God Of War Acension Review

The God of War series is one series of games that I've personally never bothered much with. Yeah I tried the God Of War 3 demo on the PS3 and thought it was alright but it certainly didn't inspire me to run out and grab the game. I also recently received God Of War HD as a benefit of being a PSPlus member and again thought it was decent enough but felt pretty clunky compared to more modern games and although I didn’t play too much if it I did like the concept of the boss battles. But after initially dismissing Bioshock Infinte (to my detriment) and absolutely loving it when I played through and finished it recently, I decided to rethink my stance on games and play some games outside of my normal comfort zone. And that's where I come into GoW: Ascension. Graphically the game looks amazing easily comparable to other recent releases like Tomb Raider and Deadpool in particular in the larger scale stuff but we will get to that later. The level design is good although it is fairly linear with just a few hidden areas to find and explore. The combat system is simple but very effective and it is very satisfying performing the QTEs on the larger general enemies. Even the platforming sections are well crafted and interesting, though Sony Santa Monica have clearly been heavily influenced by the platforming sequences in the Uncharted series in this regard. There are actually a surprising number of puzzles and the fact some are real brain benders makes them feel like a worthwhile addition rather than just something thrown in to break up the fighting. The bizarre time bending mechanic helps in a big way with this and sets it apart from other games of this ilk. Sound effects are suitably epic and Kratos sounds just as badass as he looks. Storyline wise it's a rather bizarre tale being told here as a prequel to the original God Of War trilogy and I wouldn't want to spoil the cool twist here so I'll just say its interesting but weird, although it manages to keep the action flowing constantly. Where Ascension really excels for me is in the huge scale boss battles which manage to both look incredible and play extremely well with each one being more entertaining than the last, playing through the game I couldn't wait to see what they would come up with next. The multiplayer even manages to be pretty fun pitting two teams of 4 against each other competing for the favour of the gods against backdrops with huge interactable beasts that you will get the opportunity to kill later in the matches. Good fun and manages to be different enough to other multiplayer games to keep you interested for a while at least. Overall this game surprised me immensely at every turn by being completely over the top and the epic scale simply had me glued to the game from start to finish. Andy