GOD OF WAR

[Twiztid Elf]

Kratos is angry. There are no good games.
Kratos is here with an axe to wig split the nonsense.

[guttermouth]

Sony releasing GOW on the same day as The Nintendo cardboard box is a huge risk. Hopefully this amazing game isn't overshadowed by cardboard cutouts.

[Twiztid Elf]

First impressions are pretty damn good.
The combat is really satisfying.

[lestat]

Spoiler!

Saw some combat with the blades of chaos, looks sick. Hard is pretty brutal in this, seen a lot of people get their arses whooped bad.

I'll have to pick it up over the next few days and give it a crack when i get back.

[GameHED]

Single player games are not doomed lestat. This game proves they are alive and wel. It's just that greedy businessmen can make alLOT of money on multi so that's why they all want to copy the current trend*. That's no excuse to make short campaigns like Wolfenstein II and cram communist propaganda down little kids throats and say single player games do not sell anymore. Yeah the shit ones don't sell because the devs lacked passion. But that only represent tiny fraction of the stuff. Don't believe candy arse so much (always bashing zelda breath of the wild but celebrates horizon zero dawn) and you can get close to the truth.

All the best talent left when the diversity quotas were put into place which explains why mass effect started to jump the shark from 3 onwards. SJW is the problem and I warned you we are doomed if they are allowed to work on my fave games. (the goal of these bad guys who work for george soros is to make all the shitty games which they worked on as the new gold standard of quality and lower player's expectations as to what is a considered a good game by making lots of really shit ones to hide the good ones from us. (by giving the shit ones really high scores because anita sarkesian and ben kuchera approve of them. Think of it like mainstream media telling us to believe them because they are the only thing to choose from therefore that's why they are right and people should not check for factual evidence because they are 'professional', and not believing them makes you a crazy person because thinking for yourself is wrong - "greedy corporation and corrupt bought-off government officials never lies ok?" )


*in the past gens that meant waggle. So nintendo made a lot of money on gimmicks. Does that mean the end of hardcore gamer? Don't exaggerate. They want you to believe that because it makes it easier for them to justify cancelling single player star wars titles. They just want big money with minimal effort. It's called laziness. You don't have to become like a jewish central banker to survive. Jesus is going to protect the ones who work hard and achieve big. You got to believe. Remember when everyone thought the preowned business was going to kill off developers? I still see nintendo and bethesda and ubisoft etc all managing ok. It's all exageration to make us like shit games and want to pay high price for them, so they don't need to make good games. SJW hate competition. They were raised to believe that merely competing and not winning deserves you a participation ribbon just for existing. So when they go into the workforce they expect everyone to like shoddy quality and accept it without criticism. I think it's made games slowly get worse over time imo. The bad guys just need to work within limits and accept that there are genius people in existence who are naturally talented that can do better than them (like Goku being better than Vegata no matter how often Vegeta trains in the hyperbolic time chamber to try to catch up and close the gap) .....and that's ok.
Just lower the price of your stuff to compete in the free market. This is nature. Jesus hates unfair weights and measures and the pharisees of today want you to hate the critic (eg gamergate being demonised and gamers being called "dead" by the SJW journos) when the message is true. You'll get your money when good shit is made. People want single player star wars games. EA is full of shit. And MS should never have sold off bungie but instead nurture the company like nintendo with Rare when they owned them and we got amazing titles like Golden Eye on n64. Sony making quality single player titles to boost the sony brand is having big effect on console war sphere.
It's what PC gamers wish they had. (which is why they always port beg these days like nintendo fans hehe)

My suggestion to MS: they need to create a GTA clone. You see ever since number 5 it seems rockstar are stuck in multi player mode land. If MS can do a competent GTA clone while there is gap in this genre they can make easy money here. (this can be MS chance to showcase power of the platform.) I don't think Halo and Gears holds as big impact as they did in the past. And forza is niche. (like JRPG back in the 16 bit days) You need a big budget game like what GTA 5 was back in 2013. Then remaster appears when Xbox TWO is announced with enhancements and more content exclusive to that machine. You won't get much competition because nintendo is generally anti-guns in games and sony playing it safe. (remastering old shit) You got to take risks like the kid in Rad who competed on Helltrack. Stop being a frightened pussy. Remember what happened when you rejected the inventor of Waggle technology? nintendo betted on it and it won.

[Rorschach]

Just ordered online, with Flybuys Moon money got it for $55. Looking forward to even the 'cinematic' base PS4 version.

[guttermouth]

Spent about 4 hours so far on it. Game looks so damn pretty. Really beginning to enjoy the combat, very different to previous GOW's

[flipswitch]

This is what the series really needed, a re-boot.

I’m on a small canoe and can travel to different destinations. I’m still early in it, but the game opens up from the beginning where it was almost corridor-like.

Which is another great thing. I thought I’d get tired of it if the whole game was just corridors with a few different paths.

[GameHED]

It's what Deep Down could have been if capcom didn't wuss out. After Monster Hunter World success maybe they can resurrect it.

[Candy Arse]

Oh shit. This game makes a VERY GOOD first impression!

I'm playing in performance mode. Framerate is largely very good and HDR more than offsets for 1080p resolution.

[GameHED]

https://gamingbolt.com/god-of-war-ps4-p ... f-all-time" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Sony Santa Monica has done it again. They have delivered a game that is not only a treat to play through but is also a technical marvel. God of War on the PlayStation 4 quite easily surpasses the likes of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Horizon Zero: Dawn, two of the most beautiful looking games and takes the crown for the best-looking game of this generation. And yes, we know that’s a huge claim given there are new titles releasing every month, but among all the titles we have analyzed for the last many years, this game stands tall among all.

Much like previous AAA PS4 exclusives in recent years, God of War excels in delivering an extremely high-quality assets package. Kratos looks eerily close to real life, his armor is extremely well detailed and his muscular body is clearly showing signs of aging. The animation technology implemented here is simply phenomenal. When Kratos talks or moves, the related skeletal system reacts accordingly resulting into the most complex yet realistic animation system we have ever seen. Heck, even Kratos’ teeth are superbly detailed! That’s attention to detail for you, I suppose!

The game takes place in Norse setting, so from an artistic standpoint, a lot of things have been changed. Most of the environments you travel in the game is filled with life, flora and fauna. But what makes the world stand out is its amazing lighting system. It’s quite evident that the developers are using the game’s lighting system to accordingly create an atmosphere which is either lively, dark or dangerous to the player. Implementing a full physical based rendering pipeline, the physical based lighting dynamically reacts according to the type of objects it’s interacting with. Earlier games in the series had a kind of one dimensional look and feel to them which worked really well back then but with the latest iteration every environment the player comes across is different and has its own set of challenges. So, whether it’s the phenomenal dynamic snow effects or wet environments, all of them look amazing thanks to some really aggressive anisotropic filtering, object displacement and parallax occlusion.

We also wanted to take a moment and talk about the water effects in the game. Look, most of the exploration you do in the game is through sprinting around but there is also a boat that you can hop around to reach different areas. And the water effects during these moments is simply special. Now this is no Sea of Thieves and the game doesn’t intend to deliver that level of immersion but what is here simply looks amazing thanks to the lighting model. I also wanted to briefly talk about the conversation tech while you are travelling in a boat. Kratos and his son will at times engage in conversations but if the player docks the boat before the conversation fully ends, the character who is speaking will end the conversation in a natural way. And when you are back on the boat, the characters will resume the conversation, again in a way that seems authentic. This is a very minor feature but adds to the overall immersion factor.

Next up is the enemy and bosses. Unfortunately, we can’t go in-depth here but what we can say is that this game has perhaps one of the most colorful cast of enemies and bosses you will ever face. The boss’ assets use high resolution textures along with full skin shader support. The game uses a ton of particle effects to deliver some of the most authentic fire, ice and electric effects you will ever see in a video game. And when you have ton of enemies all attacking you at once, the visual effects on offer can be sight to behold at times.

The game’s framework also uses a rather interesting destruction engine which can be seen in one of the earlier boss fights. Now, it’s not completely dynamic like Frostbite but what is here definitely seems intriguing. There are also complex physics processes at work, specially related to the Leviathan axe that Kratos carries. The axe is not only used for taking down your foes but also used for solving chest puzzles in rather unique ways. And by the way throwing the axe far away and then calling it back only to see it follow the more or less accurate trajectory back to you doesn’t get old.

As expected, the game comes packed with PS4 Pro support. However, unlike some of the major PS4 releases in the past, this game come with not only a resolution mode but also a performance mode. But before we jump into analyzing the PS4 Pro version, we want to make it clear that the in our analysis the base PS4 version ran smoothly at 30fps and at 1080p. There were drops here and there but for the most part performance was fine. The PS4 Pro on the other hand seems like a different story. On a 4K TV, the game runs at a dynamic checkerboard 2160p resolution. Performance for the most part seems fine but at times there were drastic frame rate drops which made the game completely unplayable for 1-2 seconds before the engine corrected it back. On performance mode, it seems like the game is targeting higher frame rates up to 60fps. The game doesn’t really run at a consistent 60fps, in fact performance was so bad in some cases that we had to switch back to Resolution mode for smoother gameplay.

So overall and this may be surprising for some players, we preferred the base version as far as performance goes. Of course, we fully expect the developers to patch out the PS4 Pro version and it’s ideally the best version due to the extra bells and whistles it offers but for now, our preferred platform is the base PS4 version.

So, in conclusion, God of War on the PS4 is an incredible effort by the development team at Sony Santa Monica. Not only it has delivered one of the best games of this generation, it has managed to surpass our expectations from a technical perspective as well. Back in 2016 we had claimed during our Uncharted 4 analysis that next-gen doesn’t start until Naughty Dog says so. Well, today we say this: Next-gen doesn’t start until Sony Santa Monica says so.

The ball is now in your court, Naughty Dog!

The rival admits they fucked up:
https://gamingbolt.com/microsofts-mike- ... competitor" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

PC gaming is doomed too. GoW is platform exclusive.

[Vince]

Playing on the Pro in faux 4k and it's stunning. Controls really well. Loving the story and interactions between father and son are great. Sony really knocking it outta the park this gen with 1st party exclusives.

[t0mby]

Sony really knocking it outta the park this gen with 1st party exclusives.

They pretty much do every generation, it's why I made the transition from Xbox to Playstation as my favorite console last gen and stuck with them this gen.

[GameHED]

Sony was always going to win this gen. MS need to listen to us hardcore guys who were with them during the Xbox original and Xbox 360 days. We are the guys who are now buying high quality 1st party sony games (with quality single player content) NOW.

If EA and MS believe multi is so important then ok that is fine. Keep making money from that stuff if you think it will keep the shareholder happy. But don't cancel the single player shit you dicks! That's what God of War teaches them. Strive for excellence like the next game may be your last game you ever make before you die. And if the game is bloody good? Even if people are buying preowned eb games copies and not new copies of the games, you still win despite this. That's what nintendo has had to do for ages. I think they are just making excuses and want to ditch single player gaming altogether because they are businessmen first and cool creative guys secondly.

All MS has to do is give us stuff like a Horizon ZD, Zelda BTOW, God of War but with 4k beauty. So easy. Stop obsessing over the mobile gaming crowd who are mostly 5 year old kids pestering their mums to buy them skins. That's not the future of gaming guys. You can have money from that but don't make that the reason to buy a Xbox branded consoles FFS. Aim high and outdo sony on these triple A game front and people will come back to the Xbox brand. (Maybe when Cyberpunk and Elder Scrolls 6 come out)

funny review from WAB: "You got traffic lights on your arse!"

[flipswitch]

I thought the x360 was the better console from last gen. Better online - innovations such as party chat and achievements that everyone has copied. Controller was better, again a design that other manufacturers copied. Better third party games performance generally. The hardware was more innovative and dev-friendly than ps3. Unified memory architecture, etc.

The OS had some multitasking capabilities. PS3 I felt wasn’t made for it and when they did add it, it bogged down performance and was slow.

It had a nice range of exclusives. Halo 3 exploded in 2007 with MW. And I remember seeing 1 million users online frequently when playing Halo 3 multiplayer which was amazing. RROD was bad, but I received mine repaired in a week. I bought a slim later on.

Things I didn’t really get into much, such as XBLA, again brilliant

They REALLY screwed up the Xbone launch and lost all that momentum.

[lestat]

Sony really struggled with their first party early on, getting lots of black eyes trying to do online.

So now they just focus on single player using shared code bases and technology from naughty dog, that's why a lot of Sony stuff looks a little derivative but they can nail the quality and depth with very good and mature tools.

Ms had great success outsourcing 1st party last gen but that has proven to be much harder now and their internal studios besides turn 10 have been a shambles. Ms made a mistake letting Bungee go, they should have let them create destiny in house.

I think it's also easier to get the budget for games when you have the user base to take those risks. Ms need to make some big announcements at e3, to get mind share back. Sony is on fire.

[Vince]

Yeah I'll admit I loved the ps1 and ps2, but went 360 more than ps3. I hardly touch my 1x now as my pro vets all the attention. Ps3 had some great exclusives, but ps4 is really where it's at this gen. And God of War is getting better the further I play. I was a pretty big fan of the originals, but this blows them away.

[Candy Arse]

This game is soooooo good! Hell of an evolution to the series.

[PhoneMonkey]

Seen Wired's headline on God of War? Incredibly fun, well developed action games are now an example of toxic masculinity, apparently.

[Gamma]

Disappointing that there's no comment section, would have been golden.

[Rorschach]

I stopped reading halfway through. Written by a pious halfwit. Critique the game by all means but leave the gender politics out if it FFS.

[Twiztid Elf]

Holy shit. This game......
Wow.
It's not a 10/10 from me, but it's damn close.
There are a couple of annoyances that slightly tarnish this amazing game.

Btw, wtf is the definition of 'toxic masculinity'? Matt Lodge type behavior I'm guessing is what they're getting at? If so, that's being an arsehole, not masculinity.

[Candy Arse]

Holy shit. This game......
Wow.
It's not a 10/10 from me, but it's damn close.
There are a couple of annoyances that slightly tarnish this amazing game.

Btw, wtf is the definition of 'toxic masculinity'? Matt Lodge type behavior I'm guessing is what they're getting at? If so, that's being an arsehole, not masculinity.

Nah can't be Lodge-type behaviour because Lodge did nothing wrong, just ask the Broncos and their fans.

[lestat]

I had no idea Christopher Judge is the voice of Kratos.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/4 ... -go-to-die" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Big Stargate fan, so I'm hyped to hear teal'c scream boi when my copy arrives from Amazon. He really is a God killer!

[Madmya]

I don't get why there isn't more of these type of games, particularly on xbox.

Xbox had Ninja Gaiden and Bayonetta, now it has none. ffs *kicks cat*