God of War Retrospective | A Game-Changer
27Let’s talk about God of War.
Hello everyone, it’s your boy Creamy C here with another weekly rundown.... Yeah I’m not married to that intro. God of War. When the idea of reviewing one of the most well-known and praised PlayStation 2 games crossed my mind, I immediately dismissed it as lunacy. What can I say about God of War that hasn’t already been said by much more qualified reviewers? Not much. Why? Well, I’m about to say something earthshattering here, so you might wanna clench your sphincters for this one: God of War... is a fantastic game. I know, if I were living under a rock since 2005, I’d be swimming in a pool of my own ass gravy right about now due to the sheer shock of this news causing me to expel all of my body fluids at once. All sarcasm aside, most people who know what God of War is, know that it’s amazing, either by playing the game itself or one of the seventeen point five gorillion clones that it spawned in the mid 2000s to early 2010s. Some of these clones were actually great games in their own right, and others… not so much.
At first I thought this review would be one of my usual 8-10 minute affairs, but this one turned into something much longer and more detailed, despite my best efforts to make it pithy. I guess if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a great game is worth 3772 words. Despite that, I’m still going to use my standard reviewing format to take on this incredibly rich and detailed game one bite at a time. With that being said, let’s find out what made God of War so good, and why so many studios wanted to copy it for about a decade after its release.
God of War’s visuals are so good, I need to break out the thesaurus so I don’t use the same word fifty times when describing them. It’s one of the best-looking games on the PlayStation 2. It also looks great when stacked up next to a lot of PlayStation 3 games, which I bring up because I’m playing the far superior PS3 version of God of War in the HD collection featuring God of War 1 and 2. This nifty blu-ray houses both games with better resolutions so you can see the larger than life imagery in full 720p with no meaningful changes to gameplay. That’s one of the best parts about this game. Everything is just… breathtaking and varied. It’s huge and makes you feel like you’re this tiny being that is affecting this cosmic battle between unfathomably powerful entities across the entire country and in multiple dimensions. It’s amazing how many different gigantic locations Santa Monica studios managed to squeeze into this game, and they all look unique and epic. Unless, of course, two stray pieces of cloth are covering the chaotic battlefield overlooked by the formerly utopian streets of Athens.
That brings me to my next topic regarding the presentation, the camera angles. The camera angles in God of War are a lot less shit than the camera in any other given ps2 game. Notice I said they’re not necessarily… good across the board. Just… less shit. Here’s the thing. God of War uses fixed camera angles. Like the blade of Artemis, this is a double-edged sword. You don’t have to worry about a dynamic camera that follows you around and has a seizure when something more intense than a gentlemanly spar between two lifelong fellows occurs, but there are moments when crucial pieces of information are just out of reach because the camera doesn’t show them. This can either result in objects blocking out in-engine cinematics that aren’t part of a cutscene, or objects blocking out areas within the arena. The camera doesn’t do a whole lot of moving around when you’re in a certain area. This is especially bad when you’re in a very challenging platforming section and the camera is faced in the completely opposite direction in which you’re headed. This isn’t a fair challenge, this is just blocking out information that the player needs to continue the game. However, when the developers take a risk with the fixed camera angles and it pans out, it really pans out. Here’s a montage with epic God of War music in the background because words are hard.
Animations talk goes here. This was originally supposed to be a note to self, but I forgot to erase it before I finished writing the script so I guess it’s going into the video. The animations are extremely fluid, which is vital for a hack and slash game. Everything flows together really well and is pleasing to the eyes without being a blurry mess. My favorite animations in God of War involve Kratos struggling to open things. These chests must be sealed with flex tape, because I’ve seen Kratos put just as much effort into lifting these giant slabs of concrete that are like ten times his size. We also can’t talk about animations without talking about the gore. I’m going to hold off going into detail on these because this is more of a gameplay feature, but just look at the sheer level of detail they managed to put into Kratos ripping monsters apart. For a PlayStation 2 game, this is almost unheard of
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