Craig Gordey

For the next few Game Design Dissections I’m going to be focusing on the God of War franchise. I just beat the first one recently, I’m going to immediately play the second, and then finally the brand-new one that I’m super excited to play. After I’ve played through and dissected each one, I’m going to compare all three and have a look at the evolution of the series from start to now.

This is the first time I’ve really sat down with God of War and played through it entirely. I’ve played bits and pieces here and there before but not enough to get a good feel for the game.
So, I popped in the God of War Collection a couple days ago and started playing on normal difficulty…

The Good

Intriguing Story
Before you start playing, a cut-scene shows a suicidal Kratos jumping off the highest mountain in Greece. This grabbed my attention right off the bat and made me want to play through the story and find out what put Kratos into that state.
The game starts you off 3 weeks prior to that event. As you progress, you see flashbacks revealing little pieces of the story, until it’s all revealed at the end of the game.
The most memorable part of the story for me was when Kratos killed his own wife and daughter under the trickery of Ares. Their ashes then stick to his skin, giving him his pale skin color and endless nightmares. This is definitely the climax of the story and shows how much power Ares had over Kratos before Kratos decided to go against him. It’s a great lead-up to the Kratos vs. Ares battle at the end as you get a feeling for how much Kratos really hates Ares for the pain he’s gone through and he wants payback, big time.

Fixed Camera
The camera in this game is fixed, meaning you have no control over it. The camera does move around on its own though, depending on where the player is in relation to the level and there are a bunch of camera angle variations that change to adapt to that, such as: over the shoulder, side-scroller, top-down, and many others.
Not having any control over the camera means that you can’t peak around corners to see what you’re going to run into, and you can’t prepare yourself for it. This allows for more surprising enemy encounters as they pop out from behind corners when you don’t expect them to. The fixed camera can also help lead the player to areas of interest by looking toward a certain area that it wants to draw your attention to. The camera seems to work best when progressing forward, because when going backwards to already-visited areas, the camera doesn’t feel right so you get a pretty good feeling for when the game doesn’t want you to go that way. This was usually a good thing during my play-through, but there was the odd time where I was supposed to go backwards and the camera didn’t adjust to give me a good feeling about it, but luckily it was quite rare for that to happen.

Adventurous Level Design
The openness of the levels encourages adventure, which is appropriate in an action-adventure game. This is always a juggling match between giving the player areas to roam without making them feel like it’s too linear of level design versus giving them too much and allowing them to get lost, which happened to me briefly a couple times and I’ll talk about that later. I found myself trailing off the main route quite often to see what was off to the sides, maybe a chest with some items inside, just out of curiosity because I’m that type of adventurous gamer who enjoys finding the hidden items and whatnot. It was nice to not have a super-linear route forcing a distinct path.
Level reusability also fits into the non-linear level design equation, as there are many times where you come across a door that is locked and needs a key to be found to open it, so you go somewhere else and eventually loop back around to that door with the key.

Placements: Health/Magic, Save Altars, and Enemies
Throughout each level you come across chests that hold health, magic, and various other useful items. I was pleased with the health and magic placements as there was always some to be found to replenish myself with when I needed it. The game prepares you well with usually giving you health and magic before a big battle and then rewards you afterwards for getting past the difficult section with more to heal yourself with and get your magic bar filled back up. I also enjoyed the chests that alternate between health and magic. You see the chest changing colour from green (health) to blue (magic) and you open the chest at whichever colour represents your needs at the time.
Save altars are glowing pillars of light which you can walk into and save your game. Much like the health and magic chests, these are placed appropriately and can be found before and after climaxes in the gameplay. If you decide to take a break and return to the game later, you don’t have to go very far to get back to where you were.
The enemy placements work well with the fixed camera and pop out from behind corners and surprise you, like I previously mentioned. The amount of enemies that I encountered felt just right. Once I got off Kratos’ ship and stepped foot in Athens, I was introduced to new enemies right away and from there it always felt like I was fighting the proper amount at any given time. There was the odd time where I’d get outnumbered, die, and have to try again, but a slight change to my strategy always led me to victory.

Solid Difficulty Progression
At the start of the game you’re introduced to some weak enemies that you can pretty much just blow on and they’ll die, and then from there they get progressively harder at a nice pace. I personally didn’t care when I encountered the weaker enemies because they didn’t pose any real threat and didn’t have an impact, but whenever a Satyr showed up I cringed a little because they’re probably the most difficult non-boss enemy in the game and they take a while to kill. As far as the bosses go, their difficulty order could be rearranged a little bit, but for the most part they start off fairly easy and end up hard.
Overall, it is a difficult game but that’s the whole point. Everyone before Kratos who had ever attempted to reach Pandora’s Box died at some point along their journey, so it’s supposed to be a challenge and an easier game would have worked against the story. Of course, being too difficult is a bad thing but I don’t think it was. If you’re not a regular gamer and your skills aren’t up to par, the game does let you change to easy difficulty if you really want.

Action-Packed Combat
The fast-paced, action-packed attacks with the Blades of Chaos are always entertaining and keep every battle enjoyable as you thrash through enemies with a long list of powerful combos. The Blade of Artemis gives you a nice change of pace if you want, too. Combine those with 4 magic powers and you have yourself a nice variety of attacks. You can even grab certain enemies and rip them apart if you’re into that sort of thing.
The blocking is very quick and you can get it in when you have to make those split-second decisions and is nicely balanced with attacks. If you’re in the middle of a big attack that has a long animation, you’ll have to wait until it plays out before you can block. This gets the player thinking about the risk versus reward before they choose to do a powerful, long attack. There wouldn’t be any risk in the combat design if the player could just stop in the middle of a long animation and instantly block.
Dodging, like blocking, is also very quick for those desperate moments. It comes in use against enemies that can cause damage even if you try to block it, and it feels good when you dodge out of the way at the last second from an attack and the enemy just barely misses you.

Cinematic Quick Time Events (QTE)
When I’m battling with an enemy and QTEs become part of the battle, it gives me a chance at earning to see how Kratos would fight instead of it being my style for a change. It doesn’t come easy with certain enemy types as they demand your fingers to be very quick, but when you succeed with the quick ones after failing a couple times, it feels good to see Kratos unleash with a spectacular attack on the enemy.

Rage of the Gods
When you fill the Rage of the Gods meter by killing a certain amount of enemies you can then activate it and cause greater damage and take very little damage for about 10 seconds. It’s great for moments of desperation when your health is running low and you want to unleash on an enemy without risking much health.

Variety of Upgrades
As you progress through the game you get rewarded with a good amount of upgrades to use in your upcoming battles:

• 4 Magic Powers
  • Poseidon’s Rage: An electrocuting attack that zaps enemies within range of Kratos.
  • Medusa’s Gaze: Turns enemies into stone after gazing at them for long enough.
  • Zeus’ Fury: Throw bolts of lightning at distant enemies.
  • Army of Hades: Summons souls of the dead to attack any nearby enemies.
• 1 Weapon
  • The Blade of Artemis
• Health and Magic Meters
  • Once you collect enough Gorgon Eyes (for Health Meter) and Phoenix Feathers (for Magic Meter) hidden in chests, you get increased health and magic meters.
• Power-ups
  • After you collect enough red orbs you can upgrade your powers to give you stronger attacks, new attack moves, etc. for your weapons and magic powers.

Epic Boss Fights
Throughout the game you are put to the test with 3 epic battles that help define the strength and determination of Kratos:

• Hydra
  • The sea monster is made up of 3 Hydra heads, with the middle one being the Hydra King. You come across it numerous times throughout the first level, but the last encounter is the one that puts an end to it:
  • It’s only attack is biting at you.
    • In the final battle you have to defeat two Hydra heads by wearing them down and then drive spikes through their heads to kill them. They work together to protect themselves, as one will suck you towards it to get you away from the other one that you’re fighting. After that, you climb up to the main Hydra head, the Hydra King, and beat it up, finally driving its head through the ship’s mast with a QTE.
• Medusa
  • The Queen of the Gorgons is next up and Kratos is after her head.
  • She has the power to gaze at you and turn you into stone, shattering you to pieces if she hits you before you break out of it. She also can strike at you like a snake.
    • All that you have to do to kill her is swing away at her with your blades until you reach the QTE and decapitate her. But, right after that, you get to test out your new magic power – Medusa’s Gaze – on some enemies that spawn around you, which adds a little more excitement.

• Minotaur
  • Pandora’s Guardian is the next major obstacle in your journey. This guy wears a lot of armour and there’s 4 phases to get through.
  • He attacks by spearing you with his horns, throws punches, grabs and throws you, and also spews lava out of his mouth.
    • Phase 1-3: Each phase is defeated by wearing down his health and then finishing him with a QTE. For every phase you defeat, pieces of armour fall off until there’s none left for the final phase.
    • Phase 4: The last phase of the armour-less Minotaur is defeated by once again slashing away it his health and then finishing him by impaling him with a log, which pins him to a big door and he conveniently kicks a hole in it to create a path for you to progress through.
• Ares + Doppelgangers + Ares Again = Final Boss
  • Finally, it’s time to fight the God of War himself in a battle that is split into 3 parts. Kratos opens Pandora’s Box and grows to an equivalent size as Ares. Once it seems like a fair fight, Ares decides to 1-up Kratos and grows long, sharp blades out of his back.
  • For the first phase, Ares attacks with a large hammer and also uses his blades, the Doppelgangers in phase 2 use a variety of Kratos’ weapons, and in phase 3, Ares upgrades his weapon to a big, fiery sword, and can summon spikes out of the ground.
    • Phase 1: After hacking away at Ares and draining his health entirely, you defeat his first phase with a QTE and stab through him multiple times.
    • Phase 2: That makes Ares angry and he sucks you into a cosmic arena to fight off Doppelgangers, evil clones of Kratos, and you must protect clones of Kratos’ wife and daughter. As the wife and daughter take damage, you can hug them to spare some of your health and add to theirs. Once you fight off all the evil clones it’s time to fight Ares again.
    • Phase 3: Ares is now more ticked off than ever and he strips Kratos of his weapons, forcing him to look for a new one as he spots the Blade of the Gods. This time around, whenever you take damage it adds to Ares’ health, making him more difficult to kill. Once you have sliced through all of Ares’ health, that’s it, and surprisingly enough, there’s no QTE!

I enjoyed all of the boss fights, but I think their difficulty progression is off by a little. Medusa is the second boss, yet I found her to be the easiest so I would have liked more of a challenge out of her. The final phase of Ares was a good challenge and a hard-earned victory.

Enjoyable Puzzles
One of the things that impressed me most about the gameplay is the amount of quality puzzles. Almost every single one, and there are quite a few, were really enjoyable and weren’t too easy or too hard. Here is a list of the ones I enjoyed:

• Objective: Push the crate from one end to the other to use to reach ledge.
  • There’s a tall ledge that you have to get up to but it’s too high to reach on your own, so you have to push the large crate safely underneath the ledge.
    • On top of the ledge are enemies shooting arrows at you and your crate. You can’t let too many arrows hit the crate or it’ll get destroyed and you have to start all over again. But, there just happens to be pillars to take cover behind along the way, so you have to wait until the enemies stop shooting, give the crate a big kick to push it, and then hide until they stop shooting again. Keep doing this until you reach the end and hop up on that ledge.
• Objective: Freeze enemy on button to open door.
  • There’s a locked door you have to get through and there’s a button that opens the door when pressed. But, when you get off the button the door closes, so you have to lure an enemy on top of the button and freeze it with Medusa’s Gaze to keep the door open to get through.
• Objective: Figure out a way to open door using arrow launcher.
  • There’s a large locked door that needs something special to open it and there just happens to be an arrow launcher a little ways away.
    • Drag the arrow launcher into the room. It is initially facing the wrong way, so you have to place it on a turning platform, pull a lever, and the platform rotates the arrow launcher 90 degrees clockwise, which is only halfway the orientation that you need it to be.
    • Now, every second use of the lever rotates the platform to its original orientation, which would do the same to the arrow launcher, of course. So, you have to take the launcher off the platform, use the lever to rotate the platform, place the launcher back onto it, and rotate the launcher the rest of the way. All that’s left to do is drag the launcher in line with the door and fire away.
• Objective: Stop the Harpies from attacking while you try to cross beams.
  • There’s a path of beams that leads to a door that you need to get to, but Harpies are constantly spawning and attacking you while you try to cross.
    • The beams are above the room where the Harpies are constantly spawning from. There are 2 holes where they come out of, and there are also 2 statues lying not too far away from them. Drag the statues to cover up the holes to stop the Harpies from coming out. You get a confirmation that it’s proper use of the statues because they wiggle every couple seconds to represent Harpies trying to get through.
• Objective: Find a way to reach vines up high on wall to start Oracle rescue.
  • The Oracle is in trouble and is hanging from a rope up high and must be saved. A cut-scene draws your attention to some vines for you to grab onto to start the rescue, but they’re too high to reach on your own.
    • Your tools this time around are a couple of statues. You must drop a statue off a ledge and then drop the other statue on top of it to create a tall platform for you to jump onto.
    • Once you reach the vines, a timer starts counting down and you must quickly hop your way across some platforms to reach the Oracle before she falls to her death.
• Objective: Figure out a way to use swivel door to get into next room.
  • There’s a door that quickly swivels around to another room when its button is pressed and then quickly swivels back when the button is un-pressed.
    • You have to drag a box close to the door and kick it so it slides onto the button and then you quickly get in the door and it swivels you into the next room.
• Objective: Drag a guy locked in a cage into a room and use him as a sacrifice to open door.
  • At the top of a hill is a room with a locked door, a button, and an incinerator. You are told that a sacrifice is needed to open the door.
    • When you go back down to the bottom of the hill, a guy locked in a cage becomes available to you and you have to push him up the hill while you fight off enemies until you reach the room at the top again. Push the cage onto the button, wait for the incinerator to wrap around the cage, pull the lever and fry him alive, opening the door for you.
• Objective: Find a door that contains the path to get out of there while dodging fireballs.
  • There are 3 paths of fireballs rolling toward you that make up the width of the hallway you’re in with some doors on the sides. As you’re dodging the fireballs you have to quickly open doors until you find a path out of there.
• Objective: Rebuild a wall to open door.
  • You see 6 stone pieces scattered around in a room, a locked door, and a rotating platform that you can turn.
    • You must rebuild a wall with 5 of the stone pieces and drag them onto the rotating platform and turn them the correct way so they all piece together. The additional piece is just there to try to confuse you, I guess. Once you’ve rebuilt the wall, the door unlocks for you.
• Objective: Push a box underneath a ledge before the spiked floor kills you.
  • There is in a room with a spiked floor, a ledge up high that you can’t initially reach and a box locked in a cage.
    • The room is shaped similar to the letter U if you rotate it clockwise by 90 degrees. On the upper end of it is a ledge that you have to get up to and on the other end is a box behind a cage. Once you open the cage to get to the box, a timer for the spikes starts up and you have to kick the box underneath the ledge, jump onto it and climb up the ledge before the spikes kill you and your box.

In conclusion to these enjoyable puzzles, the last one on the list is my favourite. Even if you push the box underneath the ledge flawlessly, you’re still cutting it close on time, so it’s very intense. One thing about the timer-based puzzles is that it uses music instead of a traditional visual clock. The faster, more intense the music gets you know you don’t have much time left. This is an effective replacement of a visual timer, if you don’t have the sound turned off.

The Bad

Getting Lost in Level Design
Because this is an adventure game and the levels are designed to give you that feeling and allow you to roam around in places that aren’t always the correct way, you can get lost and left scratching your head. This happened to me a couple times, just briefly, thankfully, and I had to retrace my steps and make sure I went in a route that I hadn’t gone before. It’s a terrible feeling being lost in a game because it shouldn’t happen, but when a game gives you a lot of space to run around, it’s sometimes tough not to get lost.
And if you’re thinking a map would fix this problem by showing you where your next objective is located, it wouldn’t really fit into the game and Kratos is too badass to use a map!

Lack of Diagonal Attacks While Climbing
When climbing a wall alongside enemies and one happens to be diagonally in-line with you, you can’t attack it like you assume you’d be able to. The game only allows for vertical and horizontal attacks. So, you either have to move over, up, or down to be able to attack that enemy.
It’s not like the PlayStation controller doesn’t have analog sticks or anything…

Too Hard to Initiate QTEs
If I’m in a heated battle with a bunch of enemies and one is QTE-ready, I want to be able to easily initiate it so I’m not getting attacked while trying to get into the QTE. It seems like you have to be positioned directly in front of the enemy and I found myself sometimes pressing the circle button multiple times, up to 4 or 5, before it finally worked. It shouldn’t be so picky and let you start the QTE from all angles. If I want to do it from behind (get your mind out of the gutter!) or the sides of an enemy, then I should be able to.

Not-So-Enjoyable Puzzles
While I enjoyed nearly every puzzle in the game, there were a couple that stuck out as being not as enjoyable. One of these tries to be a puzzle but really isn’t and the other is just a big rotating column of frustration:

• 3 Singing Sirens in a Sandstorm
  • There’s a locked door that can only be opened if you kill the 3 Singing Sirens spread throughout a large, sandstorm-desert area.
  • As you wander around with very little visibility, you listen for the Sirens. Once you hear the faint singing, you follow the noise until you reach one and kill her. Repeat that 2 more times and you unlock the door.
• Rotating Spiked Columns
  • There are a couple of spinning columns covered with spikes that you have to climb up without getting cut. Gaps in the spikes give you a path to progress with, but if you touch a spike you fall all the way to the ground.

I’m not a big fan of searching for the Singing Sirens because it’s so mindless. You just walk around until you hear one singing and then look for it and kill it. It’s trying to be a puzzle but really isn’t because puzzles are supposed to get you to think up a solution instead of just wandering around aimlessly until you hear one. This could have been done better by giving the player some indication of where to look, to include some requirement of skill, instead of getting the player to just wander around and potentially take way too long to find the last one because they missed a corner.
As for the spiked columns, Kratos is supposed to be a huge badass but if a blade just barely touches him he falls all the way to the ground. It gets pretty frustrating after you fall 4 or 5 times and I would have liked to see me just lose health instead of also falling.

“Do you want to pick this item up?”
When you go to pick up certain items you get asked if you want to pick it up or not. Well, if you don’t pick it up then you’re missing out on an item that you probably need, so of course you want it. With it asking you that question it makes you think that maybe there are consequences for picking it up, almost as to make you think twice like there’s a trap waiting for you or something, but don’t worry, there isn’t. It’s not a huge deal, it’s just not necessary for required items.

Enemy Pathing
At times, if you lure an enemy away from the area they spawned at, they will stop at an edge and not go outside the area, allowing you to stand on the other side of the area, just out of their reach, and attack them.

Conclusion

To wrap things up, you can probably tell that I really enjoyed God of War. It captivated me in both gameplay and story, which doesn’t happen too often. I really like how the story was laid out, making me want to play through the next section to see the next flashback almost like when you’re reading a good book and a chapter finishes off great and you just have to keep on reading through the next one and the next one until you can’t keep your eyes open any longer. The next chapter for me is God of War 2 and I can’t wait to play it.

Check back soon for the next Game Design Dissection on God of War 2!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 1st, 2010 at 7:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.