God of War (2018): How to reinvent a beloved series without ruining what works

Kratos' son avoids Scrappy-Doo syndrome amid more strategic melee brawling.

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[BurntToShreds]

Seeing the amount of hyperbolic, undue praise that this game is getting is ridiculous. I guess all you have to do is mix a bunch of modern AAA game elements together, throw a ridiculous amount of money at it to make it look pretty, and then you'll have critics like this eating out of the palm of your hand.

I get the feeling that Days Gone and The Last Of Us Part 2 are going to get the same overly bombastic and hyperbolic "It's such an epic cinematic grand redefining of videogames now and forever, the FEELS man!!" judgment, since they're also in the Third Person Sad Beard Man genre.

It's going to be hilarious to see the games press tell people how gaming can be redefined multiple times within the span of a year and a half or so by three games that all look the same.

 

[BurntToShreds]

After looking at a bunch of other reviews online, reading about how this game compares to the old games and older action hack and slash titles, here are my thoughts.

It's ridiculous the way people are calling this game (which is very openly chasing trends that The Last Of Us and Dark Souls built out) fresh/new/innovative when at this point in time a AAA game studio making a high speed action game in the same vein of Bayonetta and the OG Devil May Cry series (or you know, like the old God Of War games) would be the fresh and new thing to do. This game is not daring or bold, but merely Sony leaning into a winning formula that they discovered with The Last Of Us. TLoU was a remarkably good game, but it was given an outsized amount of praise as if it was a flawless masterpiece, seemingly for its heavy focus on a story told in a "cinematic" movie-like fashion. With God Of War you have game critics singing praises for a massive company taking an incredibly safe and watered-down approach to this game that's almost like every other title that Sony's been promoting over the last few years. Sony made the gaming equivalent of Oscar Bait and people are eating it up.

This situation with God Of War reminds me of BioShock Infinite. Infinite was another watered-down, drastic departure from the mainline series that took far too much inspiration from its genre contemporaries, just like God Of War. After the neverending stream of perfect scores and the initial hype died down, people started picking away at Infinite's numerous flaws, and now a lot of people regard it as the low of the series, both in terms of gameplay and story. Here's hoping that the same thing happens for God Of War.