Quick Look: God of War: Ascension

I wish this was The Last of Us instead of God of War: Ascension.

Capture the Flag in God of War is kind of silly, but the multiplayer actually looks like fun. The singleplayer in these games has grown kind of boring, though.

BOOM-SHAKALAKA!!1

Wait, weren't the furies in God of War 2? That's where you kill them, or were those other things?

Sisters of Fate. There were also three of those.

As somebody who likes God of War a lot and has played all them (especially those first two, at least four or five times each) it's both endlessly entertaining and frustrating to hear Ryan and Patrick try to remember things from past games and get it wrong almost every time. Mostly frustrating. I just wish somebody on the GB crew was a big God of War fan.

I think he's referring to the whole Laura vs. Lara controversy and this being ironic.

@namesonkel: A valid criticism, in a lot of the "zoom out to catch the scale of this scene" fights you can easily lose track of Kratos when enemies mob up on you. Not good.

The multiplayer is phenomenal though, it's Power Stone with map objectives.

Interested to see how the multiplayer will turn out on this one, looks really unique.

Load up the quick look just to see what's different about this GoW game, several minutes in: Tits.

And no one was shocked.

So, it is actually a pretty good God of War, since the puzzles, boss fights and vistas are great? I don't know why you call the combat wonky, since it's the most rewarding and technical fighting system God of War ever got. Especially since they made the counter attacks to be tricky to pull off, instead of being easy to mash and abuse. As for the audio problems, I don't have one.

I've never played a GoW game....but Patrick's advice to game designers is as stupid as navgtr's.

Never though I would say this, I'm more interested in the multiplayer than the single player. It kind of reminds me of Power Stone in some ways...

I'm a franchise fan with zero fatigue. Ascension ranks up there with II for me. The pacing is fantastic, the level design and puzzles are the best of the series, and it feels really expansive. I had a blast in SP and so far I'm loving the MP.

I was gonna sit this one out, but that multiplayer really does look like a pretty good/dumb/fun time. Hope the community stays active for a while, I can see myself getting pretty into it once this game drops down in price.

Its harder (almost impossible) to interrupt foes with damage wich makes the only valid crowd controll just an endless R1-grapple.

The combat is much more animation prioritised wich ofc makes sense when you have to balance for multiplayerlag but in a fast moving singleplayergame like GoW it just removes the players ability to make quick desicions. Combine that with making block-counter a 2 button press doesnt make it tricky it just makes it retarded, Again good for multiplayerlag but nothing else. On top of that they also removed the aoe stun from the counter wich makes the counter close to useless even if you bother with it.

Playing casualy on normal these changes makes little difference but playing on titan it just removes skill and add luck to the equation. The only valid crowd control is grapple abuse wich makes it repetitive and you have to play alot safer becouse you dont want to be locked into animations if the foes makes sudden moves = boring.

....That was the "offensive" cutscene? That's it?

Wow, talk about overreacting.

Also, weren't the Bomb Crew lamenting the over-violent ways of video games at last E3, using the elephant-man kill as an example? Now Ryan's all about it. What is going on?

To be honest, I didn't beat the Titan difficulty mode in Ascension. I platinum'd every GoW game since release ( saying I finished them all on every difficulty ), and I often felt like the games cheated on me with the lack of proper checkpoints. The last example that comes to my mind is God of War III, when you flew down the chain, dodging segments until you end up in an arena, against a cerberus. That scene was so retarded and way too hard. I deeply hope Ascension doesn't suffer from that kind of problem.

Also, I found Ascension to be much more fun gameplay-wise. Now, at least, there's some variety in the combat encounters. GoWIII re-used the same zombie-soldiers way too often and suffered from extremely bad pacing. It was epic, sure, but felt to me like it was constructed as an handheld game, since they reused the same environments all the time. God of War, for me, was about the journey. About seeing places, vistas and colors. About eviscerating mythological beasts. And on that level, Ascension delivers like hell.

DoA should watch and learn.

Wow, the multiplayer looks pretty cool. I'd love to try it out.

@whatisdelicious: Yeah, OK. I thought I had got it incorrect.

@klei: He's right about the flaws in the parry system though. I'm sure it's great in the multiplayer where you can always count the number of people you're fighting on one hand, but in the single-player, it really breaks a lot of what made the other games so great. On Normal, I doubt it's a big deal, but I started on Hard because that's where God of War veterans should start, and because they broke the parry system, it's way harder than it should be to deal with large groups. Just watch them in the Quick Look trying to manage all those enemies while also trying to hit the Hecatonchires' weak points while also under a time limit. It's frustrating when it used to be fun, and I just end up needing to mash R1 and triangle to exploit the invulnerability of grappling.

That and I really don't like the elemental effects on the Blades as much as having dedicated weapons since the move set is basically the same between elementals. I like having circle be a separate weapon because it's quicker to use than the D-pad, but I'd rather they keep the "circle to grab or L1 + circle to grapple" system, then use R1 as a second modifier button to make each face button correspond to a different sub-weapon for instant access.

Basically, I think a lot of the combat changes they made have made the game a lot less fun than other games in the series.

what is hots?

Starcraft 2 Heart Of The Swarm

"I'm stabbing this guy's hand and making it kill him in the face."

Oh hey, GoW's combat got even more simplistic and boring in this game.

Better invest your time in an actual good character action game such as Lords of Shadow.

Is there any crazy secrets like a phone number hidden in statues, that has Kratos and David Jaffe on the phone? "By the gods, you've done it....or looked it up online"

GET AWAY SHUBBYTYME

HOW MANY GOD DAMN PREQUELS DOES THIS SERIES NEED?

I mean seriously!