The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!
Let’s discuss the God of War series. What is your favorite game in the series? What do you like about it? What doesn’t work for you? Are there similar games you like? Feel free to share anything that comes up and react to other comments. Let’s get the conversation going!
If you have any recommendations for games or series for the next post(s), please feel free to DM me or add it in a comment here (no guarantees of course).
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Frankly, I don’t think any of the originals are particularly good, and I was done with the new one just before the first one was over. They aren’t terrible, but I’ve always found the praise and hype for the series entirely disproportionate to the content.
In terms of what? And what’s your relationship like with the character action genre?
I don’t particularly love the floaty, sloppy “just put some damage in this 180 degree arc” basis of the combat system much. I am also not at all on board with most of the early teenage edgelord narrative stuff in there. Maybe I was a bit too old by the time these came out.
The Harryhausen references are neat and some of the boss fights are cool set pieces that did set some of the groundwork for later AAA action games, but I would much rather spend time in the more expressive, free-flowing Devil May Cry side of things if I’m going for snappy, precise combat… or all the way into Musou slop, I suppose, although I’m not much into that, either.
I’m not sure what this means, to be totally honest.
I don’t care what anyone says, narratives in character action games are shit 😂 I’m never gonna defend it, and always find it odd that people cared about their stories. They’re not good vehicles for storytelling, IMO.
There’s a reason GoW (2018) had to change genre to shift focus to storytelling, for example.
Hmm… this makes me wonder how much time you spent playing around with GoW3’s combat system because it clearly takes a lot of inspiration from DMC.
They definitely moved towards… I’m gonna say better references later in the franchise.
Still, there’s also a reason they moved to a whole different genre.
GoW’s core combat premise is that you have absurd range and can deal damage in a wide arc. It was REALLY hard to tighten that all the way via iteration while keeping the way the game plays.
GoW 3 was a huge step above its predecessors in setting up big standout setpieces, and it played… I’m gonna say “better”, but it was still limited by the core framework of the series so far, and my argument is that framework was fundamentally flawed.
Hmm… sure, yes. I wouldn’t say it’s flawed, but I’d say it’s different, and I much prefer the Japanese way of doing things here where it feels I’m precisely choreographing a movie fight instead of doing as much damage as possible to anyone in my immediate vicinity.
I’d still say GoW3 is peak western action, and quite fun to play. I would not rank it on the same level as DMC5, Ninja Gaiden II, or Bayonetta, but I’d rank it fairly close—like a step or two behind.
As of the franchise as a whole, yeah, it’s not the best, but many franchises aren’t, TBH. I love Bayonetta, for example, but that franchise is all over the place. It’s almost GoW backwards… higher peak than GoW, for sure, but still messy overall.
I don’t have much to disagree with there, frankly. I mean, I like GoW 3 less than you do. I’d genuinely play the Ninja Theory DMC, if I’m honest, but at that point we’re splitting hairs.
To be clear, I don’t hate these games, I just don’t like them much and generally don’t play them on purpose. We’re coming at it from different angles but meeting pretty much halfway.