There’s a moment in God of War where you realise you can go anywhere. Freed from the initial settings, the game takes a step back, presents you with a map of the world and says: “You know what? You are a demigod, you have a boat: understand yourself.” This is probably the biggest change in the series, short of combat, Kratos, time zone, location, gods, monsters beards.
The ability to go anywhere and do anything in a semi-open world suddenly makes this journey through Kratos’ history as important as any of his goals. Don’t worry though, there’s still a tightly woven history here. It’s beautifully rhythmic and perfectly executed as it comes and goes through violently crashing crescendos of narrative and quieter ex positional lulls.
However, now you can control when to progress the story, or just go canoe and explore it. For a series more traditionally built around a carefully controlled theme park ride filled with excitement and scenery, this newfound freedom is as much of a rush as any building-sized monster with oh-so-gouge able eyes.
About
- Developer: Stig Asmussen
- Publisher: Sony’s Santa Monica Studio
- Release date: 20 April 2018
- Price: $18.40
System Requirements
- Requires: 64-bit processor and operating system
- Platform: Windows 10/11
- Processor: Intel i5-2500k (4 cores 3.3 GHz) or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 (4 cores 3.1 GHz)
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 960 (4 GB) or AMD R9 290X (4 GB)
- DirectX: version 11
- Memory: 70 GB of available space
- Additional Notes: DirectX 11_1 feature level is required.
Visuals
With stunning art and incredibly detailed graphics, God of War ranks among the most beautiful PlayStation 4 games – in fact, we’d even say it’s the prettiest PS4 game since the visually stunning Horizon: Zero. Dawn by Guerilla Games. Its massive scale is backed up by unparalleled lighting effects and a remarkable level of detail in costumes, faces and environments, all taken to new heights when played on the PlayStation 4 Pro console.
The PS4 Pro version of God of War offers two graphics modes: one maintains the resolution by displaying the game at 2160p (or 4K) chess, and the other boosts performance by dropping the resolution to 1080p but displaying at a frame rate close to 60fps. The one you choose will obviously depend on your personal preference.
Camera movement is much smoother in performance mode, although the reduction in visual detail is noticeable – especially in a game where the level of detail seen in 4K is very high. Of course, HDR is also available for those who have TVs that support this format, and we can say that it definitely adds to the experience, especially when it comes to lighting and shadows.
Game Play
Over the years, Kratos flourished and ruled the Greek world, but the Scandinavian realm is very different from that. The developers at Sony Santa Monica have brilliantly interpreted the Northern Realms, from Midgard to the ones you visit as the game progresses. The beautiful level design is further enhanced as the world changes as the story progresses. The brilliant use of the camera also spreads across the world, displaying the scale correctly.
During a certain scripted segment, when Kratos and Atreus first meet Jörmungandr, we were struck by the beauty of the game in which the scale expands in the least expected way. The continuous journey without interrupting the loading screen was perfect and got me immersed in the story. In a word, the game play pleases. Although it may seem a little intimidating, after a while we easily dodged and parried attacks by smoothly swinging and throwing the Leviathan Axe. However, we should note that some attacks are better off re targeting than following the default schemes.
As you progress through the game, God of War expands the game play. It also rewards players for looking away. At the beginning of the game, we deliberately chose the opposite path, and not the one pointed out by Atreus. After a short journey, we came across a fresco depicting Skoll and Hati, two wolves chasing the sun and the moon, who expanded knowledge about the world. It was beneficial to go beyond the set path and explore the world more.
Performance
Our second play through of God of War was our best play through, and it was due to the higher frame rates we enjoyed with this PC port. Like Days Gone and Horizon: Zero Dawn before it, God of War flies on a good PC. On the RTX 3060 at 1920×1080 we were able to raise our fps target to 90 and basically stay there with Nvidia DLSS set to quality. we noticed that things got a little choppy as the doorways transitioned to the lake in the open world, but footage stabilised after a while.
God of War also works great without DLSS, although Nvidia’s upscaling technology has gotten so good at this point that we’re not sure why you would ever turn it off when it’s available. The minor issues that plagued earlier versions of DLSS have now been ironed out, and what’s left is an AI-assisted upscaled image that we can barely distinguish from the original 1080p image.
The magic trick might be a little less convincing if you scale it down to Balanced or Ultra Performance, but quality is a safe bet for 1080p gaming. DLSS is not the only variant or scaling supported by God of War. Alternatively, you can enable AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution. we don’t have much experience with this, but we did notice a bit more fuzziness when choosing quality.
Final Words
God of War doesn’t look much different on PC from the PS4 version released back in 2018, but its little improvements are certainly nice, making this PC port generally solid. There’s not enough reason here to buy a second copy of the game if you’ve already played it, definitely, but the PC version is a great reason to check out God of War for the first time for anyone who hasn’t had the chance to experience it.
