God of War Ascension Review
Developer: SCE Santa Monica Studio
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Platform: Playstation 3
Release date: Out now
The God of War series has been well established as one of Playstation’s most brutal exclusive titles. The seventh entry in the series ‘God of War: Ascension’ adds more to Kratos’ back story, which is one of betrayal by the Gods and his journey of revenge for the death of his family. Ascension is a prequel to the original God of War and focuses on Kratos being tormented by the Furies after he refuses to serve Ares.
Ascension’s story is a very strange thing, for the first time while playing a God of War game I found the story to be of little interest. Considering all other entries in the God of War series were not particularly overbearing with their complex storylines they still managed to maintain a relatively tight grasp on your attention and provided a general narrative for Kratos’s actions, but with Ascension I found myself running around to locations wondering why I was there in the first place.
Aside from this the game follows a very repetitive formula of: kill waves of enemies, solve puzzles, mix in some platforming sections and the occasional boss fight is thrown in every now and again to keep things interesting. This is a bit tiresome when you’ve done it so many times throughout the course of the game.
On a positive note the gameplay remains fun, bloody and gore filled. Kratos main weapon is still the Blades of Chaos but this time you can gain extra powers for the blades of Chaos which are associated with four of the Gods: Ares, Poseidon, Zeus and Hades respectively. These change up attacks and special moves a little. The rage meter has been introduced, this fills up as Kratos pulls off combos without taking damage and once full you can unleash devastating attacks that vary depending on the attribute you have assigned to the Blades of Chaos.
The graphics for the game are some of the best seen in any game on the Playstation 3 and pushes the consoles limits. Boss fights are colossal and the sheer scale of it can leave you at times looking for Kratos who gets lost on screen and mark some of the best moments in God of War Ascension. The use of QTE (Quick time events) returns in Ascension and gives for some very satisfyingly brutal kills in the game. Aside from the weak story the main game is quite fun to play overall.
Moving on to the multiplayer aspect of the game, this is the first time a God of War game has featured multiplayer. The multiplayer features up to eight player combat. It introduces your character as an oath breaker similar to Kratos who is transported to the Rotunda of Olympus where the player chooses to align themselves to one of four Gods, Ares, Hades, Zeus or Poseidon. Upon pledging themselves to a specific God all of whom have different traits for aligning with them the player learns the basics for fighting within the multiplayer before actually doing any multiplayer battles. It was a nice short introduction to the basics of multiplayer mode and players can choose to return if they need a recap on the basics or more advanced techniques in multiplayer.
The player can customize his champion with a variety of armour, weapons, magic, skills and more and can level up his champion in the multiplayer mode In order to strengthen or acquire new abilities. This is a nice touch added to create longevity for the multiplayer mode. The maps for the multiplayer include some characters from older God of War games such as Medusa and Hercules and each of the multiplayer levels is designed after a specific area from each of the God of War games. The multiplayer consists of four different modes, Team Favour of the Gods, Match of the Champions, Trial of the Gods and Capture the Flag. Team favour of the Gods takes two teams of up to four players who must attain the desired points first in order to win by killing members from the other team, opening treasure chests for favour or other feats within each stage. Capture the flag retains the same gameplay style with the exception that no points are needed, teams just capture the enemy teams flag and return it to their base in order to win. Match of the Champions plays the same as Team favour of the Gods with the exception there are no teams this time around it’s just an all out brawl of up to eight players. Finally trial of the Gods is a two player time trial co op mode that pits players against waves of enemies that get increasingly difficult and then pit players against bosses. This mode can also be taken on alone for players looking for more of a challenge.
The multiplayer for God of War Ascension is overall very fun and addictive to play. The only downside is that while searching for a match it doesn’t give you matches to join that are currently being set up it searches for the match for you at random and can take from as little as 10 seconds to nearly five minutes just to get a match. I feel this could have been done better in that players set up matches and wait for players to join, and giving each player the choice to choose what match they would like to join rather than let the system find the match for them.
Overall: Besides the relatively weak storyline in the single player mode and the match set up issues for the online portion of the game God of War Ascension is still a very fun game to play and with the new online additions is definitely is worth checking out.
SCORE 3.5/10
Please Join us on your Social Platform of choice
