But you know what the clincher is? This action never pops up again? It is only ever used twice in the entire game and both times are in this boss fight. After 15 minutes of constantly dying I finally resorted to the internet to find out what to do and I was relieved to find I wasn’t the only one having trouble with this section. HOWEVER there is a point in a fight near the end of the game where I was stuck for about 15 minutes because the game threw a new QTE action at you without even explaining what it was you needed to do. My final issue and I felt this was a bit of a biggie, was the QTE’s. It doesn’t happen as often as in the third game but it happens often enough near the end that I didn’t want to watch anymore. There is only so much of watching a large man recklessly stomping a woman’s face into the floor I feel comfortable watching. However there are a couple of areas in the game where the violence is just plain out thuggish and nasty, and I found myself, as I did in GOW 3, losing all sympathy for Kratos. As is using your blades to inflict splitting headaches on the medusas. Gutting the brain of one of the huge elephant enemies is a highlight. The actual gore and violence itself retains its over the top crimson splattered glory. However on the two highest difficulty settings where a couple of hits can finish you, I’d imagine it’s downright mind numbingly infuriating. On Normal and easy this is just annoying. ![]() Seriously it would be the same as if the game just faded to black for ten seconds. And you leave your life in fates hands as you button mash and hope you don’t die. ![]() Often during the game when you are fighting (usually during a boss fight) the camera will pan so far out that you physically cannot see what you are doing. My final issue with the combat isn’t down to the actual mechanics but rather the camera angles. Again my slight issue with this aspect of the game was that I felt the magic that Kratos used wasn’t as effective or as impressive as it was in the other games. All the buttons do what they did in previous games. If you’ve played a GOW game before all the usual combos are here. There is not a lot else I can say about that really. So the whole music thing was a slight bugbear that took me out of the experience somewhat.Ĭombat was fine. Seriously there were a couple of points where I thought my game was glitched as I was fighting some battles in silence. Bar the sound of Kratos’ sandals slapping on the floor. Other than that there are so many instances where there is no sound at all. The usual GOW score is here and pops up in appropriate places. There is a point near the end of the game where you are scaling a huge statue, but you do it only bit by tiny bit and you’re constantly popping in and out of it so you never truly get a sense of its scale. Everything else after this feels very scaled down and minute compared to the opening hours of the game. And then that is pretty much the game done for huge typical GOW sets. Very near the beginning of the game there is a stunning set piece where Kratos has to control 3 giant snake statues to gain access to the Oracle’s tower. Suffice to say it is on par with the opening one. Not only were the visuals stunning but the boss fight was on a whole other level! You thought the Colossus was big? You aint seen nothing until you go toe to toe (or arm to arm) with the Hecatonchres! And equally impressive was the end game boss. ![]() Seriously, the opening of the game had my heart in my mouth and my eyes popping out my skull. So let’s get started! The way I look at GOW Ascension is that it is a bland by the numbers experience book ended by two classic, breath-taking and momentous boss fights. They just all seemed to take a step back from bars that were set so high by the originals. Indeed I wouldn’t describe any of the games mentioned on the list above as ‘bad’. Now just to clarify GOW Ascension is not a bad game. So it is with a heavy, but unsurprised heart, to announce that GOW Ascension falls short of the mark when compared to its previous iterations. And even though it was superior than its prequel, New Vegas was crippled by game breaking bugs at launch. Resident Evil 6 was just…I meant seriously, what the actual fuck was that?! And Skyrim, although great, failed to soar to the magical, interesting, enchanting heights of its predecessor. Dead Space 3 felt quite bland and unfocused after the two previous terrifying character driven games (don’t even get me started on the micro transaction pushing agenda). Halo 4 felt like an emotional step back after the wonderful games that were ODST and Reach. Oh God of War DAMMIT! It has not been a good period for sequels.
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