Drizzlehell
Banned
I realize that it's a spicy thread premise but I hope that at least it grabbed your attention.
Now, before I move on, let me be clear - those are perfectly fine games. I don't really have any major complaints about them beyond the fact that I'm just not into them. If you're into the sort of experience that they're offering, then I'm sure you're gonna have a great time.
My main problem with these games is that they're way too focused on everything except what used to make this series great.
They're long, they take forever to get anywhere, the combat is a slog, the story is pretentious, and watching the behind-the-scenes footage makes the creators of the game seem way too preoccupied with the notion that they're creating some form of high-brow art. But personally, the story being told in this game resonated with me about as much as a loud fart resonates inside of my toilet bowl.
You know what I used to love about God of War? The fact that as soon as I put the disc into my console, it greeted me with a title screen that immediately got my blood pumping:
It's the fact that as soon as you pressed the Start button, a really pissed off Kratos made sure to let you know that you're in for a mean ride, and you don't wanna be there once he starts passing tickets around. Those classic games didn't fuck around. They told great, heroic tales too, but they never spent more time dishing out the plot than it was necessary and you spent most of the time curb stomping monsters and wearing their entrails like a necklace. It was a pure, unapologetic, testosterone-fueled power fantasy, and its main concern was to make sure that you have a raging power-boner the entire time while playing.
And what do we have in those new games? A 45-hour journey following an elderly man and his soy boy son as they endlessly walk through forgettable forests and mountains and engage in small-scale battles with a limited number of monster types.
Now, to be fair, there are some epic moments here and there. However, the overall emphasis on emotional storytelling over balls-to-the-wall action and gory combat felt severely underwhelming for me. While the story may be engaging for those who appreciate it, there isn't much replay value after completing it once. I struggled to finish a second playthrough of the 2018 game in preparation for Ragnarok, and by the time I got to Ragnarok, I was utterly exhausted with the gameplay style and simply pushed through it to reach the end. I doubt I will ever revisit this game when I could instead replay God of War 2, which remains a high point in the series for me.
So yeah, happy for everyone involved in the making of that game, glad that Chris Judge had his moment on stage, but I don't really care about those games.
Now, before I move on, let me be clear - those are perfectly fine games. I don't really have any major complaints about them beyond the fact that I'm just not into them. If you're into the sort of experience that they're offering, then I'm sure you're gonna have a great time.
My main problem with these games is that they're way too focused on everything except what used to make this series great.
They're long, they take forever to get anywhere, the combat is a slog, the story is pretentious, and watching the behind-the-scenes footage makes the creators of the game seem way too preoccupied with the notion that they're creating some form of high-brow art. But personally, the story being told in this game resonated with me about as much as a loud fart resonates inside of my toilet bowl.
You know what I used to love about God of War? The fact that as soon as I put the disc into my console, it greeted me with a title screen that immediately got my blood pumping:
It's the fact that as soon as you pressed the Start button, a really pissed off Kratos made sure to let you know that you're in for a mean ride, and you don't wanna be there once he starts passing tickets around. Those classic games didn't fuck around. They told great, heroic tales too, but they never spent more time dishing out the plot than it was necessary and you spent most of the time curb stomping monsters and wearing their entrails like a necklace. It was a pure, unapologetic, testosterone-fueled power fantasy, and its main concern was to make sure that you have a raging power-boner the entire time while playing.
And what do we have in those new games? A 45-hour journey following an elderly man and his soy boy son as they endlessly walk through forgettable forests and mountains and engage in small-scale battles with a limited number of monster types.
Now, to be fair, there are some epic moments here and there. However, the overall emphasis on emotional storytelling over balls-to-the-wall action and gory combat felt severely underwhelming for me. While the story may be engaging for those who appreciate it, there isn't much replay value after completing it once. I struggled to finish a second playthrough of the 2018 game in preparation for Ragnarok, and by the time I got to Ragnarok, I was utterly exhausted with the gameplay style and simply pushed through it to reach the end. I doubt I will ever revisit this game when I could instead replay God of War 2, which remains a high point in the series for me.
So yeah, happy for everyone involved in the making of that game, glad that Chris Judge had his moment on stage, but I don't really care about those games.
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