Right
off the bat this demo has me scratching my head. This demo was the
first that I’ve ever seen that was “sponsored”. You start up the demo
and you are first shown a commercial for The History Channel’s new show
Vikings. Which beyond the fact that it’s very odd that a cable TV show
is sponsoring a video game demo, Vikings is completely unrelated to God
of War in general. I mean, come on, the Greek empire never even spread
to the lands the Vikings called home. So after the sales pitch the
actual game demo doesn’t even begin! You must choose to play it from the
many options on the main menu including trailers for Vikings and God of
War and “informative” videos about the real vikings and Norse
mythology. And in History Channel tradition, these videos were pretty
historically inaccurate at best. Putting that aside, it is still very
strange to me to see a triple-A game such as God of War whoring itself
out like this.
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| Wait, what? Also, Skyrim logo much? |
The
demo itself was fun enough once I finally got to it. The demo takes
place with Kratos in the “Prison of the Damned” where the Furies
themselves keep those who have broken oaths with the Gods. And in God of
War tradition, Kratos immediately sets to eviscerating his way out of
that damned place. On the plus side this is definitely a God of War
game. On the other hand I could not tell this God of War apart from the
last one. Like all the other entries in the series you’ve got to slog
through a few waves of enemies before you get to the colossal boss of
the level. You get to see a few new enemies though such as a small
scarab-like bug that attacks in swarms. But later you see these bugs
attach themselves headcrab-style to Kratos’ fellow prisoners and
transform them into creatures basically identical to the jackal-looking
enemies from the other entries. From this point on you see nothing new
or exciting if you are at all familiar with the franchise. And to top it
all off, the demo ends after an entirely too lengthy battle with one
hand of the great creature when another comes and crushes Kratos into a
wall. Yes, thats another hand, not a second hand, because it has 6 I
think. I shudder to think how many times we’ll have to fight this
bastard. And thats it. Roll credits. (There are no credits...) This kind
of anticlimactic ending would be one thing if we were unsure of the
character’s future in the series, but in a prequel? Like I said: thats
it?
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He’s Kratos! God of Been-there-done that...
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And
then, I hope you watched all the pre-demo videos you wanted first
because you’ll have to quit the demo and restart it if you want to get
back to that initial menu.
All
in all I give this demo a 3/10. That’s a resounding: meh... This demo
doesn’t offer anything new for fans of the series, nothing that I could
see that would hook a newcomer, and it was all brought to you by The
History Channel! The one new thing they added, multiplayer, is not even
present in this demo. After playing the demo, I will not be buying the game
at release and I probably won’t buy it for more than $30 pending how
well it is reviewed. So here’s just one thoroughly unimpressive demo.
Yay? No, I think not.
- Skye, Resident God of War Expert
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