GOD OF WAR

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After all the time in that temple I got killed. F u Aries, you made this personal!

That said, I finished playing at half seven yesterday evening and still was wound up around half 12, that game gets intense!

I remember there *Shudder*

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Between that challenge, the rotating knives in Hades and spikes through the floor I swear that this game was great until you tried those levels. Between the camera angle and the controls ("DON'T JUMP ON THE BOX!!! PUSH IT!!! AW FUCK!!!) it could make those puzzles a right challenge!

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Hades was really hard, yeah, but nothing that hampered my enjoyment of the game. and it just looks amazing

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=10179&type=wmv&pl=game

Also found this:

Huge Collection of Combat Moves: Players can utilize their favourite combo attacks from GOD OF WAR along with a whole new set of moves and magic. Magic is based on nature's elements which include utilizing the power if wind, ice and much more

New Characters: From the popular Cyclops and Cerebus to the Flying Gryphon and more, players will encounter some of the greatest Greek mythological beasts, along with more enemies and bosses

Puzzle Solving: GOD OF WAR II features more puzzle solving, where players must solve intelligent, challenging and progressively more complicated puzzles latent with brutal elements that are intricately woven into the overarching story

Exploration: Players will continue their previous experiences in the dark, violent world of Greek mythology and test their agility through more levels as they traverse treacherous, often brutal terrain that will range from the undiscovered Sisters of Fate to the Dark Swap

WTF? How?! NO SPOILERS PLEASE!!!

Nice one. Still can't play this. Was just too tired last night and not up for the stress!

Just keep hitting away with Blades of Athena over and over again. It's tedious but it works.

This is the kind of thing I can't stand in video games. If I even catch a whiff of this kind of "action" I stay far far away.

Whatever ico boy.

(j/k. It is a real pain just button mashing over and over again)

I remember having to kill some giant monster in Tomb Raider (or possibly TR II?) which took approximately FOREVER to do, and it involved running around in a wide arc, shooting unemptyable revolvers at it for probably 20 minutes total. I could go for like 4 or 5 minutes at a time before losing focus, I'd have to press pause, make some tea, and go back to it. Eventually I was like "wait this is supposed to be fun"

(cf: racing the same races in Gran Turismo over and over again with a tricked-out car, just to get enough money to get an even more tricked-out car.. so that you can advance to another race that you race over and over again)

I have yet to try this game.

(cf: racing the same races in Gran Turismo over and over again with a tricked-out car, just to get enough money to get an even more tricked-out car.. so that you can advance to another race that you race over and over again)

this isn't really the place to defend it, but, this kind of action can be really great, in a haiku, pleasure-of-small-diffs kind of way. but yeah it's kind of enforced aspie-dom too

I remember having to kill some giant monster in Tomb Raider (or possibly TR II?) which took approximately FOREVER to do, and it involved running around in a wide arc, shooting unemptyable revolvers at it for probably 20 minutes total. I could go for like 4 or 5 minutes at a time before losing focus, I'd have to press pause, make some tea, and go back to it. Eventually I was like "wait this is supposed to be fun"

God of War is not really like this, however. The action is very fast and intense and sometimes gets slightly button-mashy but the programmers are very good about mixing up/varying the enemies, environments and puzzles so it doesn't get boring.

i just started playing God of War 2 and the scale of the the first level already outdoes anything in the first game, which is quite an accomplishment. The PS2 is really being pushed here graphically, this game looks AMAZING.

I'm playing a hell of a lot of Ragnarok now and I'm enjoying it way more than 2018 -- for instance, I didn't care enough about 2018 to fight more than a couple of the Valkyries, but I've beaten two of Ragnarok's version and am doing what I can to progress/level up enough to take on more.

That said, I have zero sense of space for any given level (I've definitely been using the accessibility option that points you towards your goal a lot, probably as a crutch), and I'm actually having difficulty catching the finer details of the story. For the latter, I think the gameplay narration is what trips me up -- when I'm moving my character around, I seem to have a pretty limited amount of mental bandwidth and that's largely devoted to where I'm going next and how I'm getting there and probably most crucially are there ravens to kill (i.e. collectibles), and so attention to dialogue gets very tenuous for me.

Been saving this one for a sale, since I know it'll be great and loved the last one. Just a lot on my game plate right now.

Just (barely) started "Ragnarok," and tying into our general PS5/console discussion, I can't imagine any game looking better than this one. Though it's kinda like the reverse of the uncanny valley, where the closer and closer it gets to looking "real," the less it really matters.

I'm actually having trouble getting my brain into gear for this one. I am still very, very very early, so I'm sure I will get used to it, but I feel like I am rustier than I should be, enough so that once or twice already I have appreciated some character going "you might want to hit that thing over there" or whatever.

You can change how quickly the hints come in the game settings, IIRC.

I think it feels balanced right now. I don't care too much about hints, because so many of the puzzles are less about real challenge and more about just finding the stupid thing to hit wit your axe. I do know the part I am at now just dumped a ton of favors and tasks to take care of.

I know this game is supposed to be long, so I think I'm still pretty early game, but I'm enjoying how funny the writing is, and starting to feel the stakes developing into something more compelling than this tentative start.

I've only been playing in fits and starts, so part of it is on me, but I just played a leisurely sequence involving riding a dream yak that made me think, nope, this game and its story still haven't kicked in yet.

I played a significant chunk of it and it felt that way for most of it.

The characters seemed to be ambling around doing "stuff" but the prime objective wasn't especially clear; it wasn't like they had to climb a mountain to bury Loki's mum, they were just sort of bimbling around, completing various tasks, arguing with each other and mostly doing stuff based on hunches.

But maybe that was down to me and my comprehension.

I got EXTREMELY hacked off when a major turning point was only explicable if one were to remember a piece of expository dialogue spoken hours before during one of those conversations they have while you're busy concentrating on climbing up a mountain.

To balance that, I will say its bloody gorgeous and the acting is fantastic and yeah maybe I'll just finish it, possibly on story mode so I can play it like a nice movie

I just hate that thing in games, and I guess movies and books too but it seems to be endemic in games (it happened a LOT in Baldur's Gate 3 too) where they're trying to solve a mysterious problem that no one can understand, and one character just goes:
"Hey, I have no idea why but it just came to me that we should ask the Great Wise Wizard about this, because he knows things. The problem is he's been missing ever since he went walking in the Shaded Woods twenty years ago. The path is long and treacherous, and he's probably dead by now, but if we could just find him I'm sure he'll give us some other quest to do until we figure out what this game is all about...."

I mean, I know that's how plots work to some extent, a sequence of problems and solutions, but this approach feels very tedious and gamey, with characters just working off hunches a lot of the time

This game is so pretty and full of wonders, but so far it's also very wheel-spinny and portentous without being particularly dramatic. That's why I keep assuming I am still pretty close to the start, relatively speaking. There's been so much talk of war, and choices, and prophecies, and there have been heavy moments and characters weighty with death and conflict, but so far just not much of anything moving forward at any particularly urgent pace. There's also a lot of that very YA gimmick of everyone full of secrets, creating problems that could be solved with just a conversation. But then there wouldn't be a story.

And yet, it is nice to look at and the acting is great, so I suppose I have no issues with the time I've been spending with it.

Yup

Checked in on a walkthrough, not for help but just to see what chapter I am on and confirm I have a ways to go. So far this game is pretty easy, but I just hit the first (fakeout) Valkyrie and thought, hmm, if the difficulty level spikes like this, maybe I should keep the settings where they are.

There was one optional area that involved having to fight a valkyrie in order to leave and she was so ridiculously fast and one-shot that after about 20 goes, I went back to an old save before I even went there

Don't really know what's going on, plot-wise, but the game does seem to be picking up. Or did, maybe, because now I'm hanging with Freya again, and they've thrown a ton of side quests at me that seem to be hindering the momentum. Which is not unique to this game, of course. "We have to get the magic amulet from Amfir before he destroys the world tonight! But first, can you help me find some lost chickens?"

OK, still puttering along, but I've got to concede, I just met the Norn, and the story remains intriguing, and the set pieces still surprising and compelling. So ... good things.