tl;dr guy's upset the series isn't what it used to be, and video games being less 'video-gamey'.
Pretty much says: Games "should" be all about the action and none of this low-key bullshit that hinders spectacle gameplay, which is a fair point to be honest.
If this guy wants the old god of war style games back they made about 6 of them so he can just go play those again. If they just made God of War 3 again but norse this time no one would give a shit.
Games have to change if they want to survive. Take Doom 2016 for example, if they just made it shoot and collect keys it would get pretty boring. That's why they added in weapon upgrades and glory kills. The gameplay is still there, but now you have more options in how to fight. There's nothing wrong with a bit of narrative focus so long as the combat is engaging.
From what I've seen the new God of War succeeds in what it has set out to do, and it definitely deserves the praise it has been given. It's a great looking 3'rd person action RPG that excels at turning Kratos into an even more interesting character.
Problem is as good as Doom 4 was the first time through, repeat playthroughs are a bit of downer from losing all of the upgrades, the short stop n go melee stuff, and the more arena style encounters.
This new God of War is gonna suffer the same thing, I really don't think many people are gonna want to trudge through this game again on repeat playthroughs or re-visit it a few years later down the road. But that's kinda how games are becoming nowadays: Just make stuff that'll grab attention for right now rather than something that can be replayed again and again.
Disagree strongly, I've just started a new playthrough on the hardest difficulty, to both try and find the hidden collectibles and to prove my mastery of the game.
Really confused me that he was comparing this so much to a hack and slash. It's nothing like one.
Seems like his main argument is "I don't like it because it's not like DMC and games shouldn't have cohesive stories or storytelling in the mechanics." And he's talking about a game which IMO blends gameplay with narrative expertly without once feeling like a walking simulator.
In any case he seems to have a very crude and simplistic critical lense all-around so it's hard to take him seriously anyway.
I see what he's getting at, he's saying games shouldn't suffer for the sake of a story. Seeing as the devs themselves stated they wouldn't want Kratos to have a jump button or aerial combos because it would be too jarring to have him jump about inbetween the serious talky talky bits, and I agree with him wholeheartedly, I love when a game has a great narrative but I hate it when the gameplay suffers for it. Shadow of the colossus merged storytelling and gameplay well together, and this new God of War kinda has harder cuts between the combat bits and the slow talky
walky bits.
He also has a huge bias against games that force you to walk while narrative happens, and I agree with him there too, WAY too many games are employing this tactic and it's starting to feel
kinda like shit, I'd sooner just have a cutscene where the characters are emoting with their bodies rather than slowly trudging forward and talking.
His "character action games aren't a real genre" point is dumb as hell
love seeing the vitriol against games actually evolving as an art form from youtube weirdos
I love how pretty much everyone loves this game. Usually when a game comes out, no matter how good it is, there's a good chunk that hate it for whatever reason.
This is the only game I can remember in recent history that hasn't had that happen
Aside from Nintendo games, but that's a given.
I've played all of the God of War -games (well, not the PSP-ones) to the point of exhaustion and I must say the latest game in the series is a fresh take after 75 games of Kratos going "FUCKING *THING* I'LL KILL YOU!" The games are good, but I kind of got bored at Ascension.
Grr new kratos talks too much and uh wtf sony no sex minigame wtf???? do you even care about making good games anymore??? You don't even have to mash O to open chests anymore what is this Gone Home walking simulator garbage.
The game merges gameplay and cutscenes perfectly though, and the one camera trick throughout the whole game really is a testament to that. There's a bit halfway through the game where not only does the game pay respect to the previous series in an incredibly loving way, but the way it actually uses some of the gameplay elements from the Greek series to enhance that sequence was stunning.
I sat down for 3 days and played the game start to end because I was hooked. No gameplay is sacrificed for the story, and no story for gameplay. Using your memories of the old games as a story device is ludicrously cool. There are only a few characters so you really get to know them compared to adding way too many gods to get a grip of.
I agree that games have to adapt, but if there's one agreeable point I could pull from this video it would be that not every game has to be The Last of Us. They've reigned back the series combat to a much more restrictive experience.
In my opinion, GoW does enough to differentiate itself. I can't help but be annoyed by how much health enemies have on higher difficulties and the "parent on journey with kid" trope is already getting incredibly stale for me.
But not every game is The Last of Us. In fact the number of games that are The Last of Us are so incredibly small that the list is just comprised of one game: The Last of Us. God of War's only similarity is that it has a child in it that talks to you in between combat. There isn't exactly an abundance of these games like people seem to claim there are, I don't see how the "parent on journey with kid" trope can get stale when it's only been applied to like three games.
The combat is another debate entirely, personally I don't think the combat was restricted by the storytelling, I don't think we've lost anything by not having aerial combos or a pseudo-isometric perspective, this game is clearly taking such an entirely different approach to combat (it's basically Dark Souls with more combos and ranged options) that picking apart its individual elements in how it compares to the old games is mostly pointless. What's important to me is how that combat feels (it feels pretty damn fucking good), whether it remained engaging and challenging throughout the whole game (it sort of wavered near the end but I think it held up pretty well), and how it meshes with the game at large, and this being much more of an exploration game than any of the other GoWs, it feels much more appropriate.
I'm a bit biased though because I put a lot more importance on narrative and ludonarrative than the meat-and-potatoes combat stuff in a game. If the combat has to be a little more restrictive in order to achieve that (mostly) seamless one-take effect then I'm happy with that, because it makes the game better as a cohesive whole.
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