(Bloomberg) — Sony Group Corp.’s God of War Ragnarok. debuted on Wednesday to positive early reviews, suggesting it could be the catalyst the Japanese gaming giant needs to head into the end of the year without a major hit.
Critics love God of War Ragnarok. The game has a 94 on review aggregation website Metacritic, making it the second best original game of the year, just below the transcendent Elden Ring. IGN’s reviewer called it “a complete work of art from top to bottom” and “an almighty achievement”.
After breaking records during the pandemic, the video game industry has collapsed this year due to a lack of major titles, console shortages and the economic downturn. So the stakes are high for God of War Ragnarok, one of the fall’s few blockbuster games and the latest entry in one of Sony’s most important franchises.
God of War launched in 2005 with a trilogy of raunchy but fun games about killing Greek gods like Zeus and Hades. In 2018, Sony rebooted the series with a new entry that ditched the crude sex scenes and reimagined the series’ main character, Kratos, as a gruff but loving father. This game won praise and was considered one of the best of the year. It sold 23 million copies on PlayStation and PC. Four years later, a sequel has arrived that Sony hopes will reach or surpass the heights of the last version.
The gameplay of God of War Ragnarok is beautiful and rhythmic, kind of like playing an instrument – except at the end of the song you have to decapitate a worm demon with a huge axe.
Set in Norse mythology, the game takes place several years after its predecessor during Fimbulwinter, the period of endless snow said to herald the end of the world. At the end of the last game, Kratos and his son Atreus discovered a prophecy with two key pieces of information. The first is that Atreus is really Loki, the Norse god of mischief, and the second is that Kratos is destined to die. This sets up some big stakes for God of War Ragnarok, and when the game begins, Kratos and Atreus are already grappling with big questions about their relationship, their purpose, and what Ragnarok might bring.
I’ve played about 15 hours of God of War Ragnarok and even though I’m not done yet, I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. The combat is brilliant and deep, full of interesting choices and combos that let you tear demons and monsters to shreds with abandon. Fans criticized the last game for the monotony of its enemies, which were mostly variations of zombies, and the developers responded by packing God of War Ragnarok full of drastically different creatures to kill.
Battles are satisfying, highlighted once again by Kratos’ Leviathan Ax, which you can throw and summon back to your hand with the pleasant press of a button. You can customize gear and play with different special abilities, such as using your ice weapon to chill an enemy and then swapping it out for your firearm to deal extra damage. I’ve never tried meditation, but I imagine combat in a game like this puts you in a similar state.
The designers at Sony Santa Monica, the studio behind the game, use all kinds of tricks to keep things attractive. There are meaningful side quests and many more great stories told by the talking head Mimir, the wisest of the Norse gods and a returning character from the previous game. There are various new gameplay twists that I won’t spoil, but it’s clear after a few hours that God of War Ragnarok is trying to shake things up.
The story is also a highlight. God of War Ragnarok introduces villains that have only been teased before, such as the god of thunder Thor, whose bitter demeanor is miles from his Marvel Cinematic Universe counterpart, and the malevolent sage Odin, played to perfection by Richard Schiff, best known as The West Wing’s Tobey Ziegler. Odin is the best part of this game. Whenever he’s not on screen, I find myself wishing he was back. An early section in which he leads one of the main characters on a West Wing-style walk-and-talk around Asgard is a particular treat.
Fans are worried that God of War Ragnarok might look too much like its predecessor. In some ways it is. You still travel to realms like Midgard and Alfheim, you still throw your ax to solve chain puzzles, you still watch Kratos struggle to overcome his stoicism and bond with his son. But Ragnarok is bigger, better, and in some ways even more special than the 2018 game that won so much acclaim. It’s a triumphant experience well worth your time. The game is available for the PlayStation 5, which has been in short supply this year, and the older PlayStation 4. In its latest earnings results, Sony lowered the forecast for its gaming segment and said players are reducing the number of titles they buy due to “ global macroeconomic conditions’. But the company also invoked God of War Ragnarok as an engine to bring players back.
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