God of War was released in April of last year and was created by Santa Monica Studios. It received the “Game of the year” which was not that surprising because of how good the reviews were and how enjoyed it was by the players.
God of War is about a man named Kratos who has a really dark past that he has been trying to escape on his journey. His life has pretty much been controlled by rage and anger, making him kill every greek god in the past games of this franchise. Fast forward to this game and we find him not by himself anymore, but with his son named Atreus and unfortunately his mom Faye had past and that is where the journey begins. The main goal through the entire game is to deliver Faye’s ashes to the highest peak in all of the nine realms. Oh by the way, did I mention we are in the Norse God era? No? Well better now then never. Kratos and Atreus set out to complete Faye’s final wish. Of course it is not as easy as it sounds because there will be a lot of obstacles in their way.
Before they head out a visitor comes knocking on their door. Kratos is suspicious of this and tells Atreus to hide under some hidden boards in the floor so he can go check out who is behind their door. This character is introduced as “The Stranger” and he is covered in blue tattoos and is really tiny and skinny compared to Kratos. In this game Kratos has chosen a different path for himself trying to distance himself from being controlled by anger and rage so he calmly tries to get rid of this stranger but the stranger decides to use violence so they end up fighting and obviously Kratos wins and he quickly brushes it off and he gets Atreus and they leave.
On their journey they meet two new friends, Brok and Sindri, they are dwarf brothers and helps Kratos with forging and upgrading equipment and armor that he either crafts at their shops or finds on the corpses of his enemies. They do not get along well so along he story you will hear a lot about them nagging on each other and competing against each other. Along the journey they meet a witch that lives in the woods who helps them on their journey whenever they get stuck or come in contact with magic.
Every piece of armor has a unique set of attributes they can give to Kratos based on what you as a player want him to have more of. There are different categories to focus on. Vitality, Strength, Defense, Luck, Cooldown and Runic. Each of these categories represent their own thing on Kratos overall stats. Vitality represents his maximum health, strength represents his attack power, runic represents his runic attacks towards enemies. Runic attacks require cooldowns after being used so cooldown reduces the time needed before you are able to use it again. Defense minimizes the amount of damage Kratos receives from his enemies and finally luck, luck increases perk activation chances which you get from certain gears you equip.
The last friend they meet is Mimir, Mimir is an all knowing person who has been punished by Thor to be stuck in a tree for the rest of his time and it is a long time. Kratos needs his help but can not get it if Mimir is stuck in a tree so he decides to chop it off and then revive it at the witch’s house. Mimir then follows you on Kratos belt for the rest of the game telling stories and helping in battles.
Now that you know more about the game it is time to talk about my experience of playing the game. I loved the plot of the game. There are so many things that happen along the journey that you kind of forget what your real mission really is. If you have played the other God of War games like I have you also know that there is a big difference in gameplay and story when you compare them. In the older ones it was all about killing everything that came in your way and sleeping with women. In this one he has a child to take care of that looks up to him. He helps other people and instead of killing everything tries to get away from violence if he can. Seeing the end of the game put a tear in my eye because it was so beautiful. There are almost no words and also I cannot spoil the ending for you! Because that is some MAJOR spoilers! There are also a lot of side quests that makes you explore the world a lot more with challenging secret boss battles and helping out lost souls and facing some tough challenges in the realm of fire (Muspelheim) and in the realm of fog (Niflheim). The environment of the game is really beautiful and the graphics are just amazing. I was also not expecting an open world type of game since the other games were the complete opposite. Also the fact that you had a helping companion with you along the way to make fights a bit easier. This is a must play game. I have probably spent 100+ hours on this game and I finally achieved my platinum trophy on this game, I was so happy because it was definitely not easy and was really time consuming.
Having gained my platinum I felt like I was done with the game, or so I thought because if you look through the menu when you pause the game there are some smaller challenges that you complete by killing a certain amount of enemies or you could do some more exploring for better gear to become even mightier than you already are. So even after gaining every trophy which takes a long time by itself you can still find some new stuff here and there if you really take a closer look at everything. Also hearing Mimir or Kratos tell stories while on the boat you just want to listen even more and learn some more lore about the game or the history of this Norse god era.
So in conclusion, did the game deserve its “Game of the Year” award? Yes, yes indeed it did. Really well deserved and I cannot wait until the next one comes out!
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