The developer certainly hasn’t lost its penchant for flamboyance, either. The game is extremely good at putting space between battles, and making them feel more exciting as a result. It also helps to break up the pacing – spending a few minutes pushing blocks and turning cranks gives you a much needed breather before the next big fight. You’ll feel like you’ve hit a brick wall the moment that you come up against them, which makes finding a solution all the more satisfying. While there aren’t a great number of puzzles throughout the adventure, the few that are included are well designed. The Eyes of Truth are introduced late in the game, and aren’t really used much, but they offer the ability to overcome the illusion of the Furies – the mythological race central to the plot.
Meanwhile, the Stone of Orkos allows you to summon a mirror image who can sit on switches or hold cranks while you complete other activities. The mechanic itself is perhaps best implemented in a furnace area towards the end of the adventure, as you rebuild a burnt out coal fire to set alight a colossal mechanical construction.
With the Amulet of Uroborus, you can heal and decay marked structures in a nod to Braid and forgotten first-person shooter Singularity. Thankfully, you’ll have a few new tools to deal with these problems: the Amulet of Uroborus allows you to suspend targets in midair while you dish out some serious punishment, the Stone of Orkos offers the opportunity to summon a doppelganger who will temporarily fight on your side, while the Eyes of Truth augment you with the ability to push foes back if you need a little breathing space.Įach of these elements factor into the campaign’s puzzles, too. Smart pacing and clever enemy parings mean that you’ll always have a new headache to solve swift lightning imps are particularly difficult to deal with as Gorgons are attempting to turn you to stone, while fast-moving ground troops can create real crowd control challenges as Harpies target you from above. It’s arguably the most satisfying that the action has ever felt but, at its core, it still boils down to the same blend of right analogue stick dodges and Square, Square, Triangle inputs.įortunately, the combat scenarios are so well designed that you won’t have time to focus on the familiarity of the action. The series’ familiar Rage mechanic has also been adapted, allowing you to build up special attacks more frequently during combat encounters, rather than save them up over the course of multiple battles. You can now latch onto enemies from a distance, instantly closing gaps in an almost Batman: Arkham City-esque manner. The combat feels faster, partly due to an increased focus on the character’s blades. That’s not to say that the action hasn’t been refined in Kratos’ latest eight hour adventure, though. It leaves the game in an odd position, boasting the beauty of Aphrodite without the precise purpose of a Greek God. But it’s also bankable, and as a non-numbered instalment in a long-running franchise, predictable in places.
#God of war ascension series#
The prequel to Sony Santa Monica’s savage Spartan series thrives on years of iteration, delivering the slickest entry in the series yet.
God of War: Ascension is the strange type of title that could only exist at the end of a console’s lifespan.
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