I just completed God of War and its a game that starts out promising but I feel hugely disappointed.
Pushing visuals came at a huge price when it comes to level design
The game's levels are tiny, bitty and severely limited in scope and design.The game feels like it has to mask loading almost all the fucking time.
1) Constant, lenghty slow door opening animations. every two feet.
2)Intentionally slow, lenghty climbing animations/obstacles that are a slog to get through after the first time.
3) Levels are very small and empty most of the time despite looking impressive.
4) Many of the "rooms" levels are repetitive empty narrow hallways that seem to serve nothing but mask loading the next area.
5)It felt like there were too many forced slow walk sections.
Strong lack of enemy variety, lack of (mechanically) good boss fights,
1) Fighting the apes and trolls got extremely repetitive and boring the more the game progressed. They are essentially just regular enemies ,not bosses.
2) Game is overlong and padded with boring arenas of fighting the same enemies over and over.
3) Tedious encounter design on higher difficulties. Lack of manual healing made it tedious because whenever you get hit its probably a better idea to reload the checkpoint than wait for a random heal drop.
Story was a gamble some aspects were good, others weren't
1)Baldur is shallow and disappointing as a character. Not a good final boss.(despite having a great final scene)
Could've made for a decent side villain but the fact that he is THE main antagonist is disappointing.
2) Brok and Sindri take too much screen time and play too big a role.The world feels somewhat empty when its nothing but those two everywhere. Ultimately Mimir is also comic relief too. The cast in general just isn't good enough as a whole.
3) Cutscene direction is stellar. Kratos/Son interactions (and their relation to Faye)are stellar but not balanced by enough antagonistic forces that actually matter.
4) The sequel baiting and teasing felt shameless. This game actually needed Thor to feel complete.
Overall this is a good(not great game) that feels unbalanced and incomplete. It pushes amazing visuals and production values but those came at high costs. I find it very hard to want to get back to it after having completed it once
8/10.
Pushing visuals came at a huge price when it comes to level design
The game's levels are tiny, bitty and severely limited in scope and design.The game feels like it has to mask loading almost all the fucking time.
1) Constant, lenghty slow door opening animations. every two feet.
2)Intentionally slow, lenghty climbing animations/obstacles that are a slog to get through after the first time.
3) Levels are very small and empty most of the time despite looking impressive.
4) Many of the "rooms" levels are repetitive empty narrow hallways that seem to serve nothing but mask loading the next area.
5)It felt like there were too many forced slow walk sections.
Strong lack of enemy variety, lack of (mechanically) good boss fights,
1) Fighting the apes and trolls got extremely repetitive and boring the more the game progressed. They are essentially just regular enemies ,not bosses.
2) Game is overlong and padded with boring arenas of fighting the same enemies over and over.
3) Tedious encounter design on higher difficulties. Lack of manual healing made it tedious because whenever you get hit its probably a better idea to reload the checkpoint than wait for a random heal drop.
Story was a gamble some aspects were good, others weren't
1)Baldur is shallow and disappointing as a character. Not a good final boss.(despite having a great final scene)
Could've made for a decent side villain but the fact that he is THE main antagonist is disappointing.
2) Brok and Sindri take too much screen time and play too big a role.The world feels somewhat empty when its nothing but those two everywhere. Ultimately Mimir is also comic relief too. The cast in general just isn't good enough as a whole.
3) Cutscene direction is stellar. Kratos/Son interactions (and their relation to Faye)are stellar but not balanced by enough antagonistic forces that actually matter.
4) The sequel baiting and teasing felt shameless. This game actually needed Thor to feel complete.
Overall this is a good(not great game) that feels unbalanced and incomplete. It pushes amazing visuals and production values but those came at high costs. I find it very hard to want to get back to it after having completed it once
8/10.