Through Rose Coloured Glasses: Wait A Minute, These Are Clear!

As far as I know, I have never written more than one post in a row about the same game. If I have, it was surely about GTA IV, which is unashamedly one of my favourite games ever.

It turns out there are other games like this, which I have simply forgotten. In my last post, I talked about my difficulties getting hold of the God of War Collection, what with it not being available in this country and all. Now (eventually) I have it and I am simply amazed.

I am playing God of War, yes, the original God Of War for PS2, but graphically polished up, every time I sit down at my console. This may not sound that impressive, until you consider the fact that it has wholly displaced Edge magazine’s 10/10 trophy game, Bayonetta. I was playing Bayonetta a lot, until I found the GoW collection in my mailbox. Then I stopped – God of War is better.

So, am I just one of the many retro fanboys out there that would rather be playing Galaxian than Gears of War? The answer is no. I’ve tried to go retro, and it’s always been a case of the memory being better than the game. Even the Commodore 64’s “Paradroid” seemed disappointing when played on a £5 Argos C64 joystick machine.

God of War, though, is to this day a stunning game, both in terms of visuals (the 720p overhaul helped, of course) and in terms of its brilliant score, epic battles and superb sound effects. It also has a dark and gory story that actually adds something to the otherwise mostly hack ‘n’ slash gameplay, and really makes you want to see the end. It does show its age in some respects, in so much as it has some reasonably old school features. It features quick time events quite heavily, which I personally like but seem to have gone a bit out of fashion. It also features something else which appears to be “so last year” in modern games (Bayonetta is an exception to this) – difficulty. At points it is hard. Damn hard. Punishingly hard. Throw your controller across the room, shout the C word and kick the cat hard.

Fallen off the rotating wall of spikes in Hades for the 3,012,422nd time? Tough, there’s no way around it. The game even mocks you when you repeatedly die on a platforming section, by offering you Easy mode – and then pointing out that “only combat is affected”. Nice.

All of it, though, the difficulty, the frustration, it all just ends up making you love the game even more when you get through it, and that’s something I adore it for.

The rest of Bayonetta may well offer me the same, albeit with a lot more loading screens, but for now it can wait. I have Gods to kill.