Topic: TheGamingBritShow highlights everything wrong with God of War 4 so far

[Lumi Kløvstad]

TL;DW version: if you're going to make it basically a new character with a new set of gameplay, make it a spin off or an original IP already. Furthermore, if we vote with our wallets in favor of redefining God of War as something it patently never has been, we more than risk the same happening to other beloved action franchises.

A shame though. Give him a whip and he'd have made an awesome take on Barbarian Simon Belmont.

[Claimh Solais]

Is it bad that this honestly looks far better than the previous God of Wars to me, though?

[Lumi Kløvstad]

Is it bad that this honestly looks far better than the previous God of Wars to me, though?

Yes it is. Indescribably so.

God of War should be what it is, and not something else. This new game is something else that isn't God of War.

[Claimh Solais]

Fair enough. Only GoW games I've played are the first and Chains of Olympus. While Chains of Olympus was pretty alright, I hold GoW1 as one of the worst games I've ever played. (dabbled a bit in GoW2 and the game seemed alright). I don't really trust my opinion of Chains of Olympus, either, since I played that when I was like... 13 or 14.

That being said, I'd say wait for a little bit more of the game before making a full judgment of it, but I do get how it's a bummer with a series changing (it'd be like if FromSoftware made Dark Souls IV and suddenly it was like MGR: Revengeance). I do appreciate the more realistic feel the gameplay looks to have, though. It'd be nice to have a straight hack-n-slash with realistic physics and such once in a while.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

Fair enough. Only GoW games I've played are the first and Chains of Olympus. While Chains of Olympus was pretty alright, I hold GoW1 as one of the worst games I've ever played. (dabbled a bit in GoW2 and the game seemed alright). I don't really trust my opinion of Chains of Olympus, either, since I played that when I was like... 13 or 14.

That being said, I'd say wait for a little bit more of the game before making a full judgment of it, but I do get how it's a bummer with a series changing (it'd be like if FromSoftware made Dark Souls IV and suddenly it was like MGR: Revengeance). I do appreciate the more realistic feel the gameplay looks to have, though. It'd be nice to have a straight hack-n-slash with realistic physics and such once in a while.

Chains of Olympus has actually aged quite spectacularly; I just completed a replay a few months ago and it's still one of the best (albeit short) entries in the series that condenses everything good about GOW1 and 2 into a PSP title. God of War 1 is easily the worst entry in the series, especially the PS3 HD Remaster which reduces the amount of time for the Traps of Madness spike puzzle from a difficult-but-ultimately-possible 30 seconds to a controller-chucking-hair-tearing-out-pixel-perfect-performance-requiring 25 seconds which I have been unable to beat since the remaster first hit shelves.

If you're basing your opinions of the series on just those games, you really aren't giving the games their fair due -- they improved a LOT as they went on.

[Dracula9]

I'm less bothered by the "it's still Kratos" aspect (I don't expect Sony to drop one of their titular characters and IPs for something "new", that'd be stupid), and more bothered by the "how the hell do you fix all the shit that went down at the end of GoW3?" aspect.

"It's not something new" is an argument I've seen more and more people run with, and while it does have some merit I mostly regard it as petulant whining.

"God of War should stay as God of War" is crap because there are multiple gods of war throughout human myth and history. That it went with the Greek one first doesn't invalidate Agurzil or Mixcoatl or Chi You or Ahnur or Chamunda or Hachiman Daimyōjin or Belus or Qamaits or Odin or Freyja or Bellona or Anat or any of the other war deities/pantheons. It's purely an argument of "I want something NEWWWWWW!" and smashing one's fists down on the table in frustration, because there's no actual argument that rationally favors it.

Would I find it interesting if they'd still retained the GoW name, but came up with a new protag? Of course I would.

Would I be irrevocably buttmad that the literal son of a literal god among gods managed to survive an injury he's survived before and went on to live out his life elsewhere since he's probably some form of immortal or just has a really long lifespan due to his parentage? Not really, because I'm not so uptight that a new spin on an established character in a new environment sends me into a Fury (see what I did there?), and that is the only way I can regard the holders of this particular argument--it's not so much me knocking and dismissing them or the argument outright, but rather dismissing it due to how opinionated it is. There's no set rule that the studios have to do something new all the time--we then run the risk of audiences equally blowing their tops because the new product deviates too far from the expected standard of quality.

Does recycling Kratos illustrate a possible laziness on the part of Sony? Of course it does. We live in a time in the industry where shit's getting recycled left and right, with a lot of it being lackluster straight out of the gate. Of course people are going to be defensive and wary of another instance--but, despite that, dismissing the validity and worth of something almost entirely on that premise alone is a show of intellectual dishonesty, since the root argument is purely a subjective and opinion-centered one.

I, for one, am curious how the actual Hel (see what I did there?) they're going to explain how

(click to show/hide)

the world was restored after Kratos offed practically all the major terrestrial deities and caused armageddon in the process, survived the suggested death wound, survived the very long fall off that cliff he was implied to have fallen from with that suggested death wound, relocated to (presumably) somewhere in the Scandanavia/Denmark/Iceland area, had another kid presumably lost the wife/mother after the implied apocalypse happened, and where and how the Norse pantheon show up.

I don't really give a shit that they're recycling Kratos for his titular series. I fully expect that sort of thing. I fully expect for Sony to milk the franchise as long as they can as has become a bit of a disappointing norm--but looking at who's working on this, and specifically who's leading it (seriously, Corey's back to man it, I don't see how that can possibly go badly unless he's done a complete 180 on his quality of work from when he led GoW2), I can forego grievances about recycling characters again perhaps where it's not necessary anymore because I expect the game to actually be good.

This sort of argument looks a lot like all the outcry when Heath Ledger's Joker was first shown to the public--everyone bitched and moaned that he'd never live up to the likes of Nicholson and Hamill and that it was a waste of time and effort and would be so horrible, and then The Dark Knight came out and everyone shit their pants praising the performance.

What is this argument doing? More or less the same thing--people bitching and moaning that Kratos is being used again and that it's not "original" despite literally everything but Kratos being a completely new setting and that the game is somehow ruined on that premise alone, all before anything more than the E3 demo has been shown, before there's anything really solid in Gow4's corner.

I'm not a particularly big fan of the "don't knock it until you play it" counter, and am trying not to veer into that territory with this, but the hostility and defensiveness of this specific argument seems a bit of a jump of the gun, don't you think?

[X]

"God of War should stay as God of War" is crap because there are multiple gods of war throughout human myth and history. That it went with the Greek one first doesn't invalidate Agurzil or Mixcoatl or Chi You or Ahnur or Chamunda or Hachiman Daimyōjin or Belus or Qamaits or Odin or Freyja or Bellona or Anat or any of the other war deities/pantheons. It's purely an argument of "I want something NEWWWWWW!" and smashing one's fists down on the table in frustration, because there's no actual argument that rationally favors it.

You didn't mention Mars the Roman God of War. Granted he's just the Roman version of the Greek god Ares.

[Dracula9]

I also didn't mention all the secondary and tertiary war deities from such places as Vietnam, other parts of Africa, Ireland, Siberia, any other American Indian tribe, any coastal tribe or sect, Australian and other aboriginals, or any of the other dozens of options.

Would you like me to amass a list of every known war deity simply because I felt it unnecessary to mention the most obvious non-Ares choice relevant to the Greek pantheon? I have no problem doing so for the sake of semantics--I made deliberate omissions for the sake of cutting down reading times.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

What you fail to address, D9, is the second part of the argument the guy is making: the gameplay in no way even resembles any God of War game. They changed a character who has been an outright unrepentant limb-ripping blood knight murder-boner Villain Protagonist from Day 1 into a poor man's Joel from The Last of Us (apparently, we haven't seen more of the new Kratos yet) with no explanation and then completely changed the gameplay until it was no longer recognizable as even being from the same franchise! Furthermore, the creators did a piss-poor job at explaining why any of these changes were made, or even needed to be made. Just sort of "Oh I dunno man change is good I guess?"

As he said, imagine Uncharted 5 being made. You boot it up and suddenly find that instead of the funny and slightly adorkable chatterbox Nate Drake has always been he's now essentially Kratos from GOW3, screaming at the top of his lungs in a blood-fueled rage, decapitating people, and gouging their eyes out with his thumbs. It doesn't matter how you justify the change in-story; that's just not who the character is fundamentally supposed to be. Characters play a huge role in storytelling, and when people see the characters involved in a story, it informs them as to what kind of story it will be. When you see Deadpool show up, you know it's going to be a bloody but hilarious irreverent romp, and there's a few other characters you could reliably expect to turn up around the corner -- be it Spider Man, Cable, Domino, or Wolverine. When you see Nathan Drake show up, you know you're about to be treated to a grand globe-trotting epic with snarky line delivery centering around Hollywood Archaeology and treasure hunting. When you see Kratos turn up, you expect a bloody orgy of gratuitous sex and violence with just enough plot-tape present to keep the set pieces from falling apart and showing the world how shallow the story really is.

AND THAT'S OKAY.

WE NEED STORIES LIKE THAT.

The 12 Labors of Herakles (which provided a hefty amount of inspiration for the original team) was EXACTLY that kind of story. It was a thrilling but ultimately shallow tale of a great warrior meant to give fighters someone to aspire to be like, give children something to gasp in awe about, and generally serve as a distraction to how crappy life in Ancient Greece tended to be. Herakles has become a far more complex and dynamic character since his tale was first told, but that is almost entirely a modern invention of our 19th-21st century societies. The Greek version was a LOT more like Kratos is in the initial God of War Trilogy.

God of War should be what it is. God of War isn't meant to be a heartwarming tale, a fathers and sons tale, or a deep and moving story for adults. It's never been that. What it is, a shallow and simple but thoroughly enjoyable hack and slash hyper masculine murder fantasy, has now been so long established that to change it is a terrible risk.

He also addressed that the weapons which were so iconic to the series and the combat system that leaps to everyone's minds when they so much as hear the name of the game is no longer present. The way the camera works has been completely redone and is now something completely alien to the franchise. The way the game explains its story has been lifted from games like The Order 1886 (railroaded walking and talking sequences? OH BOY SIGN ME RIGHT UP!). This is "God Of War: All-New, All-Different!"

So why not make it a spin off, or a reboot, or a gaiden entry? It's making the sort of changes any of those entries would have required doing, but God Of War: All-New, All Different! refuses to change up the most critical thing: the canon focus. This being an AU Kratos would have been understandable. You expect the Ultimate Marvel version of Captain America to behave differently from the main canon version because they are meant to be different takes on the same character -- you expect the same kinds of stories (as you read above) but you accept that they will be told slightly differently than you are used to. This being a completely new character would have wiped the board of most of your expectations entirely. You know it's going to be violent (because of the God of War franchise name), but you otherwise expect nothing because Kratos would no longer be the narrative focus.

In short, this is exactly why people were pissed off about what Capcom forced Ninja Theory to do with DmC Devil May Cry, only even more so. DmC ended up nailing the series gameplay to a tee -- even more so in the Definitive Edition -- whereas this changes almost absolutely everything. The character is one I barely recognize (cool beard though), the setting is one that doesn't feel natural to what the series has presented before, the combat system is unrecognizable, and the storytelling apes from the worst trends of gaming in 2015.

Really, all I'm waiting for now is the plot-twisty reveal that Chronos survived Kratos' rampage and used time travel to undo the whole series and relocate Kratos far to the north to a safe distance away from Zeus or some other trite cliche.

At least that would be in line with what the series has presented before.

And the worst part of all of this is that by saying we're okay with this happening to THIS franchise will tell the industry we're okay with this happening to other franchises who deserve these changes even less.

Really, in an age where it is so patently obvious that the entertainment industry is going to learn the wrong lessons from anything and everything, do you really want to take that chance?

[Dracula9]

I did not "fail" to address that particular point--I saw no reason to do so. Perhaps this was a mistake.

"It doesn't play like it used to exactly and the Blades of Chaos/Athena are gone" might hold some water, if not for the fact that we're talking about a guy who's used everything from a bow to a sword to bastardized kusarigama to cestuses (cesti? cestae? I have no idea.) to a dude's head to a spear to tesla-coil chains to his own teeth.

Removing weapons tied to a pantheon he's moved on from (slain, more like) and using something new suited to where he's at is in no way some horrid sin that must be resolved. He's used an armada's worth of other weapons over his game life, and it makes no sense in the context of a post-Olympus Kratos to continue using the weapons given to him by deities he's either killed or turned his back on.

Now, the argument that "it's straying just far enough that it seems odd to use the same IP" is indeed a valid one--but if you'll notice, I addressed the exact reason I don't have an inherent problem with this: marketing. In some measure I fully expect that the series name is being attached and that series' posterboy being the protag yet again were deliberate decisions made so that people would flock to it more readily. I've long since come to terms with this method of franchise-milking, and therefore am not as vehement about it as you or others may be.

That doesn't mean I entirely support it, just that I've realized it's going to happen no matter what and don't see the point in bemoaning something that will exist regardless of how I feel about it.

The comparison to DmC is also a somewhat valid one--except the core combat mechanics stayed relatively the same to the original series. Sure, they threw in more use of platforming elements and drastically new weapons, but really the axe is just the big heavy sword from DMC2, the fire fists are [insert gauntlet-based weapon Dante gets several times during the series here] again, and the Tron discs are notably similar to Vergil's Summoned Swords in DMC3. The only noticeably new weapon type I really took note of was the scythe, due to its inherent purpose of crowd control in a way DMC only briefly touched on with Agni & Rudra. The others I can trace similarities back to previous iterations. But ultimately, combat in DmC remained largely the same as it always was--precise combo-chaining and increasing variety in techniques to get more style points.

Wanna know why I think the rest of the comparison falls a bit short at present? DmC openly mocked the playerbase of the original series, several times over--the obnoxious and infamous "not in a million years" scene, the very utter bastardization of established characters into shallow-theme shells of their original portrayls, etc.

Know what I haven't seen GoW4 do yet? Any of the above.

They took the armed-to-the-teeth god-killer with a troubled past who ultimately just wanted to atone for his sins/be with his family again, and put him in a new environment to kill gods with new weapons to be armed to the teeth with and gave him a new family.

I hardly see how that is as drastic as things that games like DmC has done.

We've barely seen anything more than a glimpse of GoW4, and already there are people jumping to conclusions as to what it will entail. Sure, theories will be theories and predispositions will arise as they always have and always will--but we're not talking about something like Mighty No. 9 here--there's no shitty PR relations, no open and very clearly deliberate mocking of the core fan audience, no unfulfilled promises being dished out left and right with delay after delay, or disappointing releases being showcased. There's not nearly enough content shown for GoW4 yet for this to be so, and yet here you and TGBS are treating it as though there is.

There's nothing wrong with skepticism, far from it, but this has clearly escalated beyond simple skepticism.

Perhaps I have a more positive/optimistic and probably a little biased perspective on the whole thing due to it being headed by someone with a good and established track record with the series and everything that that can entail. And I'm remaining healthily skeptical and wary of fanboying so much that my judgment becomes clouded, as well as trying to maintain a balance between "here's what they've shown us, here's what I've concluded based on that evidence" and "don't jump the gun and prematurely cast a likely fallible verdict on it."

But the arguments being presented, the manner they're being presented in, and the things used as defense material simply don't stack up well enough for me to regard them more seriously than I've shown myself to. Plain and simple. When more of the game is shown, and more opinions and interviews and all that develop, I'll likely alter my stance to some degree based on the conclusions I draw from the new developments, both on this and the development side of the game.

But I'm far from taking shots in the dark and "forgetting" to address things. I am merely operating based on my current prerogative, is all.

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As for the Cronos thing--not gonna happen in all likelihood. Cronos' death scene was pretty implicit, not to mention that you can still see Kratos' scar from GoW2 on his abdomen and his ash/blood markings are still prevalent. In order for Cronos to send him back in time to render him "safe," it would have to have been long before he became Ares' servant, since that was one of the main catalysts for everything that happens in the series. And we have no evidence to support such a theory.

I would place more stock in one of the Sisters of Fate somehow surviving and doing that than I would Cronos, but the Sisters' deaths were also very implicit--Clotho had her head impaled and Lahkesis/Atropos were sealed in a magic time-mirror-dimension thing which was then shattered, effectively erasing them from existence based on how the game and plot presented that dimension and their powers.

So no, there seems to be no solid evidence to suggest Kratos was flung back in time and relocated to be rendered "safe." What's more, it seems unlikely that Cronos would do such a thing, since he and Kratos share Zeus as a common foe--if anything, Cronos would be more likely to reverse time back to before Kratos fought and killed him and changed how he addressed and reacted to Kratos to prevent pissing him off (which, as all GoW players know, means you gon die and you gon die all painful-like).

Why might the developers not give any real explanation for how and why Kratos is where he is now in the circumstances he finds himself within?

I dunno, probably because that's exactly the kind of vagueness that gets people talking about your product and promotes free advertising and all but guarantees some portion of sales just for the curiosity value alone, and that's what any smart marketing team would do.

What it probably isn't, though, is it just developers/writers/marketers being lazy and just up and not explaining shit.

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As for what I believe is an edited rhetoric, the entertainment industry will do more or less whatever it wants to do regardless of what a few of us agree or disagree upon on internet message boards. That's not to say that we, the audience, hold no power; rather, there will be sales no matter what, and if those sales are enough to satiate the companies, then they've achieved something anyway.

Just look at Mighty No. 9 again, to use a well-documented example. It's not looking to good, it pissed off and disappointed a ton of people, Inafune and the team appear to at least be willing to own up to some mistakes (whether or not they're genuine about it has no bearing on the point I'm illustrating here), but at the end of the day that four million in backer funding and the actual product profit margin still went into people's pockets.

And sure, maybe some will learn from their mistakes and know how to gauge their audience's reactions appropriately. Isn't that what things like E3 reveals and demos are for, after all?

But at the end of it all, unless a very significant portion of the playerbase rally behind a singular point or series of points either for or against something being done, there's not going to be much going in the way of making a statement to the industry. It's unfortunate, it's a bitch, but that's the nature of the beast.

So to answer your question, no, I don't want to "take that chance"--but not for the reasons you seem to think. I'm not against planting my foot and making a statement for/against something deserving of it, but at the same time I'm also not in favor of jumping the gun based on literal scraps of evidence and confirmation bias to justify whatever I have to say (even when I'm just as guilty as everyone else and do it myself--we're all human and we all slip up in our convictions from time to time). But I'm not about to lose my shit over a new direction for a series that, despite glaring past reasons to have red flags go up (such as the Lords trilogy on the whole, DmC, MN9, etc.), so far hasn't actually done anything that it hasn't already done in some form already in the very past iterations that are being cited as "how it should be done."

We've seen Kratos use shitloads of different weapons other than his signature ones. His signature ones appear to be gone, which makes complete sense if they're no longer as powerful or useful as they once were and if Kratos has relocated to a new setting which would require a new approach to things. What's replaced them seems to be a pseudo-Marvel-Mjolnir battle axe (hardly a drastic deviation when you look at Tesla-chains and a god's magic head as canonical weapons), a bow (which we've seen him use before), and his own fists (also which we've seen him use before).

We've seen Kratos travel many different environs and landscapes--Tartarus, time-streams, the domain of the gods themselves, the underworld, basically Heaven, [insert famous Greek/Greek area city here], the dreamscape, the insides of not one, but two Titans (as well as other giant monsters), and his own subconscious, to name but a few. Now he's in what appears to be a wilderness in what is presumably a Viking or Nordic country (Sweden, Denmark, Scandanavia, Norway, etc., etc.). With trees. And snow. How terrifying and abstract a concept for a dude who's beaten Death itself multiple times and gone literally under the planet itself and the living pillar supporting it.

We've seen Kratos have a rare soft side--his conversations with a disguised Alecto/Tisiphone, his reunion with the afterlife spirit of his own daughter, his subconscious manifestations of his tragically-slaughtered family, his interactions with Orkos, and his relationship with Pandora. Now he's in a role where he has an actual kid of his own again and is trying to do better than the first time. Wow. What an uncalled-for and sinfully-deviant leap from his original character seeking vengeance and absolution for his family and his own (admittedly warped) sense of honor.

Now I get where the counter to this comes from: "GoW isn't really about character growth, it's about mindless gory raunchy bloodshed and fun"--but this is subjective and opinionated at best. If it were true, then all the dialogues and plot elements trying (not necessarily succeeding well at it, but trying nonetheless) to give his character some measure of an arc--his acceptance of hope as a powerful emotion, his journey to self-forgiveness, his willingness to lay aside his vengeance's clearly mandatory route to try and keep Pandora alive, the constant comments about wanting to be released from his torment, etc.--would not and should not be present in the plot whatsoever. The original plot arc would work just as well under the basic premise of "dude's pissed, wants to kill the gods, gods keep fucking with him and giving him more reason to want to kill them" without anything involving his emotions or past beyond "the gods fucked with him and tricked him into murdering his family, and that's not cool."

Yet they didn't do that.

Krato's character development might be lackluster and shallow at its very best, but the writers tried nonetheless. A new route and setting giving him a new start to atone and do better does nothing but expand on what the base series has already attempted to do--it's just giving itself more room to do it better than the first time.

Once more, I'm not being an apologist or supporter of the "fuck it, they're buying it, let's keep making it even though it's shit" mentality prevalent in the industry these days. Far from it.

But based on what Sony has shown thus far, I see no reason to include GoW4 in that category.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

As for the Cronos thing--not gonna happen in all likelihood. Cronos' death scene was pretty implicit, not to mention that you can still see Kratos' scar from GoW2 on his abdomen and his ash/blood markings are still prevalent. In order for Cronos to send him back in time to render him "safe," it would have to have been long before he became Ares' servant, since that was one of the main catalysts for everything that happens in the series. And we have no evidence to support such a theory.

I would place more stock in one of the Sisters of Fate somehow surviving and doing that than I would Cronos, but the Sisters' deaths were also very implicit--Clotho had her head impaled and Lahkesis/Atropos were sealed in a magic time-mirror-dimension thing which was then shattered, effectively erasing them from existence based on how the game and plot presented that dimension and their powers.

So no, there seems to be no solid evidence to suggest Kratos was flung back in time and relocated to be rendered "safe." What's more, it seems unlikely that Cronos would do such a thing, since he and Kratos share Zeus as a common foe--if anything, Cronos would be more likely to reverse time back to before Kratos fought and killed him and changed how he addressed and reacted to Kratos to prevent pissing him off (which, as all GoW players know, means you gon die and you gon die all painful-like).

Why might the developers not give any real explanation for how and why Kratos is where he is now in the circumstances he finds himself within?

I dunno, probably because that's exactly the kind of vagueness that gets people talking about your product and promotes free advertising and all but guarantees some portion of sales just for the curiosity value alone, and that's what any smart marketing team would do.

What it probably isn't, though, is it just developers/writers/marketers being lazy and just up and not explaining shit.

Cronus (The father of Zeus) and Chronos (The God of Time) are entirely different gods/characters. Chronos has never appeared in a God of War event, so it's likely he survived. Being a Primordial, he's probably even beyond the scope of Kratos' ability to kill (you can no more kill a Primordial than use a kitchen knife to cut the sky). And he would probably screw with time to undo what Kratos did if Kratos' actions unbalanced nature too much.

And there is that "Kratos killed everyone everywhere" ending of GOW3 that will have to be retconned in some way.

[Dracula9]

My mistake on that one. I've seen many people and sources confuse Cronus/Cronos with the Time God, and wrongly presumed another instance here. My bad.

That being said, I don't see why the Time Primordial would get involved beyond his own scope unless Kratos was fucking with Time itself too much. Causing a natural-disaster-level doomsday is hardly in that wheelhouse.

I should imagine Kratos jumping around the Threads of Fate and doing things that should rightly cause a fatal paradox and infinite loop (i.e. stopping Zeus from impaling him to death in GoW2 and thus existing in the same time-space in two iterations right near each other) would be more cause for Chronos to get involved--yet this doesn't happen.

I don't think he's done enough shit to be a threat or problem to something so sublime as a Primordial. Wrecking shit in Greece and flooding the place and causing dead people to fly around everywhere all spooky-like, despite how huge that may seem to us humans, is probably monumentally insignificant to a being whose existence transcends that by countless fathoms.

I firmly believe that there is no reason to suspect time manipulation for the new game's setting.

[PFG9000]

Forgive me for showing up late.  But when did the first God of War become the worst in the series?  I've played all of them except Ascension, and I've always thought the first was the best.  After the first one, all the others just refined the gameplay and shoehorned in more Greek mythology to the point where it was clear, beginning with Chains of Olympus, that they were running out of Greek material.

[Claimh Solais]

I can't really call God of War 1 the worst in the series, since I've only played 1 and Chains of Olympus (and the latter was approximately six or seven years ago). I remember thoroughly enjoying CoO, but it's not really a fair judgment since it was so long ago and I was much younger (and thought pretty much every game I played was amazing).

Having just recently played God of War 1, I can't really say it's the worst God of War, but it's definitely one of the worst games I've ever played, to the point where I didn't even have the stomach to finish it. I've about an hour of gameplay in GoW2 and so far it's a much better game.