If you’ve followed this blog, you know I’m a big fan of the “God of War” series… it’s mindless button-mashing fun, looks amazing, great soundtrack and an interesting enough story and character…
So, it’s with a heavy heart that I say: “God of War: Ascension” is the worse of them all…
It’s not that the game does anything wrong, it’s the same as previous ones, but being a prequel (a sequel would be too hard in terms of storyline, it seems, considering the end of GoW3), we already know how the story turns out… it just feels like a random sequence of events, in which only one character (Kratos) stands out… and even he is a bit “subdued” (guess that comes with not being the God of War yet)…
From a gameplay perspective, it has everything the predecessors had: epic combats, a lot of quick time events, and very polished (except for some very silly fights, in which we’re mainly fighting the camera (too far away, so I couldn’t identify my character and the enemies) and an ever-changing reference point which makes predicting what to press next almost impossible).
It just feels stale… I know the focus on this one was the multiplayer, but I don’t do multiplayer games (with the exception of MMOs)… The learning curve on most of those is too steep for me to give a crap, and I really like playing most games for the story…
Anyway, I can’t say the game is bad, it isn’t, I was entertained for the 10-12 hours I’ve played it… I just felt like the game was going through the motions to open up for the multiplayer (I still think they should do “God of War IV: Valhalla in Flames”, in which Kratos goes against the Nordic Pantheon… Kratos vs Thor would be epic!).
Anyway, I’ll keep enjoying my vacation and working on Grey (check out Spellcaster Studios’ blog for the latest on that!)