead and I'm almost exclusively reduced to checklist clearing, I'll probably slow down with this game.

I don't regret it AT ALL.

I think my game is bugged. I've fully upgraded my weapons, but I still have uncompleted labors related to collecting materials for the axe and blades. Bah!

GoW is now listed as releasing in January on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1593500/God_of_War/

Interesting that this wasn't in the PlayStation event and Uncharted 4 + Lost Legacy ("early 2022") was. Another Sony stream soon, maybe? Or will they announce it via a tweet?

Edit: They did announce it via a tweet, lol
Edit2: I just realized Uncharted was in that event because it’s also getting a PS5 version and GoW is not.

@Voltan Yeah, announcing a PC port of a former exclusive in a PS-focused event would be a bit of a slap in the face, I think.

Pride 0
Victory 1

Finally made a start on God of War: Ascension… and y’know, so far so pre 2018 God of War. Which is perfectly fine as I haven’t played a GoW since GoW2 around a year ago, so I’m not feeling burned out on the gameplay right now.

Quite enjoying it so far.

@colonelkilgore I was surprised at how many comments in the recent article stated that they preferred the older GoW games to the 2018 reboot. For me it was no contest. The older games were fine, but the reboot is fantastic. Perhaps some of that is just narrative tone, which weighs heavily for me. I much prefer old reflective Kratos to young angry Kratos. 😄

@Th3solution It's hard to even say I prefer one or the other. They're so different. New GOW definitely has the best story, writing, character dynamics. Not even close.
However, old GOW had better boss fights

@Th3solution well we may have had different opinions on Transistor recently… but I couldn’t agree more with you on the God of War games. While the old ones are ‘decent’ (probably more so for the time of their releases) 2018 imho at least… was bottled lightning.

@Voltan so I do hear the ‘better boss fights’ thing and can get on board with it to some degree. The boss fights of the older games are certainly more epic in scale… but they still ‘play’ very basically. The combat of 2018 was just so much more fun imo… even if the bosses you were combating were less grand on a visual scale.

@colonelkilgore Yeah, I can agree with that. More of the big cool set pieces in general is more accurate, I guess. The early fight with "the stranger" in 2018 was great. The dragon was cool but not quite that level. Thor's kids and the Valkyries were not it (they were good fights in terms of game mechanics and challenge but not in terms of overall epicness). There were also many locations in the game that could've used a cool fight but basically there wasn't any, settling for a few waves of common enemies instead.
I guess the game's focus was elsewhere though and the things that were in that focus are absolutely top notch. And I'd still rate it 10/10.

@Voltan totally, for as much as I love 2018, the ‘open-ish world’ of it all probably prevented some of the sheer epicness of the older games. The closest it came for me at least, was when you had to climb that huge dead giant… that lying prone, seemed the size of a mountain range. Obviously that section was pretty devoid of combat… but it was at least somewhat reminiscent of the titans etc from the Greek games.