God of War: Finished!
As I played this game, I couldn't help but constantly compare it to Devil May Cry games, most in particular DMC1. Why DMC1? Cause DMC3 is not really a fair comparison, as saying "you did something worse the DMC3!" is like saying "You're a worse main character than SHC's Yuri Hyuga!"
First off, the game is stylish, I'll grant that, but it also takes the graphicness a bit too high. I don't mind blood and gore, but it seemed like they decided to show scenes of people getting butchered just for the sake of more of it. This is contrast to DMC where their means of being stylish usually involves explosions or impossible acrobatic stunts.
Fights...weren't as engaging. For starters, they were easier. God of War enemies are more durable than DMC enemies (at least on Normal for both), but they're also not as aggressive and easier to read. Also hit nowhere near as hard either. There's also this issue that you can be tying up an enemy...yet they somehow break out of it despite being in a flinch animation; not cool! Don't get me wrong; fights weren't bad! I'm just saying that it was an obvious step down compared to DMC1. Magic was a neat touch, I'll grant, and Devil Trigger Rage of the Gods was nice and broken, but you ended up using it all of three times the entire game since it takes a while to charge, and...
Well, that leads to my next point; bosses. THIS GAME HAS 3 BOSSES. The first one is the Hydra, second is the Minotaur, 3rd is the final boss sequence. I was looking forward to boss fights after the Hydra cause they were different, quirky, and generally, Bosses are where Action Games are at their peak. DMC1 did like to recycle bosses *shakes fist at Nightmare*, but at least it had them. Phantom was a cruel first boss, but a good introduction to "This game doesn't pull punches!", Nelo Angelo had style, Griffon...ok, he sucks. You fight each like 3 times, but they did improve them. Also, in general, DMC1 had A LOT more enemies, by which I mean the variety of enemies was much higher. God of War, you mostly just fight upgrades of previous things. Like in the Path to Hades, everything there is just EVIL LAVA VERSION!!!! of things you fought. It led to more repetitive fights. DMC1 wasn't afraid of reusing older enemies, but then tossing new stuff at you as the game goes on. Granted, Shadows = ;_;, but then, DMC1 in general is a much harder game.
GoW did have a neat sort of plot and setting, I'll grant. As a fan of Greek Mythology, nice to see their unique take on it. Its nice seeing a fictional setting also treat Hades as something *NOT* a villain, just the Lord of the Dead *punts Disney for that*; heck, he even gives you the totally unfair Army of Hades spell which just wins. The plot of "Spartan trying to repent, but he's still a total douche"...no, its not amazing, but its better than a lot of action game plots...which says something...
Nice touch in the ending showing all those wars throughout time, on that note.
Now, GoW doing things worse than DMC1 in general isn't necessarily a bad thing, just sort of stands out, but...what does hurt GoW a lot compared to the DMC series in general?
Platforming and Puzzles. DMC series platforming can be summed up as "jump across a few platforms, if you fail, start over; you lost 5 seconds of your life." God of War? They have as much platforming, relative tot he game's length, as something like Mario 64, with constantly jumping across gaps THAT CAN KILL YOU, no less. Puzzles are just time wasters. Blocking shoving that takes a while, and is not particularly fun, yay! DMC1 Puzzle is "Find Object, find place to put object, new path opens up"; basically, they existed to force an order of exploration. GoW had those too, and those I don't mind, since its just a way ot avoiding making a dungeon linear, and forcing you to back track, explore, etc. They're fine, if a slight gameplay divergence, they're short lived. The block puzzles get tedious and repetitive.
Also, Rope fights and climbing. Climbing up isn't too bad when there are no enemies, since you can shortcut...but when their enemies, it takes a while since you really want to kill all of them to progress. Climbing down, meanwhile, takes forever, which is annoying. Killing isn't hard, but takes a while. same for the Rope Fights, except change "Want" to "MUST." The fights here require no thought, its just "use throw command, kill." The straight up fights are fine, guys, STICK TO THOSE! Don't give me these half assed battle sequences.
End result is? GoW feels very averagish. Its...very much DMC-lite with a few aspects that DMC specifically avoided, that detracted from the game play. Game was fun enough at times, but frustrating at others, so they cancel out. No clue if the later installments in the series improved upon any of this, any oppinions on whether I should look into playing them?
...and all this comparison to DMC makes me want to play DMC1 or DMC3 now <_<
