God of War (2018)

I'm almost a year late here, but yeah, the 2018 remake of God of War was just fantastic. For as much as people raved about the original series on PS2 and then PS3, I never seemed to love it like they all did. In fact when I finally got around to God of War III a few years ago - hailed in its day, 2010, as an intstant contender for greatest game of its time - it just felt so stale and dated in terms of graphics, tone, and gameplay. The graphics part can't be helped, I know, but the fixed camera nature combined with repetitive hack-and-slash combat with QTEs didn't strike me with any "greatest game of its era" mentality and the cartoonish gore and big-tittied naked slave women felt decidedly antiquated even by 2016 for me.

How nice a surprise it was, then, that God of War is as much a tonal re-imagining as it is a reboot that changes the setting from Greek to Norse mythology. There really wasn't a lot of content to wring out of the very dry God of War stone in 2018, so why not go ahead and remake the game along the lines of an open-world third-person adventure game with RPG elements? And while you're at it, go ahead and give the game an excessive "hardened old widower learns to love again, thanks to a child" narrative treatment. This accomplishes a number of things - in addition to pulling heartstrings like, say, The Last of Us or later Uncharted titles, you make Kratos a reluctantly brutal father figure, wise and regretful but still completely capable of unleashing "Spartan rage" to protect his son. Suddenly the gore and brutality are toned down - they're there, for sure, but they're not there for cartoonish shock value, vestiges of old '80s and '90s arcade games accompanied by guitar riffs; they carry weight, they support the tone of the story, they could almost be described as "art!" There's also no minigame here where you just mash buttons to fuck the absolute hell out of some sex slave - a former easter egg staple of the old series. (Although for my money this game should have gone entirely in the other direction with a tender scene and a subtle vibration-assisted minigame in which you patiently and tenderly operate the analog sticks to please a forest goddess, if you catch my drift.)

Gameplay here is also miles beyond what it was in any of the first six games in the series; I died constantly at first, and really had to learn the blocking and parrying system instead of just spamming a "whip your chains around" button. There's armor-crafting. The whole thing's a treasure trove of collectibles and side quests. The NPCs are legitimate characters in their own right. There's just almost nothing not to love. I'll admit the ending snuck up on me a little bit, and so did the lack of postgame content - but the whole thing just makes me much more excited for God of War II or God of War: Ragnarok or whatever they come out with next.

I don't play a lot of games these days, so take this with all the salt you want, but this was seriously the best and most satisfying all around experience I've had with a video game in years. Play it if you haven't yet!