God of War Thoughts
saw credits in 25 hours.
i finished god of war and it was fine. a perfectly reasonable use of time but nothing inspiring or compelling, tbh.
the wildest part is not the mid combat or the incredible number of resources to gather or the corridor-style level design, it's that it cannot handle a moment of down time. i "lit all the braziers" in midgard before finishing the game, which took me like 30 min, and i opened roughly 25 chests. it felt constant, like the game was nervous i'd get bored if i didn't get to collect another little treasure once a minute.
i'd do a mindless little puzzle (throw my axe to spin a thing to unlock a gate) and there'd be a chest waiting for me on the other side. then i'd climb two rocks and turn the corner to find another chest. and then i climb down the other side, have a mindless combat encounter and that would unlock another chest. then i go down the other corridor and throw my axe to unlock another door, and find another chest. then i use the blades to move a ghostly fire from one little skull to another 3 times, and that gets me a "legendary" chest. then i get back into the boat to go to the next brazier, and in the water are patches of gold where i can collect the primary currency, as well as little one-off dew drops that give me permanent stat boosts.
felt like i was playing the equivalent of a video with someone talking next to a clip of subway surfers. and you know what, the game was boring! none of the puzzles were interesting, none of the gear was interesting, 90% of the combat was mindless, and the writing was mostly kratos being abusive to his grief-wracked son. so maybe they did need constant chests to keep folks interested.
lol 10/10 game of the year, AAA is the only way to play