Well, there goes my summer. Not the most productive one I’ve had, both on a video game and an “important life stuff” angle, but I feel alright about where things are going.The real life stuff is both none of your business and also boring to anyone who doesn’t know me, but the video game stuff is fun and exciting and easily sharable with the internet at large! I’ll admit, as I’ve gotten older and had more consistent access to things like “money”, I’ve been able to keep pace with modern games far better than I initially did back when I started writing blogs on this website… 6 years ago. I also have less free time than I did when I was in high school, which means not nearly enough of what’s left is being spent playing old-ass video games to completion. Did I buy all of those SSI D&D games on GOG? You bet I did. Am I going to actually play any of the Gold Box RPGs to completion any time soon? No way! I have games that aren’t so crusty and unintuitive that I need to play first. Eye of the Beholder with a fan-made mapping tool? Maybe. But, despite these setbacks, I am proud to say that I have finished another old game in between holding other people’s babies, dealing with the excitement (and the “excitement”) of family reunions, figuring out what I’m doing with my life this fall, and going on a diet. It’s been a ride.

Alternate title: I play old games (God of War)

Maybe playing through and reviewing The Legend of Korra has ruined my ability to perceive quality in games anymore, but I am genuinely surprised how much I enjoyed the original God of War, which turned a decade old this March. The God of War Saga 5-pack (containing the HD versions of 1 and 2 on one disk, GOW 3 on its own disk, and download codes for the HD versions of the PSP games) was one of the first things I bought with my Playstation 3 last summer, but I only now got around to playing more than a few hours of this first one. Maybe it was the recent talk about the series on the bombcast (where Dan was positive on the series while Jeff and Brad poo-pooed it), or me getting a little tired of modern game design (I hate to say it, but the dominant emotion I feel when I play Far Cry 4 is boredom) but regardless of the reason I picked it back up. It’s weird to think how God of War is, in some ways, exactly what modern video games are trying to escape from, be it the occasionally ridiculous and juvenile “Male Power Fantasy” stuff relating to ultraviolence and boobs or more nitty-gritty gameplay stuff like the abundance of QTEs (which it and Resident Evil 4 helped popularize). That dates it a lot more than the core mechanics would suggest and yet those core mechanics managed to turn my opinion of God of War around, to the point where I’m considering playing through the rest of the series (where I will inevitably get tired of it and complain to all of you).

I should probably mention that the only reason I played a few hours in the first place was because I thought those first few hours were kinda lame. As a character action game, God of War is not interested in the complexities that its Japanese counterparts revel in, but it’s not quite as nakedly comparable as I was led to believe. While it probably deserves to be called a pioneer of the “Dude slashing up enemies with combos and stuff, but not like a brawler because there’s skill and depth involved instead of just stealing your quarters” genre along with Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden it’s a lot more action-adventure (for whatever the hell that actually means) in the sense that you do things between all those times you murder fools by pressing square-square-triangle. Early on, solving brain-dead block pushing puzzles along with aforementioned square-square-triangle did not impress me so much. The spectacle of that opening Hydra fight (among other presentational feats), while still impressive from the angle of “They were able to accomplish this on a PS2”, isn’t quite the showstopper given the decade of spectacle heavy (and sometimes barely interactive) cinematic action games that has occurred since 2005 (some of which can probably thank God of War for inspiration).

It was somewhere a little before the game’s halfway mark that it started clicking for me, when the combat became a bit more demanding and varied alongside the puzzles becoming less inane. That’s not to say that the combat ever reached Bayonetta levels of crazy (there are two weapons in the game and a handful of magic spells of varying usefulness, I was more talking about needing to occasionally block or dodge enemy attacks) or that there weren’t sequences that I would tag as aged or straight up poor game design (I never had a ton of problems with the platforming, actually, but man… that Hades segment is turrible), but at some point my opinion changed from “I am tolerating this and will write a nasty blog about it” to “This is actually pretty good and paced quite well”. Even the puzzle solving actually required a modicum of thinking for as simple as it was, a step beyond the likes of DMC 4’s brainless garbage filler. There’s also the visceral nature of the game. I’ll admit, I’m pretty cynical about ultraviolence for its own sake at this point: David Jaffe is a talented developer, but his aesthetic for games never seems to have progressed beyond what a 15-year-old (or Dan Ryckert) would consider cool. I will also totally concede that I enjoyed some of the sillier over-the-top depictions of violence from the game’s protagonist Kratos. Speaking of Kratos, while I would not go as far as to call him “A cool guy”, as Mr. Ryckert has proposed, I didn’t… hate him in this first game? The fairly minimal story of God of War does an alright job of playing up his “tragic hero” angle over his “Jerkass jerk who is a jerk” personality. I’m sure the sequels will trample all over any sort of redeeming qualities in Kratos and make him the insufferable dickbag I’ve been led to believe he is, so I’m not going to put too much effort defending him. There aren’t a ton of cutscenes, and based on the “making of” video included with the game (among some other pretty neat extras that go beyond concept art) it seems like the story wasn’t really the focus and it was more just an excuse to murder Greek Mythology. Fine by me.

For all its cinematic pretensions, God of War is still a video game-ass video game. That’s probably one of the reasons I liked it as much as I did. Not all of it has aged as pristinely as one would expect, but I still enjoyed going through the entire thing and will probably give God of War 2 a shot after I get done with The Phantom Pain. We’ll see. I’m to understand that Kratos is still angry?

Other things

I’ve been playing through the console version of Diablo III with my brother and that is an entirely acceptable way to play that game, even if I still think it’s pretty dang easy even on Expert difficulty, which is the highest you can go before you beat the game. It’s a decent, mindless way to spend time, cutting through any sort of serious stat management or min-maxery in favor of streamlining everything to hell (pun intended), as is the modern Blizzard way. In some ways that does make me pine for the good old days of Diablo 1 (which has more in common with old-school roguelikes and dungeon crawlers than its successors do) and 2 (which I’d probably still rather play than either Torchlight game), all of which probably says something about what I think about the genre (clickity click loot RPGs) as a whole. Path of Exile? I heard that game was alright and non-exploitative with its Free-to-Play mechanics.

Today also happens to be the 20th anniversary for the original Heroes of Might and Magic, a game that I don't think is particularly great but spawned a series that I hold deeply to my heart. I’m proud to announce that September is going to be Heroes of Month and Magic, in which you can expect me to talk in weird specifics about every game in the series and maybe King’s Bounty too because those games are pretty blatantly inspired by the Heroes series. It will be fun. I wrote about it in public, so that means I have to actually try to do it. That might also mean I’ll have to play more Heroes VI, which I’m less than thrilled about and apparently Heroes VII is also coming out in less than a month? That’s crazy. I’m not going to buy that. My computer is old and sucks now. I’m not gonna commit to any specifics, but look forward to it, 2 or 3 people who read these blogs and have as much knowledge of the series as I do!

There's definitely a lot of min maxxing in Diablo 3 now, there wasn't really in the original game (I mean there was but it was all blatantly obvious); but it's definitely a lot closer to D2 now in terms of hunting down particular items, gambling, and so forth. Though that mostly occurs once you get to max level, which isn't much different than D2.

Original Heroes is great (especially the graphics/animation, have aged extremely well; same thing with II), though original King's Bounty is a bit better. Heroes VII is coming out? Who knew. I guess Europeans since that's where those games sell mostly. What do I get for my Uplay points this time?

God of War's a good game, only has a few boss fights though which is a bit of a bummer. GoW 2 solves that problem. Kratos is so charismatic and angry.

I also think Kratos as a character is at his best in God of War 1. His story is bordering on cliche (after all, it borrows heavily on the story of Hercules, the most famous Greek mythological hero), but he felt more three dimensional, nuanced and justified that the avatar of anger tantrum he becomes in later games...

The GoW series as a whole is made up of really well made games from one to the next. The problem is they never mixed it up in any form. GoW 2 upped the boss count and is much better paced, making it a worthy sequel in its own right, but every other one from that point is basically more of that, just prettier and with Kratos growing to be more and more unlikeable. That is until Ascension to where they removed his one defining characteristic, making him come across as a semi-mute who is barely even a character now. Though it funnily enough may have the most satisfying combat in the series, with a legitimately amazing ending set-piece. Undoubtedly the best end boss of the series even.

I think GoW 3 was the tipping point, for while the scale is still impressive and the visuals still stunning, Kratos fucking suuuuucks in that game. His vengeance progresses from mildly sympathetic anti-hero to petulant child ''I HATE YOU DADDY'' murderous temper-tantrums. Plus, again, it's more of the same of what GoW 2 was!

Then there's the PSP games, which are also just more of the same, with Chains of Olympus in particular having literally nothing to stand out beyond that it was able to work on a PSP. Playing it on a PS3 pretty much removes its entire purpose. Ghost of Sparta's surprisingly OK, though, if still subpar compared to its home console brethren because of its comparatively mundane visuals.

I've definitely enjoyed my time with the series, but enough is most certainly enough. If there is to be a new GoW game (likely?) they can't rely on Kratos slaughtering mythological Greek Gods anymore, especially since there's basically nobody left. Though it would be hilarious if they took a left-turn and had Kratos cross into other mythologies, fighting Thor ect., with him ultimately killing Jesus or something.

I just remember liking Ghost of Sparta more than 3 for some reason.

@yummylee: You will defend Ascension? Huh. I know that's the game that gets thrown in with the post-trilogy sequel to the other GoW, Gears of War Judgement, as being totally unnecessary and not worth playing. Of course... I own it now, thanks to PS+. If I'm not tired of the series after 3 (not sure if I'll play the PSP games, though I'd still rather play either of those than Ready at Dawn's most recent work). Given that I've been staring at a "Installing game data" screen for The Phantom Pain for the better part of 90 minutes, I miiiiiiight just start God of War II. Or delete my Phantom Pain save data and play through that opening again.

I dunno where I'd want God of War to go now, but I think they'd be well served moving the concept to a different mythology, be that Viking, Egyptian or otherwise.

@fredchuckdave: I can't comment to the end-games of any of the Diablo series personally, but I very clearly recall character builds for Diablo 2 requiring the player to basically go through half the game on normal with a hobbled character, only putting points into prerequisites for higher tier stuff or skills that scaled into later acts and difficulties. Diablo III's skill system is flexible enough that you don't have to worry about accidentally gimping yourself for higher difficulties because of a few misplaced skill or stat points. I feel like the first game was sorta the opposite, where you still wanted to invest some strength in a sorcerer so that they could wear half-decent armor and use half-decent weapons against enemies resistant to magic and vice-versa for Warriors.

As for Heroes... I came to that first one really late, so I can only compare it to Heroes II, which irons out a lot of the quirks and kinks that Heroes 1 has in spades. I've gone out of my way to avoid stuff about Heroes VII, so that I can go in mostly fresh should I ever play it. Don't want the seething, overt negativity of the Might and Magic community to poison my opinion before I actually give it a try. Expect more on that soon, and probably some stuff on that original King's Bounty while I'm at it.

@arbitrarywater: Eh, Gears: Judgment's fine for the most part, it was just too damn slim with content despite being the same price as every other Gears game before it at launch. It certainly justified its existence much more so than Ascension could - it branched out in a number of directions from Gears past, for better and worse. Though despite saying that Ascension's also OK, just too samey. It's not like it's terribly designed or anything (the camera gets to be a little fucked during the first major boss, though), it's just that it's more God of War to a T, and for most people that isn't especially appealing anymore - for good reason of course.

Yeah, I missed out on the GoW games the first time around (being an original Xbox guy rather than Sony at the time), and didn't get my hands on them until the PS3 HD collection. Frankly, I too was surprised at how well they held up. I agree with you about the story - it's mostly an angry dude seeking revenge for the sole purpose of exhibitionism - but as you pointed out, it's the mythology angle that emerges triumphant from all the bloodthirsty vengeance. I'm not the biggest fan of character-action games like DmC and the like, but I had a good time with the various God of Wars.

As for your talk of Diablo III: if you're looking for something that harkens back to the D2 days, I would heartily recommend Path of Exile. Like you said, the free-to-play elements are entirely optional, to the point where you will not find them unless you actively seek them out. The action is fast, explosive, and varied, and there's loot aplenty. I've gone through the entire story (Act V just recently released) with two characters and had a blast. If it helps any more, I put ungodly hundreds of hours into D2 back in the day.

Cool, I really like the HoMM series (well, mostly 2 and 3). Looking forward to that article.

And holy shit, that Royal Bounty HD screenshot looks so shameless. Even the resource icons might as well be identical.