CHENNAI : As an invisible nightmare grips the real world, we find ourselves checking the noisy glowing instrument in our hands, more frequently than required — our frowns deepening, because the video memes generated are not nearly enough to meet our demands. But, we can find comfort in the thought that we have the power to throw it as far as we can to keep the noise away — like Kratos with his Leviathan Axe. While all of us are reacquainting with the skill of patience, PS4 owners and watchers of game streams mustalso relive the excitement of what I now consider one of the greatest games ever — God of War 4.
For a series known to be fuelled purely on anger, the beginning of the game surprises us with an image of Kratos lifting a log and grunting at his son. It quickly rectifies this error of peace through the very punchy combats.The story itself is rich, with us slowly watching Kratos address his son as ‘Boy’, but in softer tones as the missions progress.
The background of Nordic mythology feeds us some gripping tales about the supposed villain — Odin, and everyone associated with him. These stories are nicely integrated in the gameplay when we are doing pointless activities like boat rowing and portal travels. In the game, we must watch Kratos undergo a variety of emotions. It is hard to uncover these emotions due to his deadpan voice and a face full of paint. The game does a brilliant job of this through visuals and movement.
The darkening sky, the slowness and weight in Kratos’ steps, the conversational silence (apart from the raging sounds during fights) depict the desperation and anger so well! The true fun lies in the extremely graphic combat — the father-son combat integration is flawless, the thudding of the axe when it meets its mark, the light flashes, finisher moves (R3 is now my new favourite button on the console), various strategies involved in fighting the different enemies.
Each enemy is different, there’s a colourful host of them, and the frustrating in-game deaths are worth the win that arrives if you’re patient! The puzzles and treasure hunting side-quests, although contrastingly slow, are a welcome breather from the combat action. While we wait for GoW to release on other consoles, how great would it be if we had a restart to checkpoint in 2018 when it first came out?