God of War--Initial Impressions *No Spoilers* (Gaming)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Saturday, April 21, 2018, 12:25 (2413 days ago) @ Korny

The funny thing is that the combat is what put me off from the God of War franchise in the first place. It really was just generic button spamming, without any real skill required, and the quicktime button-mashing boss sequences felt super shallow.

That really is selling the original games completely short. As I said before, those games could be button-mashy on the easier settings, but crank up the difficulty and the game gets far too punishing to play that way. Then you realize how crucial the snappy controls are, and you grow to appreciate the depth of the combat and the breadth of the tools at your disposal.

It's been pretty well known that the huge shift in combat could lead to tons of "this isn't God of War!" complaints, and that lens definitely skews how longtime fans see the game (I'm pretty sure Stabbim is the most likely person to dislike this game).

Personally, I reeeeeally love the way the game's combat and encounter loops work.

-You fight a new enemy, and learn what they're all about.

-You fight a larger number of the enemy, with previous enemies thrown in.

-Your knowledge of all of the enemies so far is tested, and the room itself may provide an additional challenge.

-You fight a new enemy, and learn what they're about.

This stream of learning, improving, and adapting is great, and causes enemy groups to play more like a puzzle that can be solved a number of different ways.
Combine that with your steadily-growing list of abilities, unlocks, and knowledge of how you can synergize them all, and the tools at your disposal open up so many avenues to approach an encounter.

Yeah, the encounter design seems really good so far. I totally agree with the way you've broken it down.

I recorded a clip of how I handled the early room where the spiked ceiling descends on you whenever you call for your axe. I loved that encounter, and how I adapted to it and got my way through. But when I watched the video later, I realized that I did everything "wrong" in that room, and I could have approached every single part of it way better.
Then I watched Sammy go through that room, and do everything completely different from the way I did it, and the way I "should" have done it. And she still seemed to have less trouble than I did.

It's pretty great.

That's a great room. I initially tried to engage the enemies up close, but I accidentally recalled my ax mid-fight and got crushed by the ceiling. So on my next try, I just jumped back out from under the spikes and recalled my ax, crushing all the enemies in the room. Great stuff :)

PS, the control scheme definitely takes some getting used to, but it might help to change the controls up a bit (Sammy had to swap the bumpers and triggers, which I thought were fine).

Yeah I do find I've been fighting the controls somewhat. There's nothing wrong with the layout itself, I think... it's just that my muscle memory seems to keep diverting back to other games that use a different layout.