Who wondered 'hey its God Hand'

I didn’t know it has difficulty settings. Sounds cool.

I was thinking of making a thread today myself since I had some questions on the combat.

I’m playing on the Challenging difficulty (the highest difficulty before you have to jump to the “Give me God of War” mode that apparently redesigns the game) and it is certainly challenging. All the things Alterity mentioned still hold true aside from the enraging thing, which sounds like it will force you to change your playstyle heavily from what I’ve been doing. But concerning just the Challenging difficulty, I’m not sure I feel like this is how I want to play the game.

The game seems to give you a ton of different options between your axe, your fists, you son, your spells, and the skill trees for all of them. And I feel like I keep finding new things you can do, like how having your son shoot an arrow at an airborne enemy or an enemy on the ground pops them up in the air for extending juggles. Or how important forcing enemies into the wall is, because the wall bounces provide extended combo opportunities as well as humongous amounts of stun. Or how you can kick frozen guys into walls to shatter them, or you can throw axes at people’s feet to trip them, or how to alternate between your own attacks and your son’s attacks to stunlock armored enemies, or how etc.

But because always pits you against a ton of enemies simultaneously and almost always one or two of them will be armored guys who are resistant to hitstun. The presence of those armored guys + high damage from the difficulty settings makes me feel like I can’t really risk using most of my moveset unless I want to get hit by someone in the middle of my attack animations. I’m mostly sticking to playing keepaway with that Reaver Cleaver or whatever attack, the move where you hold heavy attack and then do a cinematic axe chop that does a ton of damage and also gives you brief invincibility during the animation. It’s the safest way to get attacks on a big group of guys. All these other moves I have, like throwing my axe like a boomerang that stunlocks enemies for extended periods, or doing the running haymaker that can knock enemies back, or that move where you use your shield to trip a bunch of enemies, all feel like needless risks when an armored guy in the crowd will just power through it and punch you in the face, killing you in 1-3 hits.

When I wittle a group down to a single weak enemy I finally have space to explore the combatsystem a bit but that’s such a miniscule amount of time compared to the rest of the combat. Like, I’m still having a fine time with the combat and it’s certainly challenging and it’s fun figuring out how to get through these encounters alive but I don’t even know what to spend my XP on because I don’t feel like I have the opportunity to use most of my moves.

Any tips or tricks plz? Considering how many small details I keep finding about the combat system I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m just missing some crowd control strategy here.

As for the rest of the game: it’s fine. It’s suitable AAA action game design but it does a good enough job of keeping combat arena design varied in shape and size and enemy types, with some light puzzle solving mixed in every now and then.

If the game wasn’t called God of War and the Kratos was instead named Bob Godman I don’t think the game would radically different. It’s so divorced in design sensibilities and overall tone from the previous entries that it might as well be a new franchise.

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Is the reason he keeps calling him BOY because he’s not in fact his holy loin son

Is that The Twist

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He’s just afraid of intimacy.

The square button is officially labeled as “SON ACTION” but it really should have been called “BOY ACTION” in my opinion.

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smash that boy action

I’m kidding but I would totally play a gayed up God of War that explored the same themes, it’s the dumb somberness of it that turns me off

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There’s been one hog

I want to see Kratos taken to task by his son for going to battle with his dick in his literal hand

they could steal supermoves from Cho Aniki

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I’ve come to wonder if Christopher Judge has ever been made to recite “pee is stored in the balls”

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i’ll wait for God of War 8, AKA Highbrow God of War, where you play 80 year old Kratos as he tries to keep up with his rowdy adult son

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More like Hard to Be a God of War

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skogkatt’s in the cradle

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finally a game about the strained relationship with my father. videogames are alt lit now!

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in the last couple years I’ve had to conclude that all captains of AAA gamedev had strained relationships with their fathers

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Is the naive son this year’s bow and arrow?

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Put it this way I am disappointed no footage yet captures instances of using child as projectile

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Kratos plays Godhand now that he’s a widower.

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A widower twice over! That much more God Hand

Kratos just can’t seem to get the hang of wives

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I started on the hardest difficulty and got out of the intro into the game proper (up the part where you Kratos and Atreus fall through an old wooden bridge and into an area with several Draugr) but I started over on the “balanced” difficulty (the second of the four) because I was really curious to see if the end of the game was as good as the beginning. That’s the real question for a big budget “game with a story” is to see if the game manages to follow through on the story part. Lots of games the ending is kind of cobbled together for various reasons that have to do with the challenges of game development in general.

It’s a really strong beginning though. Plus now that I’ve got a dozen or so hours under my belt and a feel for the combat I’m already planning on going back to play it on a harder difficulty for a second round.

I don’t think I’m anywhere near the end yet (just got back from the initial visit to Alfheim) and if the way things have been set up is any indication the journey is far from over.

The combat is really fun. Unlike the prior God of War games there is an actual flow and rhythm to it, like in God Hand or Devil May Cry or other action games with Real Combat Systems. God of War done grew up in more ways that one.

The story so far is basically an absentee father developing a real relationship with his son for the first time while trying to also teach the son how to be strong in a world of predation but it just may turn out the son has a thing or two to teach the father as well.

It’s not a super original story but it’s told well and more importantly for video games it’s an actual good story. Like, if it were a novel it wouldn’t be classical literature but it would probably see a moment or two on a best seller list.

The way the game tells its story with the single camera cut is quite innovative and will probably be the subject of at least a few copycat attempts. In fact it seems like there is a lot that the game does that might end up becoming a template for third person actions in general, like how Resident Evil 4 and Gears of War became models for third person shooters.

But the things God of War 2018 does are not so much original in themselves but rather synthetic (and perhaps even syncretic in some instances). It’s design borrows elements from other games, like its crafting system or its loot system or even its combat system. It polishes and innovates in smaller ways for the most part to where the individual elements add up to become something greater. The combat in particular is very interesting because it starts out kind of plodding and deliberate and gradually keeps picking up pace until it reconciles being both fast-paced and deliberate at once. The more moves you open up the more options you give yourself in moment to moment battles and the more you enjoy returning from defeat to try a different strategy.

And at all times the presentation is paramount. Everything is framed just so to look suitably “epic” and amazing. As in the prior games the presentation is really what you’re here for and everything else is secondary to it. Only now the secondary “part” (the combat, the actual story, the characters and so on) are just as polished and refined and engaging as the moment to moment presentation so there are no more compromises.

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:waynestare: