@Erratum Ha! I played for like 40 minutes and got really bored and I shut the game down. Never played it again. As soon as I played the game and couldn't turn around for like the first 10 minutes of gameplay, my will to keep playing sinked lower and lower. I just don't get why people orgasm at the sight of these movie games.
@@introduction1266 the game was designed with certain areas being slow to mask loading times then the PS5 now released with an update for god of war to significantly reduce loading times meaning world design wouldn't have to be the same if they took the PS5 into consideration.
As a AAA dev myself (And an environment artist for most of my 22 years) I find this video incredibly sobering. And important. I haven't played GoW yet myself, but this piece is clearly an industry critique first and foremost. Great work! I'm sharing with all my coworkers.
Play it for yourself if you've played the older ones. It is a good story and imo there are alot of pros that I would say out weigh the cons noted in this Case Study.
I really appreciated your comparison to modern cinema. For years, I’ve heard people continue this confused dialogue on “when are games gonna be on the same artistic level as film.” I actually find it kind of offensive that people keep on saying video games haven’t reached the artistic heights of film. It’s an argument that ignores the fundamental differences between the two mediums. It ignores the many flaws of modern cinema, and most of all, it takes the decades of hard work and creative vision that game designers have poured into their craft and tells us that doesn’t matter.
Also, people ignore the fact that there are so many many things that are only possible in the gaming medium. Instead of waiting for the approval of older, dying mediums, studios and devs should try their best to play on gaming's strengths as a unique form of art.
I have always considered video games as an art form but saying that games already reached the artistic heights of film is seriously pushing it. Films are over a century old matured medium and film makers have complete mastery over it while game development is not only much more complicated composed of many moving complex parts, but also relatively super young to reach those heights yet. Games that are generally considered as art with clear artistic vision from people behind it like Cory Barlog with God of War are super rare especially when it comes to big budget video games. Video games have other priorities most of the time whether it is competitive games intended for multiplayer, to games designed only keep you busy and entertained as.they make money off you selling stuff.
@@weaverquest Films have yet to reach the artistic heights of literature. Literature spans practically the entire existence of human civilization. See what I did thar? Really, it's a pointless goal to chase, and one that is constantly moving.
the main issue with games is, that they dont use their own medium to convey good stoys most of the time. A cutscene, basicly is just a minimovie. A "good game" or a perfect one, would be one where you only would play. Where everything you do, basicly is a game mechanic.
fuck man your point about how they should have used kratos' strength as a way to make fun of other games and reduce tedium in certain parts was brilliant and i can't believe i haven't heard anyone bring that up before
It's the issue with a lot of stories. You're either experiencing the tail end or the beginning of the Hero's reign. Playing as peak Krato's sometime between GoW 2018 and GoW 4 would definitely make for interesting enough flashbacks, if not a full game.
That's an easier point said than done. Only works in your fan fiction mindset. Try developing a game and tell me how easy that would be to implement in a story like this.
@@kittykitty101001 The fact that you listed an exception makes your argument silly. Especially for an action game, there's hardly a problem with wherever the game sits in the timeline.
@@kittykitty101001 There are plenty of good examples, like any good action game, or something like DOOM 2016, which overall avoids tedium by playing to the character's strengths. It would have required some sacrifices to be made, which the GOW team was apparently unwilling to do.
This is, still, genuinely one of the greatest videos on game criticism ever made. I felt so crazy for not loving GoW and this video game me an outlet to explore why I don't love it. Inspiring, makes me wanna actually work on a video. Love it.
@@TheEpikak I came to the opposite conclusion. OP had already formed their opinion, but couldn’t clearly articulate the reasons why. However, this review did express the reasons why
DO IT! I just started a review channel and it's rewarding to really get those thoughts on paper, record, and post. Even if the results aren't what you want. It's a rewarding feeling that improves the more you do it.
The forced walking sections were way worse on Ragnarok. It was among the reasons to why the game became way too long. It just killed the replay value for me.
@@l.2152 the new DLC helps a bit. I’m having a lot of fun replaying the game with Blade of Olympus and the Classic Kratos skin. But the low points are still low I guess
@@SaberRexZealot Yeah the new DLC is why I redownloaded the game & been playing it the past few weeks. Probably gonna try to power through Ironwood when I’m done with it.
Every time I watch one of these, I immediately want the developers of the games to watch it, too. Not for any sort of "THIS IS WHAT YOU DID WRONG, FEEL BAD" reason, but just so they can take the criticism into account and produce an even better game next time. All of the points raised in the video are very valid and, while I enjoyed Dad of War a bunch, you have a way of articulating those nagging feelings that my brain notices while playing but usually result in me making an off-hand comment about how the game doesn't feel right in general.
It's funny you say that because he DOES point out in the video that they obviously worked very hard on it and he's not saying he would have done better in their situation. If you watch the video in it's entirely you would understand he's not just shitting on the game.
Sad to say but Cory Barlog only cares about the metacritic score / initial public reception. In his mind the game is perfectly fine because it had a positive initial reception.
@@abyzzwalker there are definitely some improvements but on the whole it plays pretty identically to the previous game and doesn’t fix very many of the flaws it had.
I think there is something to be said about modern games and a "blockbuster" effect. Most "blockbusters" are large, entertaining movies, energetic and colorful, now whilst this obviously doesn't go for all of them, the majority of them are action-packed and garner large audiences: And that's it. There's nothing deeper to them, maybe they're rewatchable, maybe not. They exist basically to exist as an adrenaline rush, and then they end, and that is the last you hear about them until your friend reminds you of that time you went to see the movie. I think certain games have fallen into a similar pattern, where they do not want subsequent playthroughs to be equally thought-provoking or interesting, or their ludonarrative elements to align to their fullest potential, but rather have an adrenaline-filled, fun adventure, and have it end when the credits roll.
@@frogglen6350, In what way are they all bad exactly? I’ve never played the Witcher so I can’t really comment on that. Elden ring was a brilliant game with one of the best open worlds ever made combined with the souls gameplay loop, Overall a great souls experience. Zelda breath of the wild had amazing exploration and lots to experiment with. Combat was pretty lacking however and the lack of dungeons was a shame. By “new mario game” I assume you mean odyssey? If so, that game was amazing. Responsive, lots to experiment with and room to really master mario’s moveset. Ghost of Tsushima is just a better version of the Ubisoft open world format, which I don’t think makes it bad. I agree some aspects could have been better but that can be applied to any game.
This is exactly the sort of informed, detailed and above all constructive criticism of gaming that seems to be lacking on TH-cam and indeed other forms of media. Matthew, for the love of God, never change. The world needs people like you.
Why MatthewMatosis is currently one of the greats in video game criticism: 1. Doesn't waste time on going in a hissy fit about other people's opinions on the game or talking about his own expectations. 2. Regards the merits AND flaws of a game to bring a balanced overview. 3. Analyses extensively so the eventual judgement doesn't come out of nowhere and is understandable. 4. His analysis, although extensive, is still *concise* 5. I'm gay for his voi- uuuh I mean communicates in a clear voice :)
>1. Doesn't waste time on going in a hissy fit about other people's opinions on the game or talking about his own expectations. So many TH-camrs I can name...
Didn't he have a hissy fit in the first 5 minutes saying that fans of the OG GoW were complacent with its "stagnation" and that the extreme change to this game isnt a slap to the face of long time fans and that they should see it differently.
I thought it was more along the lines of "some might see this as a slap in the face, but let's take a more optimistic view and judge it without being predisposed to that mindset", and a causal mention of how he thought the series was stagnating. But that was just my impression.
For me he focuses too much on the negatives and small things I do loves his videos But at the same time when he comes out and says "Oh despite all the flaws it's a great game!" it feels unearned.
Puts things into perspective. I didn't mind the experiments they've gone through with this one - for better or worse - as it was clear the series was going for something completely different. But now playing Ragnarok I don't feel they've evolved at all, and the 'averageness' of the average elements has become more noticeable.
"they didn't evolve at all" the enemies are more varied the bosses are faster and hit harder the visuals are better. You control multiple characters you are ungrateful and entitled
@@frogglen6350 I'm yet to beat the game, in the mines now, and I hope that some surprises await ahead. But my time with Ragnarok hasn't brought much enjoyment beyond the high level production quality. I'm genuinely happy for everyone who enjoy the game. I'm also sorry for everyone who takes its criticism so personally that they have to resort to personal attacks on the critic)
"No matter what topic I was discussing, I would never have referred to Norse God as an example of anything, because everything it does is better represented elsewhere." -The entire video's great point. Excellent summation.
but nothing does it all in one place. When you dont have time to play all those other games for all those "better" version of the game. God of war provides. This is not to be dismissed
The Typer I find the argument of "It's not the absolute pinnacle of quality at what it's trying to do and so therefore it's artistically worthless" as a shitty argument myself
@@ultralurker7579 Wrong, the modern games industry is full of jack of all trades games, that spread themselves thin over too many ideas like that. It's not a selling point you make it out to be.
@@Soniman001 You do realize the game not being master of any craft was only half of the argument? The other part was how God of War 4 lacks any kind of strong hook or selling point. Since it lacks any strong core that would work as an overarching appeal point, it doesn't scratch any particular itch that another game with clearer focus and vision wouldn't work better on. To put it in a question form, what exactly could I want from a game I play, that I couldn't get from anywhere else except this game? If I want an intimate experience about two characters bonding trough shared journey and hardships, I play Ico or Last Guardian. If I want an action-filled adventure with fun combat, I play anything from Devil May Cry to Kingdom Hearts. If I want an exiting game with deep and meaningful narrative, I play Metal Gear Solid or Persona. If I want a game about fatherhood, I play Yakuza or Telltales first season of Walking Dead (or if for whatever reason I'd want game about father who is also a God, there's Asura's Wrath). Heck, if I would specifically want to play a game in which you play as a God and go onto an epic adventure through beautiful landscapes and meet several fabled and mythical characters, I'd choose Ōkami over God of War 4 any day.
@@jondoe7036 so playthose 12 or so games for the rest of time them, your argument comes across as pretty poor and projecting when it all boiled down to you just not liking it, its pretty fucking clear a lot of people found appeal in it and enjoyed the experienceingy implying the game is unfocused is ridiculous when the statement of it is pretty fucking clear from the start at what its trying to do
Love the ending. Too often critics fail to consider the circumstance in which a game was produced and instead sit smugly on their high horse. This is why I sub to Big Matt, he brings the awareness
Most devs have a black box approach to development, if they wanted it to be an even play field they should be more forthcoming with the backgrounds behind the games they're releasing. E.g if god of war was made by a 16 year old kid tinkering in his room for a year obviously it would be god tier.
I think it's more consumers that have a black box approach than developers. Watch some GDC talks, watch and read some interviews, the information is out there. If you really want to know how these games are made, actually look for it
@@morganlak4337 oh trust me I do keep an ear out and have things like geomod in my Google alerts directory plus have perused all of GDCs TH-cam stuff. To say that it's on the consumers though... Not sure why you would much such an inflammatory statement and blame consumers for lack of background on newly released games. Why? Because we don't get the information we should (unless we are insiders) such as team size, principle members and biggest hurdles in development, and we don't get it because 1) it's not common studio practice to publish, 2) companies don't want employees head hunted in interviews etc, and 3) marketing don't want things leaked should there be live dev chats etc before release. Do you still feel comfortable in holding the view of consumers being at fault here?
I'm not sure what you're accusing me of saying, I'm saying if you feel uninformed about games' process there are tons of resources on them and it's your fault if you don't use them. We do get access to things like team size and specific people who worked on it in the credits, and while we don't always get specific hurdles we often do through interviews and talks. Obviously we don't get perfect windows into what devs do on individual projects, but we can fill in the blanks, especially on big titles like God of war. I'm also mostly complaining about critical who don't consider the devs point of view, consumers was a poorly chosen word as it doesn't actually represent who I was complaining too. The information I'm talking about is public though, so everyone can see it
Sucks Santa Monica responded to this critique but took none of it to heart. Ragnarok really not only didnt improve on the aspects that made this game bad, but somehow actually magnified them. Oh well, I can always fire up the 'ol ps2 and play good god of war games anytime i guess.
@@frogglen6350 because they could make a good game if they did. There's no more harmful words to a creator than "Good Enough". If a game needs criticism as bad as these god of war games did, then they should be criticized, of they will continue to pump out trash.
@Exeledus Prince Do you justvwant gane devs to ignore positive feedback from the majority of the target audience? Because if so, you're gonna hate Devil May Cry, Dark Souls, and most games as a whole
@@frogglen6350 yes, I do if it means a better game. Sony chose to target the casual gamet market with these games and as a result they dont leave an impact and are very mediocre. Funny you mention Devil May Cry and Dark Souls, 2 series where the developers weren't afraid of targeting a smaller niche audience but made better (much better) games than these as a result. And there it is, "why dont you play fortnite"? Lol as if it's any more obvious someone cant take criticism. I love God of War 2018, but its important to know what works and what doesnt. Ragnarok could have been amazing, but they didnt bother improving.
Coming back after Ragnarok released really hammers in how Corey Barlrog's compliments to this video were just lip service, because that game doubles down on all the problems Matt pointed out.
I can't believe some insane loser is lurking in the comment section of a 4 year old video defending a game's sequel from mild criticism Fellas, our precious time on this earth is pretty short
Probably, just a kid who has nothing better to do after school. But the annoying part is, Frog guy says something dumb, a lot of people dunk on them thus successfully derailing the conversation. Like “Congrats! You’re the center of attention on another comment thread.”
I disagree on that one. Turning off extensive tutorials and the compass from the beginning made it probably feel better for me. Also changing difficulty was enough for me to keep me challenged and about the babyproof world I don’t really get the point. Do you want to glitch into walls or why would you not want these limitations?
Linie Kiste Linie Kiste first of all turning off tutorials and HUD elements is like using duct tape to fix a leaking boat, it’s a temporary, flawed solution that might cause you to miss necessary information, or get lost for a unnatural amount of time because the game expects you to have waypoints on. By “babyproof world” he means there’s no peril or danger in the games traversal mechanics, you just hold a direction and press X occasionally, even uncharted allows you to fall and die. This creates disconnect because kratos and the boy are exploring unknown, hazardous environments on their journey, but the only gameplay where any danger exists is in the combat, so about half the journey. He’s not saying it’s a terrible solution but it’s about as lazy as making an NPC companion invincible with teleportation powers, and hampers immersion as a result.
The reduced tutorial was actually really well done and I had no problems with it, it only removed information like "use the left thumbstick to move around", recalling the axe and other new mechanics were still explained. Getting lost also wasn't a problem, since I still had the map and the world isn't terribly complex to begin with. I didn't feel like the game expected me to use the compass at all. Also, I didn't turn the whole HUD off, the game gave me enough flexibility to pick what I wanted. I'll admit that the world does feel not very dangerous, but It doesn't give me that disconnection, so I can't really say how it feels for anyone who has a problem with it. Do you maybe have examples with games that did that aspect well? I also get that maybe it would bond you and Atreus if he wasn't invincible, but if he could be killed and not teleport I think he would be more annoying than helpful (which is probably why they made him like that) and most players would start to dislike him, so how would you have a vulnerable NPC that does not get annoying after 10 minutes because of how stupidly he dies?
Linie Kiste Fair enough, if you had no problems I can’t argue that those changes would improve the game somewhat. Maybe when I go back for NG+ I’ll try them. To answer your question my ideal situation for Atreus would be something similar to ICO, so if Atreus is overwhelmed by enemies they’ll grab him and try to take him away through some portal, causing a failstate. Maybe this sounds “annoying” but I think it could add that extra bit of tension the fights sometimes lack, and also strengthen that bond between the player and Atreus, which as Matosis said in the video, is mostly conveyed by the story rather than gameplay. Glad you enjoyed the game! I did as well, I’d consider it a little above average, but I find it very hard to disagree with anything Matt says here, his arguments are close to objective.
Looks like I should broaden my spectrum of games, I've never heard of ICO (guess I'm too mainstream for that), but it does look interesting. For me it was all very good, but maybe that is because I haven't seen it much better anywhere else.
It’s unfortunate but, I suppose, not terribly surprising that they didn’t address very many of these criticisms with Ragnarok. There are a couple of surface level improvements and common sense tweaks but a lot of fundamental flaws are baked into the game design and I guess they weren’t willing to uproot everything to fix them.
Perhaps it's not a matter of willingness, but simply one of resources: like Matthew states in this video, devs of games with this scope are under huge time/money pressure. It could be that changing the core gameplay was never even possible in the first place. Which, ironically enough, is the exact phenomenon that this video is criticizing...
@@kingnro1 Exactly! Essentially GOW Ragnarok is a 22-hour movie disguised as a video-game. Above all, they focused on the "experience" rather than attend to elements that would improve the game itself. The most important thing for them was the spectacle and not the mechanics of how the game actually works. Once again, we have puzzles that are brain-dead simple. Move Assist is still in the game despite its existence basically making the difficulty curves irrelevant considering how much of an advantage the mechanic gives to certain enemies in the game. Once again, almost every combat scenario is a test of your own ability not to become bored of decreasing your enemy's health bar. All of this just so a bunch of monkeys can go to their favorite Twitch streamer or TH-cam channel to watch the whole "cinematic experience." Based on some things I've heard from Kripparian, however, I've been lead to assume that a lot folks in the Twitch or TH-cam gaming sector of social media are pretty much only playing these games because its a medium to engage their viewers and subscribers. Therefore there's really no reason to mess with the game's mechanics in any significant way because--in the long run--people are readily willing to dive into a dumpster full of rotten food and diapers just as long as that dumpster has "God of War" written on it and there's a body pillow with Kratos somewhere inside.
@@Crowbar I understand the frustration, which is why I'm not buying the game. But I've watched the game streamed and it's clearly a very big game (of course in the bog-standard "magical check-list of fetch quests" design, but what would you expect). I can't fault the devs for not overhauling the gameplay, they worked in the pandemic context and surely worked hard just to fill the game with content to satisfy today's AAA standard of bloat. It's just the homogenized state of the industry, you can't expect much else with publishers breathing down their necks with focus tests and deadlines plus the expectations after the first game's success - they were always going to play it safe. It's very disappointing and emblematic of the creative bankcruptcy of triple-A, just like the subject of this video.
@@kingnro1 Ultimately, I believe it would help if people didn't refer to these as "games" but as something else entirely. They're movies disguised as games. I mean, the majority of what people talk about online is about what happens in the story. Very little discussion regards the mechanics and looks for modes of comparison between this and other titles with less or superior modes of gameplay. Alongside Matthew's commentary, one needs to acknowledge that the real winner here isn't superior gameplay but superior marketing. The game was always going to be good no matter what because it's "God of War" and it has Kratos in it. That's all there is to it.
That Frog Glen guy is still here! i posted a comment 4 months ago about him and he still keeps complaining in the comments like crazy, what's wrong with him, he made his hatred of this video his entire character and life meaning, he keeps coming back to keep shiting on this video, it's been months, just stop already!
he's been frequently coming back to this video for the past 4 years. Imagine a video pissing you off so much that you come back to it every few weeks to bitch about it. lmao
I honestly think this guy has nothing better to do. He is probably a 200kg heavy f-up, glued to his chair and his only meaningful way of some kind of social interaction is this comment section.
@@jgloukas That is *beyond* badass. I watched this video out of love for Matt's content, now I want to actually play the game, knowing it was made by developers who talk to the consumers.
It's becoming increasingly clear to me that the more money publishers and developers pour in to a game, the wider of a market that game has to cater to and therefore making the game less focused. Makes you think whether or not a fully funded and fully focused game on this scale could ever come out.
Well given that first party games are about making people feel good about their console purchase (basically) and also about have a good diversity overall, I would think that first party games (even the very expensive ones) could be more focused and not so typically AAA. But plenty of first party games have been stereo typical in varies ways from all three of the big boys.
countless incredibely expensive games and low budget indie games turned out to be masterpieces. its almost like it relies purely on dev talent and execution on vision or something like that. your argument is riddled with confirmation bias and correlation without causation.
I can't think of any game with similar combat. God of War 4's combat feels like it has crunch and impact. The way Kratos brutally rips apart a werewolf is awesome
This game is pretty much The Last of Us but with more melee focus and having GoW skin, which is not good imo TLoU emotional moments makes more sense, because u see how awful thing has become. Knowing Joel daughter dies at the start, in your own hand, only to later has to babysit another young girl in a harsh environment. This and adds that everyone in TLoU are literal humans that dies quite easily, it make the stakes even higher than ever. While both Kratos and Atreus have a literal God's blood runs in their veins. This means that the only way they could die is by some divine interventions from the narratives like Magni, Modi and Baldur's fights. Even then, the "fear they might gets caught and killed by the Gods" were thrown out of the window because we literally met them 4-5 times (1st during the first Baldur fights, during climbing and saw the trio interrogate Mimir on the tree, Magni and Modi fights, and the final fights)
@@ShatteredGlass916 . Also. Kratos is not a pure god. He is a *demi god* His mom was a mortal. So Kratos is only half god. Which is why he isn't immortal. And also why he needed another god to turn him into a god in god of war 1 and 2
Your foresight into how this game will be played on the PS5 was spot on. This new generation of consoles are known for their fast loading times and this game just ends up being halted to a crawl because the masks that hide the loading times are hard baked into the game itself. You can't skip walking sections, you can't run in walking sections. You always go to the world tree area to teleport. You can't teleport from realm to realm. And the sad part is is this game's sequel (GoW Ragnarok) does all of the same things becacuse it was made to work on PS4 as well. If there's any game that should be used as an example of how creating games to be backwards compatible with older consoles is a bad idea, it's Ragnarok.
it has nothing to do with it being backwards compatible. It has everything to do with shit game design and an intent to waste player time to try and make it a single cut (which it ruins with it's excessive amounts of menuing required)
Dragon's Dogma was a pretty odd experience. The story itself didn't really highlight the bond you have with your pawn (with the traditional dialogue or cutscenes, at least) but for some reason I really DID care for my pawn throughout the whole adventure because of how I "raised" and "trained" them as we grinded up the levels. Not to mention the sense of being like a proud parent when people commend your pawn's performance with the whole pawn sharing system thing.
Like the Lost Soul Arts Of Demon's Souls video, this one just hits so many unacknowledged key points and makes such a rigorous, focused argument that it deserves to be a touchstone for creatives in the games industry, many of whom just don't seem to have a mind for the finer points of gameplay design anymore. I've been following your channel since you were posting the Zelda videos and it's incredibly gratifying to see you have honed your critical faculties and matured your thinking over time, rather than descending into churning out lazy hot-air like so many on TH-cam do. So thanks for all your effort Matthew, I hope you'll keep it up.
It isn't the creatives here adding RPG elements, or limiting the combat scope, or adding hand holding elements to gameplay. Publishers demand these bullet points and lower the depth of systems to maximize sales to recoup out of control budgets.
Some random guy on the internet I disagree. While I do like this video more, I feel like Matt hit the nail on the head on the issue with the new Souls games. The new games seem more and more like a safe product capitalizing on what made the series popular, at the cost of the risks and strange design choices the older titles used to make. Tbf, I would have never agreed with his video until I actually went and played Demon’s Souls to see what he meant
@@bloomingteratoma no? He fairly criticized how mechanically uncreative the games have gotten, it rang true for blood born and it rings true especially with elden ring It’s honestly scary how well the video aged
Welp, quite on point honestly. Like Yahtzee said - another game to be offered as sacrifice on the altar of "hairy old dad games". While the visuals are absolutely stunning and the story drops clues for the attentive in advance, these changes generally do nothing but mask the underlying problems games have. You've been quite on point the whole time. Especially striking to me is that whenever there are problems cropping up, the only benefit is that it looks great. The combat is a cluttered mess that has systems which could potentially work out, but ultimately limit the player more? Animationwork looks phenomenal with many different reactions. Climbing is excessively railroady and relies on no skill? At least it looks cool (in Uncharted that is) The game basically forces me to play a section with an annoying chore, like carrying a boar or rowing around the lake only to be what is essentially a glorified cutscene? This way the scenery has more impact. Always the same issue and - the same thing to say as to what is the only benefit to it. While everything is being tarted up a notch or twelve, this in turn is done with no real lookout for the core mechanics at hand which could've and should've been refined more. If everything looks great but mechanics in turn shows severe issues in the gameplay department, which after a couple decades we should have managed to refine, the great animationwork and pretty skyboxes are little more than fancy set dressing and (to me) feel more detrimental, rather than adding to the overall experience. Also, guess what? The problems you talk about in regards to the industries strikes way too close to home. Not only is the market homogenizing to the point where many different games of a singular genre blend together to form a beige paste, but in the practices surrounding those. More often than not games lose focus because they are spread out in all directions. Why would anybody spread out into all directions? To cast the biggest net possible in order to catch the biggest amount of fish. We are now at a point where there is a niche for tightly focused games which is miles wide. Imagine that - the market has been and is so oversaturated on what everybody sees as the "standard" formula which works to the point that there is nothing specialized to fill out the holes left behind by the lack of focus.
But there, why should they? Essentially, these aren't games, they're movies disguised as games. That's largely what is talked about at the end of this video. The entire "game" amounts to one huge cinematic experience that you have to slog through. And people WILL slog through it because they're hopelessly attached to the franchise. With "God of War" in the title and Kratos pictured foremost, people already talked themselves into liking it, despite how bad the mechanics are.
@@rustycheeseknife Chill. The mechanics aren't that bad. They have issues which are dissapointing, the game is still enjoyable on a casual level. Besides, I'm pretty sure the developers have the ambition to deliver the best game possible, they just can't because they lack the talent or time or whatever. Or someone forces things into the game like unnecessary RPG mechanics.
Matthewmatosis remains one of the best video game critique channels on TH-cam. He adds so much to the conversation of video game mechanics, just as Every Frame a Painting added so much to talking about film form. Seriously, if we're talking about making polished, balanced, and meaningful videos, he's in a different league than most other critique channels that often nitpick tiny issues, rather than focusing on how those issues affect the whole game.
That ending was utterly haunting, Matthew. Never did a span of 5 or so minutes do to me what you did in that time span. Actively calling out the sort of critique machine you "created"/are a part of here on TH-cam while also recognizing the work of the developers who, may have failed in making a distinct and fresh experience, but also have put a large amount of effort into crafting the work many have found themselves playing or discussing regardless of their enjoyment of the final product. It really made me consider the type of content I consume on a daily basis and got me to open my eyes about the other end of the spectrum no one really talks about beyond either unflinching criticism or praise of a work. Keep doing what you do, Mr. Matosis, the world needs your insight.
Matthew really puts way more effort and thought into this stuff than 95% of TH-camrs do. I can't stand listening to people like Dunkey or Jim Sterling because they never give such good examples, comparisons or dissections about games, it's always a bunch of vague hot air and "I feel" or "it feels like" statements.
Honestly coming from a person who enjoyed this game, I love this review. He does it best to show he is constructive criticising not like other TH-camrs who either over praise or just trash it for views. And the fact that the video was healthy enough to garner awareness from the developers makes me excited to see how they'll improve the sequel
All the things said about the camera, the move assist annoyances, and enemy issues I can't disagree with one bit. I was blinded by my absolute love of the visuals and story to notice while playing at least the first time. The Valkyries, and the Trolls were cool the first few times but after seeing the same character model over and over again with a different color was the only difference had me disinterested in seeing the same enemies again. Thanks for helping me see through my rose colored glasses because I may have loved the game but finding and recognizing the flaws helps us and programmers know what to tweak in future games to make things we love be even better.
"Emotional Maturity" is what I think it's called. A person can like whatever they want, but naturally when flaws are pointed out in a thing they like, they start feeling bad about it, either blindly defending it or starting to hate it. Emotional Maturity is when you can like something while also knowing and acknowledging its flaws. Devil May Cry 5 is one of my favorite games of all time, but I can point out flaws in it, which I didn't even notice even when playing the game multiple times, until someone talked about some of them and I acknowledge them, but that didn't make me like the game less, because I like it for certain aspects nor do I defend these flaws blindly. This is one of the aspects that a lot of people don't realize. It's actually weird how this aspect with videogames translates so well to real life as well. You can really tell in real life when someone is mature or not. Our maturity and understandings of real-life things actually also translates to smaller things in life as well like videogames. Just something to think about. Re-reading your comment I don't think my reply directly correlates to your comments, but I wrote it anyway, so take it as something to think about I guess.
playing through the game a second time i definitely notice these problems a lot more. half the time im rolling around dodging an attack behind me only to get hit by a folllow up attack from the same enemy gliding towards me while still off screen. The purple projectile indicator only flashes while the enemy is charging the attack, not when it is fired and its much harder to dodge as a consequence
I really want this content creator to review God of War Ragnorak. It addresses a lot of his issues while also doubling down on others, would love to hear his input.
I LOVE this game. I have played it through 4 times, and am starting a 5th. And yet, I've come back to this video time and again. I think hearing valid criticism of the things we love is good. I really appreciate the clarity and focus of this criticism, and maybe one day, I'll understand. But for now, I'm happy that both this video, and my love for the game, can both exist simultaneously.
To many a comment: You can't call caring about details "nitpicking" just because you think they aren't valid. Most of Mat's criticisms are based around treating Norse God as a game FIRST above all else. From that perspective/context, the points made throughout these 41 minutes are perfectly reasonable. These details do matter and aren't things to be swept under the rug just because you found the game's tale moving and visual/audio flair encapsulating. The core pillar of games is still the gameplay (i.e. the interactive elements). Graphics/music/story/etc. are ultimately auxiliary to that core pillar and should serve to enhance that core, not replace or stand by it with equal importance. If those things ultimately serve as a detriment to the interactive elements, then it is a worse GAME for it.
Problem with this review isn't nitpicking but rather the general lack of understanding of the combat mechanics on the reviewer's part. Go to any high level gameplay video of God of War from GBG and SmvR and you will see the extreme level of precision and control over their characters and complete dominance over the enemies and their surroundings. You will think as if the the issues raised in this video are completely gone, but the reality is just that this reviewer has no care for tactics or strategy. For example, while complaining about the slowdown of runic attacks at 12:01, in the footage he is trying use the rune that is intended to precisely take out distant targets where the slowdown is actually very useful for targeting while failing to realize that there runes that active instantly like the one at 16:12 which can effectively interrupt many enemies as a large area effect. You are supposed to figure out strategic advantages of each rune and only use at the right time unlike waiting forever for the cooldown to spam the powerful attacks like this reviewer suggests which is actually quite ineffective. There are a few good criticisms here but most of time he is immediately jumping on things he acknowledges as flaws only at first glance. Like how he complains about the Revenant's attack for its amorphous nature and he isn't sure whether to dodge or block, when the whole deal with Revenant is that its attacks are designed to trick you and make your habitual tactics ineffective so you need to overcome the challenge through experimentation. Realization that you can block the attack and can stop the Revenant from disappearing with Atreus's arrows is one part of that process (the arrow thing is super obvious as its hinted by the game but the reviewer still seem to struggle with it). On that point the best strategy to tackle the Revenant is to launch it into air and air juggle through combos as it can't disappear and escape while airborne. After you find a solution with each enemy like is part of becoming effective at combat. The fact that the reviewer thinks the blades and the axe is analogues and is unaware of the advantages of each weapon is makes it clear that he didn't put enough effort to understand the intricacies of the combat system. In stark contrast to claims in this video, I do find the Give Me God of War the best way to play after a certain skill level and it doesn't even take long to dispatch enemies of increased health pools with the right skills, gear and tactics. After beating the game at that difficulty in ng+, I can safely say that returning any other lower difficulty feels unsatisfactory and not fun. Of course I have only talked about the gameplay aspect but I also think most of the criticisms with the story also misses the mark but this comment is already becoming a novel so I won't get into that.
@@weaverquest You can find high level play of literally any game. Watching a pro player says a lot about their own skill, but little about the game itself. The overuse of slowdown effect is annoying no matter the context and disguising an enemy attack by making it amorphous as some kind of "surprise" for the player to have a "realization" is the most idiotic thing I've heard, it adds nothing to the game. Matthew never suggests to abuse powerful attacks, he states that the cooldown system incentivizes the player to do that instead of learning how to play, which it does.
@@SealedReality You definitely can't find high-level gameplay for every game. Ever heard of this concept called skill cap? God of War has a very high one as showcased by many people on youtube. I have beaten the game on hardest ng+ including all the Valkyries and still clueless about some of the moves they pull off. Anyway moving on. "The overuse of slowdown effect is annoying no matter the context" As I have already stated there are runic attacks that activate instantly, NO SLOWDOWN at all to reiterate, like this one 16:11 called Hel's Touch. The context is everything when, or if, you realize different runes are designed to be used strategically in certain situations. The slowdown effect on others is actually pretty useful because it gives you enough reaction time to pick out distant enemies for long-range attacks or for larger areas effects, it gives you time to assess the situation on the battlefield which is again very useful. He also pointlessly criticized the slowdown effect when reflecting projectiles at 12:18 even though that gives you an opportunity to strategically return the projectile to the target you want, you can even return it to the target behind you (by pressing down on d-pad) that's about the hit you. Disguising the Revenant's attacks serves the purpose of giving the players a different kind of challenge and catch them off-guard (which clearly worked too well on the reviewer). They could have easily made it an obvious giant ball of lighting but that would be missing the point. That amorphous attack is an invisible force field where you only see its trace on the ground which is why blocking with the shield works. You might not like the design but presenting a clearly visible projectile as a solution to this "flaw" like the reviewer does is again severely missing the point. Besides that claiming the cooldown system incentivizes the player to do them instead of learning how to play because apparently, it is simple to stall for time in this game 18:12, is by far the stupidest part of the video. The point of cooldown systems is that you can't rely on them all the time. Stalling for time is impossible in this game in most situations because enemies are very aggressive and relentlessly attack from every angle. He shows stalling one regular enemy in the video as an example which is a pathetic way to make that point since you are dealing with 3-4 stronger enemies all the time. You don't even need a rune to deal with that one guy in the first place. Not to mention the runes intended to deal significant damage have the longest charging time anyway. Anyone who can think by themselves should be able to realize how weak the argument made at that part and how forced this particular criticism is. He also spends a lot of time criticizing the move assists which was simply there as training wheels for beginners but why does he never mention that you can turn them completely off in the settings and have full manual control? That's an important detail to mention if you are supposed to be going in-depth with the combat analysis no? That's not the say you need to be really skilled at the game to enjoy it. Everyone I watched playing the game found the combat fun and satisfying immediately. Also given the almost unanimously positive critical reception of the game and IGN calling it the best action game of the decade and whatnot suggest the vast majority enjoyed the gameplay. The problem with this video is that he is playing the game at a super casual level while trying to make an in-depth analysis. Most would agree with me that for games like this you need to be at a certain skill level to properly understand the mechanics of the game and then make an in-depth analysis.
@@weaverquest I did watch a few high level videos. All they were doing was exploiting max level gear to make Kratos OP and using the same moves over and over. I beat Ninja Gaiden 3 on Master Ninja, so even watching that was really boring. Good thing I finished Give Me God of War once, now I don't have to play it ever again. "The slowdown effect on others is actually pretty useful because it gives you enough reaction time" That would make sense if you couldn't get hit during slowdowns, but you can. If anything, it's giving the enemies more time to interrupt you. And you can react normally without slowdown , so there's no point to it. You could at least be honest and admit that the game simply put an annoying cinematic effect to make stuff look cool... there's no gameplay purpose there. "Giving the player a different challenge" is a lame excuse for poorly telegraphed attacks. Try again. "The point of cooldown systems is that you can't rely on them all the time." The point of cooldown systems is that your most powerful move will be usable again if you just wait. It simply results in lazy play. Not debatable. "Stalling for time is impossible in this game" Really? I found it very easy to do, you just have to be good with your dodges and the camera. Astral Chain had cooldowns too, but at least it had the decency of making enemies resistant to your skills over time, so you effectively can't abuse them, even if you try. "you can turn them completely off in the settings" Irrelevant. This feature shouldn't even exist tbw. I've seen my fair share of Action games that had a soft lock-on to help the player, but GOW18 was the first one to add this forward momentum to it. The game literally has no trust in the player to even hit the enemies. "Also given the almost unanimously positive critical reception" Ad populum. And I'm not interested in what IGN has to say. Since you seem interested in high level play, let me tell you. I'm an Action game fan and the Action game community agrees that GOW18 is mediocre. i've seen people put it on par with DmC: Devil May Cry and Resident Evil 6. Even Santa Monica Studios themselves praised this video on their Twitter when it came out, so your white knighting is pointless. Come on, friend...
Hey guys there's an insufferable fanboy within the comment section who is constantly denying and shitting this critiques points more than actually playing the game, you will know 😮💨
Cringe fanboy that just want's attention and for every single person on the planet to validate his feelings for a video game. He's just embarrassing himself more and more with every post he makes.
@@tommero6584NeverKnowsBest gives more in some ways. Matthew would never make a review for a game like Skyrim or Cyberpunk. So NKB is filling the gap.
The new Spider-Man game on PS4 also has a lot of Move Assist for its enemies. I've lost count of how many times I got sucker punched by a thug that came in sliding from off screen.
@@frogglen6350 That's the point. If the enemy is far away you'd think "ok, now he can't reach me", but then he comes gliding towards you so you have to dodge every single atack "just in case".
Frog Glen yeah that’s the thing, the clear part of the problem. In order to dodge, you have to press the “dodge button.” You can’t just rely on precise character movement. You can’t “dodge” like someone in real life would “dodge.” I replayed Bloodborne not too long ago and I have to say one of the most satisfying feelings is learning the limits of a strong enemy’s hit boxes and attack patterns and using character movement alone to weave around them, no dodge roll required. Allows you to be so much more creative and efficient with combat, because the hit boxes aren’t being magnetized towards you.
@@IanZWhite00 in DS and BB people call that spacing, you want to be distant enough not to get hit but cose enough to punish. And theres another thing called strathing. If an enemy does a vertical slash you can just walk to the side in DS, or "duck" below a jumping atack. In GoW and Spider-man enemies turn 180 degrees to hit you and come gliding from afar. The only strategy is "dodge" or "block" every time and that's so lame.
Game designers have faltered hard and are now held down by pretentious writers. The strive to be "cinematic" and "taken seriously" has warped where the effort needs to go. It's strange to think about, but storytelling and design has barely evolved, its gotten blander. The art however, has just blossomed and become astonishing.
You outdid yourself with this one. Along with the microgames ones, I've been rewatching this video a lot over the past year. Your arguments are sound, but above all else, the way the script flows and the visual match that flow makes it very watchable. 40 minutes is far from short, but it all felt tight and concise. I never felt like a minute was wasted. For what it's worth I really like it.
Ok, since there are many people commenting on Ragnarok I would like to comment on a few things. The first thing is that there are many obtuse people who take pains not to understand the current problem of the franchise and release empty takes. First of all, I'm not a fan of this game. I think the combat system leaves a lot to be desired but I also think the story is lacking (no matter how good the script is). This game is an image wash for Kratos and for everything that this saga represented as a Sony banner. A horribly violent and bloodthirsty franchise with clear blockbuster intentions that became nastier and more misanthropic the further it went. GOW 2018 was limited to cleaning up Kratos while forgetting that he represented an important era in gaming history, one in which violence made its way to the masses. It was not a deep or intelligent game that invited you to reflect on Kratos' past, it was a story of escape and oblivion. But if there's one thing the new game wanted to do (and did) it was get closer to Kratos. As much as I hate the camera (and believe me, I hate it), his goal was to bring the violence closer to the player, a much more complex violence but also more complicated to perform. The sequence shot was a dazzling and unnecessary visual paraphernalia, but it served very well since in my opinion it gave a dreamlike and personal feeling to the trip of Kratos and Atreus (although I would remove it anyway). There are a couple more questionable design decisions that prioritize the game's feeling over combat. And that was wrong, yes, but they had a reason. They were decisions that the team took. Decisions that a GREAT majority applauded. I do not want to say that the masses are right (because they are not) but if such award-winning aspects of the game as the sequence shot, the camera and the cinematic sequences are so well received and celebrated by the public, why should they change them? People have a misconception about the design of the current triple A, they believe that every decision is deliberate by members of the design team and that is not always the case. They can be the product of the lack of economic, temporary, labor resources, and many other things, such as obtuse directors who insist on complying with what market studies tell them. The bigger the game, the more conditioned it will be. Do you really think that in Santa Monica studios there are no people with opinions contrary to what the game ended up being? That everyone got together and unanimously decided to fill the game with the worst decisions possible? In this video Matthew makes an important reflection with doing the best you can with the situation that you are given, why don't more people think the same? And I want to get this out of the way, if a game is not difficult does not make it worse, of course, the feeling of gratification of overcoming challenges is satisfactory and there is nothing more pleasant than observing that the game is designed in such a way but the self-imposed challenges are served so that people can do them. As flawed as the combat system is, higher dificulties than the standard one are going to present challenges even if they do it wrong. We can complain how the platforming and exploration system of the game is a fucking joke with no option to fail but that is what it is. It's okay to complain when they do it the first time but for Ragnarok they clearly didn't change it because the game design isn't like that. And in my personal opinion, since it is not one of the central points of the new games, this does not represent a big problem. Having NPCs telling you what to do during combat is NOT anything new un videogames, don't kid yourself. Making cinematic games or being a walking simulator isn't inherently inferior and playing them doesn't make you casual either. To think that is to be elitist and obtuse. And I clarify again, I'm not a fan of these games (I'm not even a fan of the Greek saga anymore), I always play niche ps2 games, blockbusters don't interest me in the least but you don't have to be closed-minded either that there is only one good type of action adventure games and everything else is inferior. This game and Ragnarok MUST be criticized but not for trying to be cinematic, but for the fact that in reality its cinematic appearance belies questionable design decisions that have their origins in an industry that has found a safe way to make money, gain prestige and make players believe that what they play is transgressive, when in fact it is not.
Best review on gow Less whining about how it does no justice to the franchise And more points and revelations about how it could have been better When u say it has potential gives me hopes that the developers will make the next game better And i love ur channel mate
@@edgyboi1995 After seeing the gameplay trailer of GOW Ragnarok in the Playstation Showcase... it seems you are right, they will just expand on it, and that's it.
I keep returning to this video and NakeyJakey's The Last of Us 2 video. I think it might because they feel more like an industry critique rather than just a video game analysis.
Same but I also think I keep returning to this one because I often find TH-cam criticism disappointing. This video has so much nuance and foresight then any other AAA game review I’ve seen.
I just beat Ragnarok on GMGOW and I found myself thinking about this video a lot. Most of the criticisms hold true for the sequel. There are a couple things they did improve though. For one, you can now disable abilities in the skill tree. Not a huge deal, was probably easy to implement, but hey it’s there. Also I feel like the damage sponginess of enemies has been reduced. I have not rigorously tested this but I distinctly remember the opening section of norse god before you have access to any side content being fucking miserable to get through on GMGOW. I did not get that feeling this time. On the other hand, I think the “puzzles” have gotten much worse. That clip you played of waiting for the waterwheel to turn to jump a gap just to get some hacksilver replayed in my mind a hundred times while I worked through Ragnarok. So many “puzzles” were just exercises in tedium. Many times I found myself thinking “do I have to?” I would see how a puzzle is laid out, know what I had to do to solve it, and not want to go through the motions. It was so much of “climb up this ledge, hit a switch, climb down, do another thing, climb back up and hit the switch again” etc. they were all exercises in patience rather than problem solving. Given that, the forced unskippable cutscenes, pseudo cutscenes, and parts where you had to play as atreus, I cannot see myself playing through the game again. Also, the ending felt rushed and it threw out a lot of what was built up during the rest of the story.
The part about the ending being rushed I feel like they had some big ideas they had to cut and we are left with what remained like the cut content about surtr and sinmara. Other than that the entire Ragnarok portion feels like they placed a lot of payoffs in this tiny portion of the game. Not the war part but the boss battles and the way one of the bosses seemed to have been sacrificed to make the player very emotionally invested in defeating the other one. Not that it wasn't a good payoff or that it at least lines up with what has been set up in the game and the previous entry, but more that it feels weighted to make you feel it was epic whilst being a very small portion. It's as if 40% of the importance of the game took place in 3% of it's run time. It felt quick.
Ayo stop giving that frog guy attention it actually hinders this comment section to be civil, just ignore him and dont reply, i still want to hear opinions but nothing of sense is being created since everybody tryna argue with him
As much as I enjoyed God of War 2018, I can't deny it feels like so many other video games I've played in the last 4 years. It falls into that category I call 'good generic'; not bad, but terribly familiar. I'm getting increasingly tired of the nearly identical game mechanics and gimmicks showing up everywhere these days. Crafting. Skill trees. Simple puzzles. Upgrades littered everywhere. Uneventful climbing sequences. Following a slow moving AI to the next plot critical area. The game taking control away because it doesn't trust me to do the thing (unless the thing is killing enemies). These mechanics/gimmicks are not inherently awful, but the gaming industry is relying on them too much, almost to the point where sometimes it comes off like a sloppy copy and paste job. In short: I agree wholeheartedly with your observations. Also, I'm really glad to see a new video from you!
AAA games these days often go through a similar cycle for me: 1. Almost uncritical praise at launch while critical voices are unwelcome, 2. a sobering revelation while playing it myself that - while good - it's not "the best game ever made" and that it indeed does have some flaws, 3. more and more critical views appear after some time has passed and the initial hype has died down a bit.
a bit? after 1-2weeks like horizon dawn even farcray5 nobody said a word about those games anymore! = marketing scam! marketing these days means buying youtube = buying the populist reviewers and a lot of likes. I never believe those numbers!
After consumerist hype dies down, and the hastily made day one reviews launch, more critical, academic minds that truly want the past for the medium have a go. That's how it's always worked. Good constructive criticism takes time. Time is not something more mainstream outlets have. Time is money after all.
3 actually is the fourth phase, that's after attention has died down. The real third phase is while the game is still being talked about, but the hype has down, and is more in the form of a backlash than thoughtful reflection. It's where you draw in the audience who don't like the game, and are desperate for anything that's not overblown praise, that they will lower their standards to see some angry person tear the game to pieces in rage.
Every game gets a ridiculous high score, Knack 2 got a 7 out of 10, dead cells got a 9.7 out of 10, so is Knack 2 a great game and dead cells one of the greatest games ever made?...... not at all, businesses give favourable reviews for exclusives to boost profits God of war was a great game, not the greatest ever made, but this game seems to be unfairly devisive, why do people love to hate on this game so much when games like Call of Duty get 9/10s religiously and no one bats an eye?
This is about as fair and honest as you can be while being harsh on a passion project. Once more I commend you, Matthew. I finally got to play this game and was left with an experience akin to eating a lot of cotton candy at once. Sweet, but hollow and brief. I could clearly see the game struggling between what it wanted to be, contrasted with what it was pressed down into being. I do hope this formulaic approach gets the door once people had enough, so we can usher in a new era of focused experiences and game design devoid of safe, market research fueled industry meddling
Honestly why I love souls games and Nintendo games so much. They’re not trying to be movies, they’re trying to be games. A lot of indie games are good examples as well.
I played pretty much every Souls game pretty much my favourite franchise but I actually like the combat in God of War more. It is just as skill based and deliberate as the Souls games but much more aggressive and with potential of some crazy improvised combos. The criticisms in this video of the combat misses the mark completely in my opinion. You can watch high level gameplay videos of God of War from GBG and SmvR and see the complaints made in this video are mostly from inexperience.
@@weaverquest There's high level gameplay of any game. It's not a good argument. Why do crazy combos when you can just do the same thing, easier and faster. Also the enemy variety and the tools aka two weapons just makes the game more boring and frustrating.
@@Drake00000010 Notice how the reviewer is struggling and complaining at the large health pools of the enemies in Give Me God of War mode. That's why you do the crazy combos or play strategically. That mode is the true way to enjoy the game and developers give some genuinely awesome gear for beating the game at that difficulty. After reaching a certain skill level the lower difficulties feel quite unsatisfying. The Leviathan Axe and Blades of Chaos combo is simply amazing. Axe is for insane damage to a single enemy and precise long distant attacks while blades are for crowd control and very effective at that. Even the fist/shield combat is immensely useful if you have to play defensively against certain enemies. The two weapons, shield and the fists feel really satisfying to use with proper weight behind each attack and the right feeling of impact. Most action games fail at that aspect.
@Mr.Tweezy007 Huh? Everybody back then cried about how the chains were too overpowered and made the other weapons useless in the older games. Take off your nostalgia bias
You are one of the few critics that truely understands how this medium works. I unironically watch your vids to get better at realising the potential of video games to their fullest
If you're looking for more content by MrBtongue he has been doing a lot of writing for a blogging site called twenty sided headed by one shamus young. His most recent work is an ongoing multipart analysis of The Witcher 3.
Hbomberguy's videos on games are the same kinda quality as Mathew's. With the focus on stuff other channels don't seem to focus on like the storytelling of the game mechanics as opposed to the narrative and cut scenes. Like his video on the game LISA is one of the best videos on gaming I've ever seen, it's great, I learnt a lot about what makes games a unique storytelling medium compared to films, books and so on. How games can tell stories in ways no other medium can, and why that should be focused on instead of trying to make interactive movies which don't at all exploit the possibilities of what games can and should be. Their channels compliment each other as I believe his movie-length video on Dark Souls 2 was a direct response to Mathew's video. It's worth watching both to see where your opinion lies.
@@duffman18 Hbomberguy's DS2 video is one of the worst "analysis" videos on this site. Full of golden statements such as, "DS2 was the blueprint for Bloodborne" and "DS2 disincentivizes shield usage" even though it has like 50 shields, and a ring that buffs shields. That video is an hour-and-half of a bitter nerd raging over the fact someone didn't like a video game the way he does. I've seen multiple people who like DS2 say that video sucks. It makes DS2 fans look like whiney morons.
Holy shit that move assist. I never noticed it in other people's playthroughs but now I can't unsee it. The fact that enemies also benefit from it is crazy and feels possibly unintentional or at least misguided on the part of the developer. also clarity and consistency, the two most important metrics enabling efficient and effective radio communication.
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so." Just a neat quote from some rat movie that I feel emphasizes much of what you said at the end. While I like both God of War 4 and negative criticism, your account of the difficulties of creating a game made me link the two in a way I was close to for much of the review. It showed you scare, because you care. Thanks.
good criticism is vital to improving ones skills so I dont see how it would ever be less meaningfull then a piece of junk bad criticism on the other hand well that could be
Pedda Z Yes but clearly in the context of just someone referring to the stereotypical hyper negative critic who isn’t looking to be constructive at all... which is a fair amount of people to say the least Constructive criticism doesn’t really happen often and I wish it did.
@@speeddemonji9547 expressing dislike is constructice enough most of the time Take the "the elders scrolls" series Do you have to explain in detail why dumbing the game down is bad? Or is it enough to let the developer know that you dont approve Or do you have to explain in detail why you dont want pay to win or microtransacrions or a buggy launch So yeah I think most of the time expression alone is good enough
@@peddazz2365 No, expressing dislike is not constructive. You might as well tell a kid that you didn't like the way they put the toys in the toy bin without explaining why. Literally the only thing you're doing is making people dislike you. Now if you provided actual constructive criticism, keep in mind that constructive doesn't have to be negative at all, then that is perfectly fine and might actually help the creators.
11:28 it took me really long to get used to the fact that, in this game, I'll get hit by attacks that just shouldn't hit because the enemy was a mile away and I didn't expect it to glide to my face in an instant. I'm glad that someone pointed this out.
I don't know if this is something unique to this new "case study" format, but I really enjoyed how often you brought up other games in comparison to GoW. Show's off how knowledgeable you are with games and illustrates your arguments a lot more clearly. Loved the vid as always Matthew, hope to see more long form videos like this in the future.
I love it too. It really contextualizes everything he's saying. I hope he continues doing it. The gaming industry, its journalists, and consumers all have problems learning from the past, so doing callbacks is really nice.
That's one of the biggest issues I have with most modern games criticism. I love how he contextualizes his criticisms with comparisons to other games in order to highlight its shortcomings. A lot of sites like ign will flip flop between reviewing a game on its own merits or within the context of the games industry as a whole (they mostly lean towards the former). Doing only the former isn't as helpful as it's a sequel and an action game so it will inevitably be compared to not only prior games in that franchise but also prior games in that same genre. While there is merit to reviewing a game by itself it also ignores the fact that games do not exist in a vacuum. They are built on the shoulders and backs of other titles, taking what came before in order to make something new. Comparison serve as a way to examine what certain games do wrong and how some other games are better.
It sort of blew my mind how he basically just grabbed every possible comparative example I could think of. God Hand, RE, Dragon's Dogma, Bayonetta, DMC, MGR, Dark Souls - it's all there. These are the games that comparisons would be drawn from, and they are both new and old. MM says that it might be unfair to compare God of War to every possible apex of its genre, but frankly I disagree. It blew my mind that The Witcher 3 would put so much effort and budget into such an amazing world with great character animations and content, but then gave a comparatively pathetic amount of attention to the combat system which comprises so much of the game itself. What exactly at CDPR prevented them spending time on the combat so it could provide a satisfying basic experience? There are so many existing examples in Dragon's Dogma, Dark Souls and DMC to draw from and it's like they pretend these games don't exist - you just get spamming attacks and auto-lock on. WHY? Why can't western devs just copy good combat from these japanese games, get that down to a good degree, and THEN focus on the aesthetic stuff. If the core gameplay is good, then it can carry everything else. God of War is the same. You have a library of incredible games to draw from, but you just...don't. Frankly I don't care about developer effort, or whatever - there is no excuse. There is no excuse to have these iconic games with perfect combat systems ready to inspire you, and just ignore everything they do. Eventually a western dev will get this, and they will make all other western devs look like lazy morons.
Thank you so much for the comments regarding good combat not needing number upgrades. It's something that's always really annoying me about games that dress their entire combat around passive numeric upgrades, without fully embracing an RPG/customization aspect that could allow this to mean something. The moment you introduce this sort of system, you almost entirely need some level of customization in there to keep a sense of player expression active, or else it ends up meaning very little, outside of a loose way to increase/decrease the difficulty manually for the player. Few games balance their number scaling well enough for the latter to ever happen successfully, and a designer needs to be able to trust their audience regarding customization to truly take place. So it's a shame that it often gets used the way it generally does. A way to make people feel more "skilled" because they increased a number that makes the game easier. It's a false sense of progression.
Aboveup Very good points, I have the same problem with health upgrades which are more common in this genre I’d say. Lots of action games end up being hardest at the start because you don’t know what you’re doing yet and you have a minuscule health bar. And then the end game is much easier than it should be because you can now take so many hits cough dark souls cough. Game designers should try to balance their games around a static amount of health, and make the bosses and enemies slightly more punishing as the game goes on, to accommodate your increasing skill. Just my two cents :)
@@uraveragedude9957 Although RPG not need to be always bad in action games, Dark Souls and Monster Hunter even with their shortcomings i think those games do it very well, it doesn't feel tackled on.
Just to clarify on Kratos's son's sudden change in personality, apparently the devs had to cut some of the story, this part in particular, in order to meet the early 2018 release date. They clarified that the original idea was to have his ego grow over time instead of instantly, which would have been far better.
i think its another point in the long list of excuses they had like a mile long list of things they removed one of them was jump attacks, more bosses, and re spawning enemies so the world isnt just empty 90% of the time once you cleared an area. Pretty much they spent the entire 8 years trying to make a sad dad story with a child character with a one shot camera and everything else was either unimportant or very secondary to them.
@@chellejohnson9789 I honestly, and as much as I lament losing some of the best parts when Atreus is blinded by his ego, just wished they had cut those sections instead. Make Atreus a bit of a dick, sure, he can quickly recover and it wouldn't matter as much. But imo, his behavior reached points of ridiculousness, like him killing that God without any remorse whatsoever, being a dick to that dwarf and fucking shooting an arrow at his own father. What the fuck. You can't expect me to believe it all got resolved because Kratos told him to shut the fuck up for 5 minutes the moment they fell into Hellheim again. They only thing needed from those sequences is the death of the God but that easily solved by... I don't know showing him dead and a conversation would imply he was killed by Thor (his own father or whatever). It would add tension to their relationship. I mean, this writes itself, I know making a cutscene is hard, but come on!
No, the devs were lazy and stupid. They never notice any shortcomings of their work at all, and simply put it out as is, because they think we are dumb consumers. This guy is the debbie downer of game reviewers. I watch, and appreciate what he puts out and the effort, but he analyzes game narratives like they are literature. It can be difficult, because unlike literature or film, games can be poorly written and still be enjoyable. It seems game narratives want to be taken seriously, so I suppose its alright to rip them apart. Yet, I feel like if I ever watched any of these prior to playing, I wouldn’t bother.....but am glad I did.
@@chellejohnson9789 You can have a super long game that feels like it was cut and disjointed. If you were planning to make a 100 hour long game and cut it to be 20-30 hours, then yeah, it’ll feel pretty jarring. I was listening to a few interviews with Cory Balrog and apparently GoW 2018 was supposed to be a much grander story than the one we ended up getting. They had to cut a ton of plot points and I feel it shows in the final product. The climax especially felt like it was sort of slapped together writing wise and didn’t leave any strong impression after the game was over.
Thank you! It was really something! By now, having watched most of your videos, I can safely say that you're the best critic I've come across. You offer deep insights (not only on games but on art as a whole) and you are infinitely entertaining and at time quite funny in your own way. Again, thank you!
35:20 That made me think... The Norse Games pretend to be oh so mature, but their bloated amount of repetitive overly simple puzzles beneath the level of Zelda-Games which are aimed at 6-12 year olds, tells a different story of whom this game is aimed at.
@@frogglen6350 The older games had slightly more difficult puzzles anyway. And they didn't have a small child pointing hints out to you before you even realize you're in a puzzle room.
@@thebuddah1253 I had no difficulties at all with the older games. And I think God of War 3's only real puzzle was Hera's garden. Which isn't even hard
Tacked on RPG mechanics have been on a mind a lot lately. I think a stat based leveling system has no place in a skill based spectacle fighter. If you want to have something like that you need to go all the way and make a full RPG, but in a game like God of War anything other than new combat skills is just adding pointless number crunching on top of a fun combat system. All that min-maxing bullshit is just unnecessary padding that takes away from the core gameplay. That stuff is better left for turn based combat games and the like where preparation and strategy are more important than good reflexes and thinking under pressure.
I think it could work, if it were balanced. Like, for example, you upgrade Kratos’ attack, but your defense goes down. Now you can kill enemies faster, but _you’re_ also easier to kill. Do you take the damage boost, or play it safer and keep the HP? That might make things more interesting.
Adorni But that sucks tho because then why not just include an entire game mode where the point is that both you and the enemies take more damage like Heaven or Hell from Devil May Cry?
Because it plays to the idea of setting up a build. I don't know if you ever played any of the early Fallout games, but the "Perks" from that series had this interesting little setup where it would give you an advantage, but also give you a drawback to balance things out. That's different than a difficulty setting: In Heaven or Hell Mode, both you and every enemy in the game can die in one hit. That means it's painfully easy to kill enemies, but it's also painfully easy for YOU to die. But that applies across the entire game, start to finish. The idea behind a build is to try to maximize your strengths, and minimize your drawbacks, and to do this over a period of growth as the game progresses. A lot of people have a lot of fun figuring out what the best builds are, and a lot of other people enjoy the work that first group put into making that build, or tweaking it in small ways to make it more unique to them. God of War's "build" mechanics, however, are painfully boring and simplistic, and offer nothing of actual value to a game of this type. So if that's the case, why even have the build option at all? Still, I opted my opinion as a way of figuring out how to make something like this work for this type of game. God Hand does something somewhat similar with it's "Moveset Build." You figure out which moves to put together in your "deck" to maximize your offensive potential, while minimizing your openings or downtimes. That's a much more engaging mechanic for this type of game, and still incorporates the concept of a "build." So, maybe in the future God of War could go with that?
Couldn't agree more, great video! Thanks for giving a voice for that cubconscious frustration I had when playing this game. This camera was a nightmare, and pulling into to many directions it the best description summarizing industry problems.
This is exactly how I felt why I couldn't sit through God of War - even when I played it back in 2018 until today on a high refresh rate gaming PC. The only commendable thing is the narrative which is tragic to realize when this medium should thrive in its interactivity. Because the gameplay aspect of this game is just unengaging to me. The mechanics get arbitrarily changed to fit the story and it results in a hugely inconsistent experience that obviously feels like a roller coaster instead of a real adventure. In contrast, I just played and finished Resident Evil 4 this year and it was one of the best adventure games I have ever played period. Progression may be linear on paper, but the design in that game is very consistent in its delineation between gameplay and story - without compromising either side. What you can do at the very start of the game, you can always do whenever you're given control right until the end. How the game adds tension however, is by designing elements outside the player that challenge the established mechanics progressively. Yes, there were quicktime events, but they were few and far between. And they helped engage the player during cutscenes - instead of putting the controller down because they're unskippable. The same thing can be said about Max Payne 2, which came out in 2003. What's funny is that game was extremely cinematic - but it knows how to put gameplay first and preserve its consistency by ensuring cinematic moments DO NOT interrupt the established mechanics but supplement the gameplay instead. The main problem I have about God of War, and modern Sony exclusives in general, is that they are cinematic experiences first, and gameplay second. Even Spider-Man which is out on PC, feels more like an interactive marvel movie that's loud and pretty, but lacks any mechanical depth that feels satistying to interact with. These games always feel like control is given to you just so you could unlock more cutscenes.
This is such a good video. I find myself coming back to it every so often, it also makes me wish you did an analysis for every single game you mentioned, God Hand and Dragon's Dogma especially.
Monster Hunter it's another that comes to my mind, especially after seeing him mentioning briefly the franchise in his most recent video, "Context Sensitivity".
Well this video is catered to the loud minority. Don't like it? Play something else. Or go make your own game. I bet... you'll change the industry Pffft
@@frogglen6350 Shut up Shill-san! this video speaks for a lot of people. And IGN Korea agrees, go read their review of the new game. They learned nothing.
It's even worse considering the Santa Monica Studio itself addressed this video replying to it but it seems they either didnt care or thought they knew better
Someone on the writing team also thought it would be worthwhile to have Thor yell, "KEEP HER NAME OUT OF YOUR F***ING MOUTH!" during the final fight when Kratos tries reasoning with him. This in an "epic" story about Norse gods and mythology. Just let that sink in...
Finally watching this, just wanted to say thank you for your ability to be both thorough and concise in your videos that aren't a full game commentary. I can much more easily digest and rewatch a 40 minute video as opposed to say a 3 hour one.
DreamedLint N:A would be better off without levelling. The modding scene of that game is really light but I hope one day someone will do a mod which will always scale enemies to your level.
@@stardust_2339 Personally, I agree but I do acknowledge that the developers were trying to make a more accessible experience for fans of more strict action rpgs like Nier. A mod is a good idea, though. In fact it would have been brilliant for them to implement it as an optional difficulty rather than just increasing enemy damage.
DreamedLint N:A has a lot of great ideas but it barely ever utilize them. You are never required to experiment with combos, the starting weapons are the best in the game and you can carry 4x99 healing items. Weapon upgrading is not done well, the dodge mechanic is overplayed (why make blocking a chip? dunno), enemy levels and damage scaling is really bad (as it kills consistency) but the worst offense is how quickly the combat becomes stale or a chore. N:A has the foundation for an extremely good combat system but it paddles back on it for reasons I don't know. But I am biased and despite all this N:A is in my holy trinity of favorite games. EDIT: Closest thing to level scaling in PC is a mod menu which allows you to set your level. The only problem with this is how often you must do this and still can't adjust to all enemies you encounter in one combat scenario.
I felt The Witcher 3 had a similar problem. Despite being an RPG, tying enemy power to levels created artificiality and inconsistency in its combat. For example., if Geralt is level 20, he can easily slay a level 10 Griffith that's been terrorizing a village, yet be nigh unable to kill a level 30 unarmoured country bumpkin with a club.
Indeed. It does not even make sense in the narrative. Witcher 3 on PC thankfully can be modded to resolve these problems. The problem with W3 is that I see a competent combat system in the game but it quickly turns into a numbers game because of the leveling system.
I was shocked how nobody talked about the useless walking, the meaningless automatic-platform section, the boring repetitive enemies, the useless rpg elements, the openmap and free roaming system that just does not work and the continues mcguffins. Thanks as always for making such tight critiques.
Frank Damn. The analysis of why the cut scenes masking load times is trite, and the lumbering walks with conversation and weak jogging when preforming tasks in uncanny. I knew there was a reason I did get this game. Something about said it was just to much, and despite all the grand graphics and scope that was advertise I now know why?
To an extent, I believe the walking, RPG stuff and Open world have benefits. The walking helps with loading, cooldowns between intensity and lets the story shine for a bit (the older games did that as well). The RPG stuff can add a lot of depth (I feel 2018 didn't campitalize here). The open world and quests were pretty good as they added to the themes of the story
I’m convinced I’ve stumbled to a small corner of the internet where people determined to hate the God of War game because it’s popular and most other people like it get to gather together and yell their nitpicks together because it makes them feel better than others for some reason
It’s not determined to hate so much so that not everyone is a fan of hodgepodge games that have no real focused identity and instead cater to trends that are supremely popular at the time. Cory Barlog wanted to make another Last of Us, but with hack and slash mechanics even though these mechanics are heavily hindered by Cory’s base desire to follow in Naughty Dog’s footsteps when it comes to game design.
First thing I noticed during the first fight with Thor. He's just ice-skating everywhere which completely subdues how intimidating his size factor was made out to be in the cutscene.
@@rustycheeseknife Yeah I felt the same way. It’s strange because the RPG mechanics make the normal difficulty too easy but the move assist and tracking making the harder difficulties feel very cheap. There’s a reoccurring drauger boss fight named “The Hateful” I believe and it’s a good example how how strong tracking and move assist can ruin a fight.
@@ShadowedAgony I still don't quite understand what is meant by "RPG mechanics" in cases such as this. RPGs in the past were far more about preparation than about the fight itself. 90% of any battle took place in your inventory, casting various protections and buffs on yourself and coming up with a plan of attack. These GOW games have no such mechanics. Even the health bars of certain enemies are unreliable because you never know when the "cinematic experience" is going to kick in and just refill the boss's health before heading into the next phase of combat. It's incredibly daunting to thoroughly pummel, stab, bash, slash someone like Baldur only for him to walk away unscathed. Yet, after all that, snapping his heck is what does him in. That's it. You can run the guy through a meat grinder time and time again, but in the end what gets him is a neck snap. GOW Ragnarok has similar issues. Thor dies because Odin stabs him with a spear which happens AFTER you've hacked him to pieces with your weapons.
One of the worst instances of this is one of those Traveler enemies who will slam his sword down and then pull it back up. He will literally turn on the spot while doing this if you dodge out of the way. These are games where people think the combat is good because it can look cool and "cinematic" but it's just a really terrible system under the hood. They need the gear system in the game to give players a sense of progression because there is no depth to master.
@@amysteriousviewer3772 I like the combat because of the dogge offset which lets you be very aggressive if you time your steps well also the game rewards you if you don't get hit by buffing your weapon withL1 triangle also I find the minni bosses and moves of the weapons to be a lot better in ragnarok especially the blades the biggest problems are the health of the enemies and the camera I think the game becomes a lot better if you use the armor set that gives a realm shift after every well timed step also I like that some enemies have weaknesses like the asgard soldiers if you hit their helmets they will take a lot of stun damage and the boss fights are incredible especially the valkary queen and thor I don't mind the move assist because in most games I always dogge if an enemey attacks and I never use spacing so it wasn't a problem for me but I understand how it can be annoying.
amazing video, probably one of my new favorites of yours- your insight and analysis on the medium is very inspiring, comparing the similarity of the game industry to the film industry in terms of budget and safe practice growing exponentially is scarily accurate, all in favor against improving and pushing the medium itself or taking risks- something I've felt about the film industry for a long time. Keep up the great work!
Gesamtkunstwerk refers to evaluating a piece of art as a whole. When various facets of a piece of art fail to synergize with one another, the end product is weaker than the sum of its individual parts.
The parallels between the film and game industries hit even harder when you look at the cultures surrounding the indie label. The indie label might be a sign that a particular form of media has “made it” in terms of its recognition within society.
Simechanical Honestly, I think it’s a balance between passion and greed. If you get involved with big publishers, you need to make big sales. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t care as much about visuals compared to good storytelling and good gameplay. It’s on the studios to create great works without falling victim to big publishers. Big publishers forces everything created by a studio into homogeneous, lowest common denominator drivel.
@@wuwei473 Couldn't agree more, I'm just curious as to why the games industry is going (or has gotten) like this in the first place. Why can't you have a triple A game that isn't as homogeneous as God of War be as profitable? That's what it looks like to me anyway.
Not that I should really give a shit about TH-cam BS, but Joseph Anderson’s clickbaity bollocks getting more views than this genuinely well thought out material is depressing as all hell.
Matt isn't a spotless critic either, but Joseph is so self indulgent and ranty. I feel like people get off on that stuff, but it just agitates me. He'll make a good point occasionally - it isn't worth all the other garbage though.
the guy rambled half of the video about the camera which is not an issue at all; i suggest you to consume better criticism; read ian bogost books for example
YO Mr Matosis, great video but this comment is totally unrelated. Do you think could add closed captions to videos in the future. Not personally hard of hearing but I feel it helps me appreciate the pieces more. Given the whole script you can actually just copy and paste it into the video’s caption settings in video manager and TH-cam will take like 20 minutes to auto-sync it for you. It’s a pretty low effort thing to do but adds a lot of value to viewers and your own seo. Anyways, bless up fam!
I think this has come up on ask.fm, his podcasts, his streams, or more likely all three. His answer at the time was that it was something he wanted to do, but that his final recording diverges from the script when he thinks of better ways to phrase things while recording, or when he reorders sentences while editing the video. That question might have been more about translations for other languages as closed captions, but all the same reasons would still apply. And even if viewers can submit captions themselves, he still has to approve them, and I get the impression he doesn't want to do that without reviewing the whole video. In that case, he might as well do them himself, but like I just said, he just doesn't feel like he has the time.
He's mentioned multiple times that he's always and greatly appreciative of fans' translations and he's just tardy when it comes to checking and approving them.
I just watched 5 minutes of the video with automatic captions on and there was only a single error. It even got his broken Spanish joke right. While proper captions are nice, I can't say TH-cam itself does a bad job at all. His videos have little to no background noise so his voice is clear and easy to understand, both for us viewers and the caption algorithm. Hell, you can use the "show transcript" option to basically get the entire script.
This is a great video dude! The part at 24:10-24:30 made me think a lot about the interactions between Booker and Elizabeth and your amazing video on Bioshock infinite. So when you referenced it during 38:00 I was somewhat taken aback and I thought that your introspection was quite interesting. It is startling to think about how similar the long term trend on these type of AAA video games are. Your critique of Bioshock Infinite was the first video I saw from you and I try to put a lot more thought towards my gameplay habits and analysis because of you. Always love your work and I really can't wait to see what you make next!
I just found your channel and this is the first I watched. I can’t believe your attention to detail! I didn’t think about most of these things! You’ve got a new and excited subscriber. You’re extremely well spoken and make great content, contrary to 99% of other gaming youtubers
So with God Of War Ragnarok out let's see the changes they made and to see if they listened to the criticisms of the video. Things that weren't fixed *Move assist *Lock-on still breaks with evasive maneuvers from enemies *RPG mechanics *Unskippable walking sequences *Unskippable cutscenes *Puzzles are as braindead as before and the game tells you how to solve them. *Runic attacks still operate on cooldowns *Single shot camera is still around *Enemies can still level up mid-fight *High level enemies become immune to Juggling, freeze ,tripping etc... *Weapon swapping on the fly is still not here (Keep in mind GOW3 had this) *Platforming is still context sensitive *Radial attack indicators are back due to the poor camera *Wall pins are still inconsistent with the environment *Give me God Of War is still a chore to get through due to the inflated health pools of the enemies and bosses Things that were fixed *The flash indicator now happens at the beginning of an attack *Certain techniques can be disabled now Overall it seems that the devs didn't take the criticisms into the game at heart and passed it away as if they knew better, there are some positives elements but these additions aren't enough to cover all of the problems that the sequel possesses. In conclusion: It's a mediocre sequel.
Matthewmatosis may be the exact only person on the planet who can say that line and have me doubt whether it's an intentional dunkey reference or on purpose. Still think it was on purpose though
I can't imagine anyone ever saying the line and not make a dunkey reference. His famous critic video has over 7 million views and he has one if not THE biggest videogame channel on youtube. Every youtube videogame critic on Earth saw that video. *by Earth I only mean English-speaking part of Earth, obv.
i mean the reason that dunkey made that joke is because literally every games critic says that. the reason they say that is because the game is unironically good at it.
I saw the developers messaged you on twitter... I'm very happy for you Matt, it's amazing to see such a relatively small channel get noticed, it speaks volumes about the quality of your videos :) keep it up
@@stolensentience it's been 3 years so my memory is hazy, but I remember the developers (maybe Barlog himself) complimented his video and told him the criticisms were fair and well articulated. They said some of those were because of time and money constraints, as usual, and wanted to do better in the sequel
Is kinda amazing (and sad) that MGR a 10 years old game pretty much made in a single year with 1/10 of Sony AAA budget got a far better combat system and boss battles compared to Dad of Walk.
@@frogglen6350 MCU movies made more money than The Godfather, Terminator 2, Reservoir Dogs, Goodfellas, that mean they are better? Such a dumb way of thinking. And yeah MGR has much better combat system than GOW clown, the camera is not a disgusting mess filled of indicators and you actually feel like a god rather than slow ass Nu-Kratos. And saying MGR is a "DMC clone" only shows how ignorant you are, DMC is a combo heavy based action game, MGR is not, in fact it has more in common with other parry heavy action games like Sekiro rather than DMC. Then again, your are a fan of these shitty movie like nuGOW games so I dont expect you know shit about action games or combat systems. A final battle against a politician felt bigger in scope and with more spectacle than a final battle against fucking Odin and Thor, that is how lame these new GOW games are.
@@frogglen6350 what is a real Metal Gear game though? The series changed so much since PW that the series lost its identity a lond time ago, MGSV barely is a "real MGS" game, it lacks everything that made the series popular in the first place. MGR is a spin off so it can be whatever it wants, is not a core entry or main numbered game, if anything these nuGOW games are everything you bitch about, they are barely GOW games, they are this weird TLOU/Dark Souls hybrid with shitty camera combat and tacked on RPG lite systems, its like Santa Monica made a mash up of every modern popular gaming trend.
Excellent video, can't agree more with the God Hand comparisons, when I first played it I was so used to games making it easier for me to win without doing right timings, it made me angry that I died so many times, but the thought didn't leave my mind that all those times were my fault not the game and so I kept thinking of strategies to beat the enemies and I got better at knowing what buttons to press and when. That was much more satisfying than me being happy that the game let me kill dudes right away without me putting much effort into dodging and using certain abilities. Also the recommendations you make for the interactivity with Atreus are great.
Man this video is so on point. I really was blinded by the visuals and cinematic aspects. But grinding out crappy combat situations, and getting all the best gear to just be teleported to the top of Jotenheim was immensely disappointing
He also completely nailed how masking the loading screens would be a terrible decision long term. I'm used to SSD loading times on PC and I played it on PS5 and while other games load in 5 seconds, God of War feels like an eternity, fast travel isn't fast at all and the elevators are as bad as the first Mass Effect.
It's already been a year since this video was released, so I'm not sure Matthew will see this comment, but I just wanted to point out how much I appreciate the editing in this video. At 34:52, for instance, you cite Majora's Mask as a "race against the clock," so to segue into the next clip you begin the footage of MM with a sharp tilt of the camera upwards to the moon and Clocktown's clock all in the same frame. This is clever editing, because the quick movement of the camera creates anticipation, which immediately grabs the viewer's attention for a brief moment before you hit us with the main subject, the clock, bringing the focus back to your main point about time. (Side note, it's just a really pleasant angle. You get the imminent threat of the moon in the center of the frame, looming above you in the sky, and juxtapose that nicely with the ticking clock, which also looms above you at the top of the frame.) Then, to end this sequence, you tilt the camera back down in a manner reminiscent to what you did at the start to indicate a clear ending to the shot. This is strong editing structure, as you've visually created a hook, held it just long enough to make your point understood, then dropped it once it lost interest in such a short span of time. It's a moment where both the script and visuals align perfectly in their intentions, and this video is littered with little creative moments like that that I believe go unappreciated.
the way the boy flies at kratos whenever they're about to climb a wall together is hilarious it looks like he's being pulled by a magnet
I like to think kratos had the dwarfs make one of their pull trinkets to put on atreus specifically for that
In the game's defence, I assume players would find it boring if they had to wait for Atreus to jump properly
Matt literally talks about why that is dumb though
@Erratum Yeah, the game is alreadly robbing you of your time in plenty of other ways without adding another one.
@Erratum Ha!
I played for like 40 minutes and got really bored and I shut the game down. Never played it again. As soon as I played the game and couldn't turn around for like the first 10 minutes of gameplay, my will to keep playing sinked lower and lower.
I just don't get why people orgasm at the sight of these movie games.
imagine if boy only learns what you teach him, and then he becomes cold hearted and uncaring cause you don't do the sidequests.
you sound like a guy who made some unpopular roguelike
That’d be dope af.
wheres my kino
I wouldn't care
Kinda like Dishonored's story
The “petty complaint” about the loading times on PS5 was spot on lmao
What about them?
@@introduction1266 the game was designed with certain areas being slow to mask loading times then the PS5 now released with an update for god of war to significantly reduce loading times meaning world design wouldn't have to be the same if they took the PS5 into consideration.
@@LN.2233 true
Honestly, Zachtronics really outdid themselves with this one.
Even if this gets 1k likes it'll be an underated comment.
Worst Zachtronics game imo
Well played
lmao
To imagine how much work has gone into making this with only EXAs. woah
25:08 Matt did you..... did you go out of your way to make a pawn in Dragons Dogma who's a recreation of Atreus, just for this 10 second bit?
Holy fuck
He's so dedicated lol
Its not like making a pawn takes more than 5 min.
Masterduced he should do a dragons dogma review so Atreus pawn can return
+Masterduced
Apparently Mitosis made it, although Matthew did play 10 hours of DD in order to make sure his point was well-based.
Been a year since I've watched this video and that frog guy's still here lmao
I hover over the thumbnail and get a Wonderful 101 clip. That's the highbrow shit I like.
This comment is just great.
As a AAA dev myself (And an environment artist for most of my 22 years) I find this video incredibly sobering. And important. I haven't played GoW yet myself, but this piece is clearly an industry critique first and foremost. Great work! I'm sharing with all my coworkers.
yep, in my opinion his video "The Lost Soul Arts of Demon's Souls" is very interesting for the industry too.
Yeah, that's another great vid. Thanks!
What studio do you work for?
ArenaNet
Play it for yourself if you've played the older ones. It is a good story and imo there are alot of pros that I would say out weigh the cons noted in this Case Study.
I really appreciated your comparison to modern cinema. For years, I’ve heard people continue this confused dialogue on “when are games gonna be on the same artistic level as film.” I actually find it kind of offensive that people keep on saying video games haven’t reached the artistic heights of film. It’s an argument that ignores the fundamental differences between the two mediums. It ignores the many flaws of modern cinema, and most of all, it takes the decades of hard work and creative vision that game designers have poured into their craft and tells us that doesn’t matter.
Also, people ignore the fact that there are so many many things that are only possible in the gaming medium. Instead of waiting for the approval of older, dying mediums, studios and devs should try their best to play on gaming's strengths as a unique form of art.
I have always considered video games as an art form but saying that games already reached the artistic heights of film is seriously pushing it. Films are over a century old matured medium and film makers have complete mastery over it while game development is not only much more complicated composed of many moving complex parts, but also relatively super young to reach those heights yet. Games that are generally considered as art with clear artistic vision from people behind it like Cory Barlog with God of War are super rare especially when it comes to big budget video games. Video games have other priorities most of the time whether it is competitive games intended for multiplayer, to games designed only keep you busy and entertained as.they make money off you selling stuff.
@@weaverquest Films have yet to reach the artistic heights of literature. Literature spans practically the entire existence of human civilization. See what I did thar? Really, it's a pointless goal to chase, and one that is constantly moving.
the main issue with games is, that they dont use their own medium to convey good stoys most of the time. A cutscene, basicly is just a minimovie. A "good game" or a perfect one, would be one where you only would play. Where everything you do, basicly is a game mechanic.
@@weaverquest are you unironically trying to tell me that Cory is some kind of a genius and GOW is "art" ?
fuck man your point about how they should have used kratos' strength as a way to make fun of other games and reduce tedium in certain parts was brilliant and i can't believe i haven't heard anyone bring that up before
It's the issue with a lot of stories. You're either experiencing the tail end or the beginning of the Hero's reign.
Playing as peak Krato's sometime between GoW 2018 and GoW 4 would definitely make for interesting enough flashbacks, if not a full game.
@@anthonya.jumelles7103
No. No. No. And No. Prequel stories are 99% bad. Only exception is Red Dead 2.
That's an easier point said than done. Only works in your fan fiction mindset. Try developing a game and tell me how easy that would be to implement in a story like this.
@@kittykitty101001 The fact that you listed an exception makes your argument silly. Especially for an action game, there's hardly a problem with wherever the game sits in the timeline.
@@kittykitty101001 There are plenty of good examples, like any good action game, or something like DOOM 2016, which overall avoids tedium by playing to the character's strengths. It would have required some sacrifices to be made, which the GOW team was apparently unwilling to do.
This is, still, genuinely one of the greatest videos on game criticism ever made. I felt so crazy for not loving GoW and this video game me an outlet to explore why I don't love it. Inspiring, makes me wanna actually work on a video. Love it.
Yup, the quality of criticism is unmatched. I find myself coming back to this every now and then just for that.
Matt taught me how to think for myself...by agreeing with him lockstep no matter what.
@@TheEpikak I came to the opposite conclusion. OP had already formed their opinion, but couldn’t clearly articulate the reasons why. However, this review did express the reasons why
I loved GOW and I still agree with you this is one of the finest criticisms of any game ever.
DO IT! I just started a review channel and it's rewarding to really get those thoughts on paper, record, and post. Even if the results aren't what you want. It's a rewarding feeling that improves the more you do it.
The forced walking sections were way worse on Ragnarok. It was among the reasons to why the game became way too long. It just killed the replay value for me.
Fucking IRONWOOD
@@asad9414I’m trying to do a new game and new game plus run but Ironwood is making me not want to tbh and most of atreus’ parts as well
@@l.2152 the new DLC helps a bit. I’m having a lot of fun replaying the game with Blade of Olympus and the Classic Kratos skin. But the low points are still low I guess
@@SaberRexZealot Yeah the new DLC is why I redownloaded the game & been playing it the past few weeks. Probably gonna try to power through Ironwood when I’m done with it.
Every time I watch one of these, I immediately want the developers of the games to watch it, too. Not for any sort of "THIS IS WHAT YOU DID WRONG, FEEL BAD" reason, but just so they can take the criticism into account and produce an even better game next time. All of the points raised in the video are very valid and, while I enjoyed Dad of War a bunch, you have a way of articulating those nagging feelings that my brain notices while playing but usually result in me making an off-hand comment about how the game doesn't feel right in general.
kay ok Saying "no offense" at the end of a sentence like that doesn't work very well.
It's funny you say that because he DOES point out in the video that they obviously worked very hard on it and he's not saying he would have done better in their situation. If you watch the video in it's entirely you would understand he's not just shitting on the game.
Sad to say but Cory Barlog only cares about the metacritic score / initial public reception. In his mind the game is perfectly fine because it had a positive initial reception.
@MARS they did see it
twitter.com/Just_Tank/status/1034115712564903940?s=19
@@Crabhammaren Hell yeah
It saddens me how the exact same critiques on this game seem to be applicable to the sequel x)
Really? Haven't played Ragnarok yet but this was my fear, that everything is going to be more or less the same as the previous one.
Welcome to modern gaming
@@abyzzwalker I can confirm, I'm playing it rn
@@abyzzwalker I can confirm, I'm playing it rn
@@abyzzwalker there are definitely some improvements but on the whole it plays pretty identically to the previous game and doesn’t fix very many of the flaws it had.
I think there is something to be said about modern games and a "blockbuster" effect. Most "blockbusters" are large, entertaining movies, energetic and colorful, now whilst this obviously doesn't go for all of them, the majority of them are action-packed and garner large audiences: And that's it. There's nothing deeper to them, maybe they're rewatchable, maybe not. They exist basically to exist as an adrenaline rush, and then they end, and that is the last you hear about them until your friend reminds you of that time you went to see the movie.
I think certain games have fallen into a similar pattern, where they do not want subsequent playthroughs to be equally thought-provoking or interesting, or their ludonarrative elements to align to their fullest potential, but rather have an adrenaline-filled, fun adventure, and have it end when the credits roll.
yeah. metal Gear Solid 1 on ps1 is definitely modern
That's sadly the absolute state of AAA game nowadays.
@@marsupialmestre9088
Yeah. Witcher 3, Elden Ring, and Zelda are really bad. Especially that new mario game and ghost of tsushima
@@frogglen6350, In what way are they all bad exactly?
I’ve never played the Witcher so I can’t really comment on that.
Elden ring was a brilliant game with one of the best open worlds ever made combined with the souls gameplay loop, Overall a great souls experience.
Zelda breath of the wild had amazing exploration and lots to experiment with. Combat was pretty lacking however and the lack of dungeons was a shame.
By “new mario game” I assume you mean odyssey? If so, that game was amazing. Responsive, lots to experiment with and room to really master mario’s moveset.
Ghost of Tsushima is just a better version of the Ubisoft open world format, which I don’t think makes it bad. I agree some aspects could have been better but that can be applied to any game.
@@Tmaster2006YT lol he was being ironic
This is exactly the sort of informed, detailed and above all constructive criticism of gaming that seems to be lacking on TH-cam and indeed other forms of media. Matthew, for the love of God, never change. The world needs people like you.
"The business itself now mirrors the Hollywood machine."
That... that comment cut deep for some reason. And it hurts.
I guess it’s what’s necessary for the business to evolve.
It isn't necessary at all.
@@chimingito and nier was awesome
and some random video on a small youtube channel would change nothing. Business as usual
InTheAir But it isn't evolving, it's stagnating
Why MatthewMatosis is currently one of the greats in video game criticism:
1. Doesn't waste time on going in a hissy fit about other people's opinions on the game or talking about his own expectations.
2. Regards the merits AND flaws of a game to bring a balanced overview.
3. Analyses extensively so the eventual judgement doesn't come out of nowhere and is understandable.
4. His analysis, although extensive, is still *concise*
5. I'm gay for his voi- uuuh I mean communicates in a clear voice :)
>1. Doesn't waste time on going in a hissy fit about other people's opinions on the game or talking about his own expectations.
So many TH-camrs I can name...
>currently
Has always been
Didn't he have a hissy fit in the first 5 minutes saying that fans of the OG GoW were complacent with its "stagnation" and that the extreme change to this game isnt a slap to the face of long time fans and that they should see it differently.
I thought it was more along the lines of "some might see this as a slap in the face, but let's take a more optimistic view and judge it without being predisposed to that mindset", and a causal mention of how he thought the series was stagnating. But that was just my impression.
For me he focuses too much on the negatives and small things
I do loves his videos
But at the same time when he comes out and says "Oh despite all the flaws it's a great game!" it feels unearned.
Puts things into perspective.
I didn't mind the experiments they've gone through with this one - for better or worse - as it was clear the series was going for something completely different.
But now playing Ragnarok I don't feel they've evolved at all, and the 'averageness' of the average elements has become more noticeable.
"they didn't evolve at all"
the enemies are more varied
the bosses are faster and hit harder
the visuals are better. You control multiple characters
you are ungrateful and entitled
@@frogglen6350 I'm yet to beat the game, in the mines now, and I hope that some surprises await ahead. But my time with Ragnarok hasn't brought much enjoyment beyond the high level production quality.
I'm genuinely happy for everyone who enjoy the game. I'm also sorry for everyone who takes its criticism so personally that they have to resort to personal attacks on the critic)
@@frogglen6350 thanks for the spoiler. you must be a great person with a lot of friends
@Fluxx
for saying facts?
@@frogglen6350 For spoiling the ending, you jerk.
"No matter what topic I was discussing, I would never have referred to Norse God as an example of anything, because everything it does is better represented elsewhere." -The entire video's great point. Excellent summation.
but nothing does it all in one place. When you dont have time to play all those other games for all those "better" version of the game. God of war provides. This is not to be dismissed
The Typer I find the argument of "It's not the absolute pinnacle of quality at what it's trying to do and so therefore it's artistically worthless" as a shitty argument myself
@@ultralurker7579
Wrong, the modern games industry is full of jack of all trades games, that spread themselves thin over too many ideas like that. It's not a selling point you make it out to be.
@@Soniman001
You do realize the game not being master of any craft was only half of the argument?
The other part was how God of War 4 lacks any kind of strong hook or selling point. Since it lacks any strong core that would work as an overarching appeal point, it doesn't scratch any particular itch that another game with clearer focus and vision wouldn't work better on.
To put it in a question form, what exactly could I want from a game I play, that I couldn't get from anywhere else except this game?
If I want an intimate experience about two characters bonding trough shared journey and hardships, I play Ico or Last Guardian. If I want an action-filled adventure with fun combat, I play anything from Devil May Cry to Kingdom Hearts. If I want an exiting game with deep and meaningful narrative, I play Metal Gear Solid or Persona. If I want a game about fatherhood, I play Yakuza or Telltales first season of Walking Dead (or if for whatever reason I'd want game about father who is also a God, there's Asura's Wrath).
Heck, if I would specifically want to play a game in which you play as a God and go onto an epic adventure through beautiful landscapes and meet several fabled and mythical characters, I'd choose Ōkami over God of War 4 any day.
@@jondoe7036 so playthose 12 or so games for the rest of time them, your argument comes across as pretty poor and projecting when it all boiled down to you just not liking it, its pretty fucking clear a lot of people found appeal in it and enjoyed the experienceingy implying the game is unfocused is ridiculous when the statement of it is pretty fucking clear from the start at what its trying to do
Love the ending. Too often critics fail to consider the circumstance in which a game was produced and instead sit smugly on their high horse. This is why I sub to Big Matt, he brings the awareness
Most devs have a black box approach to development, if they wanted it to be an even play field they should be more forthcoming with the backgrounds behind the games they're releasing. E.g if god of war was made by a 16 year old kid tinkering in his room for a year obviously it would be god tier.
I think it's more consumers that have a black box approach than developers. Watch some GDC talks, watch and read some interviews, the information is out there. If you really want to know how these games are made, actually look for it
@@morganlak4337 oh trust me I do keep an ear out and have things like geomod in my Google alerts directory plus have perused all of GDCs TH-cam stuff. To say that it's on the consumers though... Not sure why you would much such an inflammatory statement and blame consumers for lack of background on newly released games. Why? Because we don't get the information we should (unless we are insiders) such as team size, principle members and biggest hurdles in development, and we don't get it because 1) it's not common studio practice to publish, 2) companies don't want employees head hunted in interviews etc, and 3) marketing don't want things leaked should there be live dev chats etc before release. Do you still feel comfortable in holding the view of consumers being at fault here?
I'm not sure what you're accusing me of saying, I'm saying if you feel uninformed about games' process there are tons of resources on them and it's your fault if you don't use them. We do get access to things like team size and specific people who worked on it in the credits, and while we don't always get specific hurdles we often do through interviews and talks. Obviously we don't get perfect windows into what devs do on individual projects, but we can fill in the blanks, especially on big titles like God of war. I'm also mostly complaining about critical who don't consider the devs point of view, consumers was a poorly chosen word as it doesn't actually represent who I was complaining too. The information I'm talking about is public though, so everyone can see it
Who would 'little matt' be?
Sucks Santa Monica responded to this critique but took none of it to heart. Ragnarok really not only didnt improve on the aspects that made this game bad, but somehow actually magnified them. Oh well, I can always fire up the 'ol ps2 and play good god of war games anytime i guess.
Why take this to heart instead of the more positive feedback..Game devs should never listen to critics who never made a game.
@@frogglen6350 because they could make a good game if they did. There's no more harmful words to a creator than "Good Enough". If a game needs criticism as bad as these god of war games did, then they should be criticized, of they will continue to pump out trash.
@@exeledusprince9165
This game is very good. I think maybe fortnite or something with microtransactions is more up your ally
@Exeledus Prince
Do you justvwant gane devs to ignore positive feedback from the majority of the target audience? Because if so, you're gonna hate Devil May Cry, Dark Souls, and most games as a whole
@@frogglen6350 yes, I do if it means a better game. Sony chose to target the casual gamet market with these games and as a result they dont leave an impact and are very mediocre.
Funny you mention Devil May Cry and Dark Souls, 2 series where the developers weren't afraid of targeting a smaller niche audience but made better (much better) games than these as a result.
And there it is, "why dont you play fortnite"? Lol as if it's any more obvious someone cant take criticism. I love God of War 2018, but its important to know what works and what doesnt. Ragnarok could have been amazing, but they didnt bother improving.
Coming back after Ragnarok released really hammers in how Corey Barlrog's compliments to this video were just lip service, because that game doubles down on all the problems Matt pointed out.
Does it play basically the same?
@@bmbterps Yes. It sucks.
@@jespero93
yet you probably give other games a pass for playing similarly to their orevious entry. Pretentious
@@frogglen6350 Probably! But those games most likely had a good combat system in the first place ;)
@@frogglen6350 idk my man, i'd be glad if the core idea was there even on different incarnations,you get me?
This Frog guy in the comments is literally the human form of the meme "You Are Nitpicking and Biased, I Win, Bye Bye". Is quite pathetic actually.
It makes sorting by new unbearable. It’s strange to see someone like that in the Matthewmatosis section.
he has 200+ comments on the channel, holy fuck touch some grass
I can't believe some insane loser is lurking in the comment section of a 4 year old video defending a game's sequel from mild criticism
Fellas, our precious time on this earth is pretty short
Probably, just a kid who has nothing better to do after school.
But the annoying part is, Frog guy says something dumb, a lot of people dunk on them thus successfully derailing the conversation. Like “Congrats! You’re the center of attention on another comment thread.”
"You're not trusted..." segment captures exactly how I felt about this game. Thanks.
I disagree on that one. Turning off extensive tutorials and the compass from the beginning made it probably feel better for me. Also changing difficulty was enough for me to keep me challenged and about the babyproof world I don’t really get the point. Do you want to glitch into walls or why would you not want these limitations?
Linie Kiste Linie Kiste first of all turning off tutorials and HUD elements is like using duct tape to fix a leaking boat, it’s a temporary, flawed solution that might cause you to miss necessary information, or get lost for a unnatural amount of time because the game expects you to have waypoints on. By “babyproof world” he means there’s no peril or danger in the games traversal mechanics, you just hold a direction and press X occasionally, even uncharted allows you to fall and die. This creates disconnect because kratos and the boy are exploring unknown, hazardous environments on their journey, but the only gameplay where any danger exists is in the combat, so about half the journey. He’s not saying it’s a terrible solution but it’s about as lazy as making an NPC companion invincible with teleportation powers, and hampers immersion as a result.
The reduced tutorial was actually really well done and I had no problems with it, it only removed information like "use the left thumbstick to move around", recalling the axe and other new mechanics were still explained. Getting lost also wasn't a problem, since I still had the map and the world isn't terribly complex to begin with. I didn't feel like the game expected me to use the compass at all. Also, I didn't turn the whole HUD off, the game gave me enough flexibility to pick what I wanted. I'll admit that the world does feel not very dangerous, but It doesn't give me that disconnection, so I can't really say how it feels for anyone who has a problem with it. Do you maybe have examples with games that did that aspect well?
I also get that maybe it would bond you and Atreus if he wasn't invincible, but if he could be killed and not teleport I think he would be more annoying than helpful (which is probably why they made him like that) and most players would start to dislike him, so how would you have a vulnerable NPC that does not get annoying after 10 minutes because of how stupidly he dies?
Linie Kiste Fair enough, if you had no problems I can’t argue that those changes would improve the game somewhat. Maybe when I go back for NG+ I’ll try them.
To answer your question my ideal situation for Atreus would be something similar to ICO, so if Atreus is overwhelmed by enemies they’ll grab him and try to take him away through some portal, causing a failstate. Maybe this sounds “annoying” but I think it could add that extra bit of tension the fights sometimes lack, and also strengthen that bond between the player and Atreus, which as Matosis said in the video, is mostly conveyed by the story rather than gameplay.
Glad you enjoyed the game! I did as well, I’d consider it a little above average, but I find it very hard to disagree with anything Matt says here, his arguments are close to objective.
Looks like I should broaden my spectrum of games, I've never heard of ICO (guess I'm too mainstream for that), but it does look interesting. For me it was all very good, but maybe that is because I haven't seen it much better anywhere else.
It’s unfortunate but, I suppose, not terribly surprising that they didn’t address very many of these criticisms with Ragnarok. There are a couple of surface level improvements and common sense tweaks but a lot of fundamental flaws are baked into the game design and I guess they weren’t willing to uproot everything to fix them.
Perhaps it's not a matter of willingness, but simply one of resources: like Matthew states in this video, devs of games with this scope are under huge time/money pressure. It could be that changing the core gameplay was never even possible in the first place. Which, ironically enough, is the exact phenomenon that this video is criticizing...
@@kingnro1 the game was in development for 4 years and they changed NOTHING (except you have different looking shields now, wow)
@@kingnro1 Exactly! Essentially GOW Ragnarok is a 22-hour movie disguised as a video-game. Above all, they focused on the "experience" rather than attend to elements that would improve the game itself. The most important thing for them was the spectacle and not the mechanics of how the game actually works.
Once again, we have puzzles that are brain-dead simple. Move Assist is still in the game despite its existence basically making the difficulty curves irrelevant considering how much of an advantage the mechanic gives to certain enemies in the game. Once again, almost every combat scenario is a test of your own ability not to become bored of decreasing your enemy's health bar.
All of this just so a bunch of monkeys can go to their favorite Twitch streamer or TH-cam channel to watch the whole "cinematic experience."
Based on some things I've heard from Kripparian, however, I've been lead to assume that a lot folks in the Twitch or TH-cam gaming sector of social media are pretty much only playing these games because its a medium to engage their viewers and subscribers. Therefore there's really no reason to mess with the game's mechanics in any significant way because--in the long run--people are readily willing to dive into a dumpster full of rotten food and diapers just as long as that dumpster has "God of War" written on it and there's a body pillow with Kratos somewhere inside.
@@Crowbar I understand the frustration, which is why I'm not buying the game. But I've watched the game streamed and it's clearly a very big game (of course in the bog-standard "magical check-list of fetch quests" design, but what would you expect). I can't fault the devs for not overhauling the gameplay, they worked in the pandemic context and surely worked hard just to fill the game with content to satisfy today's AAA standard of bloat. It's just the homogenized state of the industry, you can't expect much else with publishers breathing down their necks with focus tests and deadlines plus the expectations after the first game's success - they were always going to play it safe. It's very disappointing and emblematic of the creative bankcruptcy of triple-A, just like the subject of this video.
@@kingnro1 Ultimately, I believe it would help if people didn't refer to these as "games" but as something else entirely. They're movies disguised as games. I mean, the majority of what people talk about online is about what happens in the story. Very little discussion regards the mechanics and looks for modes of comparison between this and other titles with less or superior modes of gameplay.
Alongside Matthew's commentary, one needs to acknowledge that the real winner here isn't superior gameplay but superior marketing. The game was always going to be good no matter what because it's "God of War" and it has Kratos in it. That's all there is to it.
That Frog Glen guy is still here! i posted a comment 4 months ago about him and he still keeps complaining in the comments like crazy, what's wrong with him, he made his hatred of this video his entire character and life meaning, he keeps coming back to keep shiting on this video, it's been months, just stop already!
he's been frequently coming back to this video for the past 4 years. Imagine a video pissing you off so much that you come back to it every few weeks to bitch about it. lmao
it's honestly just entertaining at this point. this vid really hurt their feelings.
I honestly think this guy has nothing better to do. He is probably a 200kg heavy f-up, glued to his chair and his only meaningful way of some kind of social interaction is this comment section.
@@FyreReignI come back every so often to see his new comments on the video. It's a delight every time 🤣🤣🤣
The fact that Sony Santa Monica and Corey Barlog actually listened to this makes me extremely hopeful for the future of this series.
Wait, did they?
Yiannis Loukas That’s amazing. Wish more game devs would take criticism from the community like that.
I tweeted them the link to this video ha! So glad they’ve watched it. Matt is the ultimate play tester.
@@jgloukas That is *beyond* badass. I watched this video out of love for Matt's content, now I want to actually play the game, knowing it was made by developers who talk to the consumers.
@@AnnNightNoxana you should play it it's fantastic
It's becoming increasingly clear to me that the more money publishers and developers pour in to a game, the wider of a market that game has to cater to and therefore making the game less focused. Makes you think whether or not a fully funded and fully focused game on this scale could ever come out.
Well given that first party games are about making people feel good about their console purchase (basically) and also about have a good diversity overall, I would think that first party games (even the very expensive ones) could be more focused and not so typically AAA. But plenty of first party games have been stereo typical in varies ways from all three of the big boys.
@@xBINARYGODx Elden Ring release day after tomorrow.
This game is a piece of shit that's the verdict now.
countless incredibely expensive games and low budget indie games turned out to be masterpieces. its almost like it relies purely on dev talent and execution on vision or something like that. your argument is riddled with confirmation bias and correlation without causation.
@@AaronBiswas lmao stay mad
This game is the definition of "designed by committee". Everything it did felt like it was cribbed from an earlier, better game.
I can't think of any game with similar combat. God of War 4's combat feels like it has crunch and impact. The way Kratos brutally rips apart a werewolf is awesome
This game is pretty much The Last of Us but with more melee focus and having GoW skin, which is not good imo
TLoU emotional moments makes more sense, because u see how awful thing has become. Knowing Joel daughter dies at the start, in your own hand, only to later has to babysit another young girl in a harsh environment. This and adds that everyone in TLoU are literal humans that dies quite easily, it make the stakes even higher than ever.
While both Kratos and Atreus have a literal God's blood runs in their veins. This means that the only way they could die is by some divine interventions from the narratives like Magni, Modi and Baldur's fights. Even then, the "fear they might gets caught and killed by the Gods" were thrown out of the window because we literally met them 4-5 times (1st during the first Baldur fights, during climbing and saw the trio interrogate Mimir on the tree, Magni and Modi fights, and the final fights)
@@ShatteredGlass916
Yeah. I remember fighting a dragon and two gods in last of us.
@@ShatteredGlass916 .
Also. Kratos is not a pure god. He is a *demi god* His mom was a mortal. So Kratos is only half god. Which is why he isn't immortal. And also why he needed another god to turn him into a god in god of war 1 and 2
The fun part is that this was actually supposed to be another game in the first place.
Your foresight into how this game will be played on the PS5 was spot on. This new generation of consoles are known for their fast loading times and this game just ends up being halted to a crawl because the masks that hide the loading times are hard baked into the game itself. You can't skip walking sections, you can't run in walking sections. You always go to the world tree area to teleport. You can't teleport from realm to realm.
And the sad part is is this game's sequel (GoW Ragnarok) does all of the same things becacuse it was made to work on PS4 as well. If there's any game that should be used as an example of how creating games to be backwards compatible with older consoles is a bad idea, it's Ragnarok.
it has nothing to do with it being backwards compatible. It has everything to do with shit game design and an intent to waste player time to try and make it a single cut (which it ruins with it's excessive amounts of menuing required)
Dragon's Dogma was a pretty odd experience. The story itself didn't really highlight the bond you have with your pawn (with the traditional dialogue or cutscenes, at least) but for some reason I really DID care for my pawn throughout the whole adventure because of how I "raised" and "trained" them as we grinded up the levels. Not to mention the sense of being like a proud parent when people commend your pawn's performance with the whole pawn sharing system thing.
My man your criticism ended up being so true. They did the same with Ragnarok
thankfully Ragnarok sold like hot cakes and has a high review score. Matosis amd hiw blind fanboys are in the minority....good
@@frogglen6350You are cattle.
Bro, if you hate him so much, why tf are you commenting everywhere instead of ignoring this? @@frogglen6350
@@frogglen6350 Just like Call of duty and FIFA, right? Because those games are so good.
@@_ArsNova God 0f War is actually well liked and has positive reviews on steam and metacritic. unlike the garbage you mentioned
.
Like the Lost Soul Arts Of Demon's Souls video, this one just hits so many unacknowledged key points and makes such a rigorous, focused argument that it deserves to be a touchstone for creatives in the games industry, many of whom just don't seem to have a mind for the finer points of gameplay design anymore. I've been following your channel since you were posting the Zelda videos and it's incredibly gratifying to see you have honed your critical faculties and matured your thinking over time, rather than descending into churning out lazy hot-air like so many on TH-cam do. So thanks for all your effort Matthew, I hope you'll keep it up.
It isn't the creatives here adding RPG elements, or limiting the combat scope, or adding hand holding elements to gameplay. Publishers demand these bullet points and lower the depth of systems to maximize sales to recoup out of control budgets.
Yeah, except this video made actual good points. The Demons' Souls video just screamed rose-tinted glasses.
@@bloomingteratoma Yup. Probably Matthew's weakest video, whereas this one is one of his best.
Some random guy on the internet I disagree. While I do like this video more, I feel like Matt hit the nail on the head on the issue with the new Souls games. The new games seem more and more like a safe product capitalizing on what made the series popular, at the cost of the risks and strange design choices the older titles used to make. Tbf, I would have never agreed with his video until I actually went and played Demon’s Souls to see what he meant
@@bloomingteratoma no? He fairly criticized how mechanically uncreative the games have gotten, it rang true for blood born and it rings true especially with elden ring
It’s honestly scary how well the video aged
Welp, quite on point honestly. Like Yahtzee said - another game to be offered as sacrifice on the altar of "hairy old dad games". While the visuals are absolutely stunning and the story drops clues for the attentive in advance, these changes generally do nothing but mask the underlying problems games have. You've been quite on point the whole time.
Especially striking to me is that whenever there are problems cropping up, the only benefit is that it looks great.
The combat is a cluttered mess that has systems which could potentially work out, but ultimately limit the player more? Animationwork looks phenomenal with many different reactions.
Climbing is excessively railroady and relies on no skill? At least it looks cool (in Uncharted that is)
The game basically forces me to play a section with an annoying chore, like carrying a boar or rowing around the lake only to be what is essentially a glorified cutscene? This way the scenery has more impact.
Always the same issue and - the same thing to say as to what is the only benefit to it. While everything is being tarted up a notch or twelve, this in turn is done with no real lookout for the core mechanics at hand which could've and should've been refined more. If everything looks great but mechanics in turn shows severe issues in the gameplay department, which after a couple decades we should have managed to refine, the great animationwork and pretty skyboxes are little more than fancy set dressing and (to me) feel more detrimental, rather than adding to the overall experience. Also, guess what? The problems you talk about in regards to the industries strikes way too close to home. Not only is the market homogenizing to the point where many different games of a singular genre blend together to form a beige paste, but in the practices surrounding those. More often than not games lose focus because they are spread out in all directions. Why would anybody spread out into all directions? To cast the biggest net possible in order to catch the biggest amount of fish.
We are now at a point where there is a niche for tightly focused games which is miles wide. Imagine that - the market has been and is so oversaturated on what everybody sees as the "standard" formula which works to the point that there is nothing specialized to fill out the holes left behind by the lack of focus.
I'm sad to report that they didn't address any of the issues highlighted in this video in the sequel
But there, why should they? Essentially, these aren't games, they're movies disguised as games. That's largely what is talked about at the end of this video. The entire "game" amounts to one huge cinematic experience that you have to slog through. And people WILL slog through it because they're hopelessly attached to the franchise. With "God of War" in the title and Kratos pictured foremost, people already talked themselves into liking it, despite how bad the mechanics are.
@@rustycheeseknife Chill. The mechanics aren't that bad. They have issues which are dissapointing, the game is still enjoyable on a casual level. Besides, I'm pretty sure the developers have the ambition to deliver the best game possible, they just can't because they lack the talent or time or whatever. Or someone forces things into the game like unnecessary RPG mechanics.
@@Crowbar Nope, they're incredibly bad. Also, you're welcome to chill on calling it enjoyable on a casual level too.
@@rustycheeseknife "they're movies disguised as ganmes"
hmmm....yeah. you didn't play New gow. I think you are referring to metal gear
These people in the comment want to be pretentious so bad lol
Matthewmatosis remains one of the best video game critique channels on TH-cam. He adds so much to the conversation of video game mechanics, just as Every Frame a Painting added so much to talking about film form.
Seriously, if we're talking about making polished, balanced, and meaningful videos, he's in a different league than most other critique channels that often nitpick tiny issues, rather than focusing on how those issues affect the whole game.
That ending was utterly haunting, Matthew. Never did a span of 5 or so minutes do to me what you did in that time span. Actively calling out the sort of critique machine you "created"/are a part of here on TH-cam while also recognizing the work of the developers who, may have failed in making a distinct and fresh experience, but also have put a large amount of effort into crafting the work many have found themselves playing or discussing regardless of their enjoyment of the final product. It really made me consider the type of content I consume on a daily basis and got me to open my eyes about the other end of the spectrum no one really talks about beyond either unflinching criticism or praise of a work. Keep doing what you do, Mr. Matosis, the world needs your insight.
Matthew really puts way more effort and thought into this stuff than 95% of TH-camrs do. I can't stand listening to people like Dunkey or Jim Sterling because they never give such good examples, comparisons or dissections about games, it's always a bunch of vague hot air and "I feel" or "it feels like" statements.
Honestly coming from a person who enjoyed this game, I love this review. He does it best to show he is constructive criticising not like other TH-camrs who either over praise or just trash it for views. And the fact that the video was healthy enough to garner awareness from the developers makes me excited to see how they'll improve the sequel
DancesWithMetroids lolwut. Watch videogamedunkey’s vids “game critics” and “difficulty in games” to see how wrong you are
All the things said about the camera, the move assist annoyances, and enemy issues I can't disagree with one bit. I was blinded by my absolute love of the visuals and story to notice while playing at least the first time. The Valkyries, and the Trolls were cool the first few times but after seeing the same character model over and over again with a different color was the only difference had me disinterested in seeing the same enemies again. Thanks for helping me see through my rose colored glasses because I may have loved the game but finding and recognizing the flaws helps us and programmers know what to tweak in future games to make things we love be even better.
"Emotional Maturity" is what I think it's called. A person can like whatever they want, but naturally when flaws are pointed out in a thing they like, they start feeling bad about it, either blindly defending it or starting to hate it.
Emotional Maturity is when you can like something while also knowing and acknowledging its flaws. Devil May Cry 5 is one of my favorite games of all time, but I can point out flaws in it, which I didn't even notice even when playing the game multiple times, until someone talked about some of them and I acknowledge them, but that didn't make me like the game less, because I like it for certain aspects nor do I defend these flaws blindly.
This is one of the aspects that a lot of people don't realize. It's actually weird how this aspect with videogames translates so well to real life as well. You can really tell in real life when someone is mature or not. Our maturity and understandings of real-life things actually also translates to smaller things in life as well like videogames. Just something to think about.
Re-reading your comment I don't think my reply directly correlates to your comments, but I wrote it anyway, so take it as something to think about I guess.
playing through the game a second time i definitely notice these problems a lot more. half the time im rolling around dodging an attack behind me only to get hit by a folllow up attack from the same enemy gliding towards me while still off screen. The purple projectile indicator only flashes while the enemy is charging the attack, not when it is fired and its much harder to dodge as a consequence
I really want this content creator to review God of War Ragnorak. It addresses a lot of his issues while also doubling down on others, would love to hear his input.
I LOVE this game. I have played it through 4 times, and am starting a 5th. And yet, I've come back to this video time and again. I think hearing valid criticism of the things we love is good. I really appreciate the clarity and focus of this criticism, and maybe one day, I'll understand. But for now, I'm happy that both this video, and my love for the game, can both exist simultaneously.
Do you play fromsoft games?
To many a comment: You can't call caring about details "nitpicking" just because you think they aren't valid. Most of Mat's criticisms are based around treating Norse God as a game FIRST above all else. From that perspective/context, the points made throughout these 41 minutes are perfectly reasonable. These details do matter and aren't things to be swept under the rug just because you found the game's tale moving and visual/audio flair encapsulating. The core pillar of games is still the gameplay (i.e. the interactive elements). Graphics/music/story/etc. are ultimately auxiliary to that core pillar and should serve to enhance that core, not replace or stand by it with equal importance. If those things ultimately serve as a detriment to the interactive elements, then it is a worse GAME for it.
Problem with this review isn't nitpicking but rather the general lack of understanding of the combat mechanics on the reviewer's part. Go to any high level gameplay video of God of War from GBG and SmvR and you will see the extreme level of precision and control over their characters and complete dominance over the enemies and their surroundings. You will think as if the the issues raised in this video are completely gone, but the reality is just that this reviewer has no care for tactics or strategy.
For example, while complaining about the slowdown of runic attacks at 12:01, in the footage he is trying use the rune that is intended to precisely take out distant targets where the slowdown is actually very useful for targeting while failing to realize that there runes that active instantly like the one at 16:12 which can effectively interrupt many enemies as a large area effect. You are supposed to figure out strategic advantages of each rune and only use at the right time unlike waiting forever for the cooldown to spam the powerful attacks like this reviewer suggests which is actually quite ineffective.
There are a few good criticisms here but most of time he is immediately jumping on things he acknowledges as flaws only at first glance. Like how he complains about the Revenant's attack for its amorphous nature and he isn't sure whether to dodge or block, when the whole deal with Revenant is that its attacks are designed to trick you and make your habitual tactics ineffective so you need to overcome the challenge through experimentation. Realization that you can block the attack and can stop the Revenant from disappearing with Atreus's arrows is one part of that process (the arrow thing is super obvious as its hinted by the game but the reviewer still seem to struggle with it). On that point the best strategy to tackle the Revenant is to launch it into air and air juggle through combos as it can't disappear and escape while airborne. After you find a solution with each enemy like is part of becoming effective at combat.
The fact that the reviewer thinks the blades and the axe is analogues and is unaware of the advantages of each weapon is makes it clear that he didn't put enough effort to understand the intricacies of the combat system. In stark contrast to claims in this video, I do find the Give Me God of War the best way to play after a certain skill level and it doesn't even take long to dispatch enemies of increased health pools with the right skills, gear and tactics. After beating the game at that difficulty in ng+, I can safely say that returning any other lower difficulty feels unsatisfactory and not fun.
Of course I have only talked about the gameplay aspect but I also think most of the criticisms with the story also misses the mark but this comment is already becoming a novel so I won't get into that.
@@weaverquest You can find high level play of literally any game. Watching a pro player says a lot about their own skill, but little about the game itself. The overuse of slowdown effect is annoying no matter the context and disguising an enemy attack by making it amorphous as some kind of "surprise" for the player to have a "realization" is the most idiotic thing I've heard, it adds nothing to the game. Matthew never suggests to abuse powerful attacks, he states that the cooldown system incentivizes the player to do that instead of learning how to play, which it does.
@@SealedReality
You definitely can't find high-level gameplay for every game. Ever heard of this concept called skill cap? God of War has a very high one as showcased by many people on youtube. I have beaten the game on hardest ng+ including all the Valkyries and still clueless about some of the moves they pull off. Anyway moving on.
"The overuse of slowdown effect is annoying no matter the context" As I have already stated there are runic attacks that activate instantly, NO SLOWDOWN at all to reiterate, like this one 16:11 called Hel's Touch. The context is everything when, or if, you realize different runes are designed to be used strategically in certain situations. The slowdown effect on others is actually pretty useful because it gives you enough reaction time to pick out distant enemies for long-range attacks or for larger areas effects, it gives you time to assess the situation on the battlefield which is again very useful. He also pointlessly criticized the slowdown effect when reflecting projectiles at 12:18 even though that gives you an opportunity to strategically return the projectile to the target you want, you can even return it to the target behind you (by pressing down on d-pad) that's about the hit you.
Disguising the Revenant's attacks serves the purpose of giving the players a different kind of challenge and catch them off-guard (which clearly worked too well on the reviewer). They could have easily made it an obvious giant ball of lighting but that would be missing the point. That amorphous attack is an invisible force field where you only see its trace on the ground which is why blocking with the shield works. You might not like the design but presenting a clearly visible projectile as a solution to this "flaw" like the reviewer does is again severely missing the point.
Besides that claiming the cooldown system incentivizes the player to do them instead of learning how to play because apparently, it is simple to stall for time in this game 18:12, is by far the stupidest part of the video. The point of cooldown systems is that you can't rely on them all the time. Stalling for time is impossible in this game in most situations because enemies are very aggressive and relentlessly attack from every angle. He shows stalling one regular enemy in the video as an example which is a pathetic way to make that point since you are dealing with 3-4 stronger enemies all the time. You don't even need a rune to deal with that one guy in the first place. Not to mention the runes intended to deal significant damage have the longest charging time anyway. Anyone who can think by themselves should be able to realize how weak the argument made at that part and how forced this particular criticism is.
He also spends a lot of time criticizing the move assists which was simply there as training wheels for beginners but why does he never mention that you can turn them completely off in the settings and have full manual control? That's an important detail to mention if you are supposed to be going in-depth with the combat analysis no?
That's not the say you need to be really skilled at the game to enjoy it. Everyone I watched playing the game found the combat fun and satisfying immediately. Also given the almost unanimously positive critical reception of the game and IGN calling it the best action game of the decade and whatnot suggest the vast majority enjoyed the gameplay. The problem with this video is that he is playing the game at a super casual level while trying to make an in-depth analysis. Most would agree with me that for games like this you need to be at a certain skill level to properly understand the mechanics of the game and then make an in-depth analysis.
@@weaverquest I did watch a few high level videos. All they were doing was exploiting max level gear to make Kratos OP and using the same moves over and over. I beat Ninja Gaiden 3 on Master Ninja, so even watching that was really boring.
Good thing I finished Give Me God of War once, now I don't have to play it ever again.
"The slowdown effect on others is actually pretty useful because it gives you enough reaction time" That would make sense if you couldn't get hit during slowdowns, but you can. If anything, it's giving the enemies more time to interrupt you. And you can react normally without slowdown
, so there's no point to it. You could at least be honest and admit that the game simply put an annoying cinematic effect to make stuff look cool... there's no gameplay purpose there.
"Giving the player a different challenge" is a lame excuse for poorly telegraphed attacks. Try again.
"The point of cooldown systems is that you can't rely on them all the time." The point of cooldown systems is that your most powerful move will be usable again if you just wait. It simply results in lazy play. Not debatable.
"Stalling for time is impossible in this game" Really? I found it very easy to do, you just have to be good with your dodges and the camera. Astral Chain had cooldowns too, but at least it had the decency of making enemies resistant to your skills over time, so you effectively can't abuse them, even if you try.
"you can turn them completely off in the settings" Irrelevant. This feature shouldn't even exist tbw. I've seen my fair share of Action games that had a soft lock-on to help the player, but GOW18 was the first one to add this forward momentum to it. The game literally has no trust in the player to even hit the enemies.
"Also given the almost unanimously positive critical reception" Ad populum. And I'm not interested in what IGN has to say.
Since you seem interested in high level play, let me tell you. I'm an Action game fan and the Action game community agrees that GOW18 is mediocre. i've seen people put it on par with DmC: Devil May Cry and Resident Evil 6. Even Santa Monica Studios themselves praised this video on their Twitter when it came out, so your white knighting is pointless. Come on, friend...
@@SealedReality man you destroyed these fools
Hey guys there's an insufferable fanboy within the comment section who is constantly denying and shitting this critiques points more than actually playing the game, you will know 😮💨
Cringe fanboy that just want's attention and for every single person on the planet to validate his feelings for a video game. He's just embarrassing himself more and more with every post he makes.
Great video and great analysis. I wish all long form gaming videos were as well thought out as this. Keep up the good work Matt.
Oh my god NeverKnowsBest is a Matthewmatosis fan? Now we know why your videos are so good! You are carrying the torch man, great work!
@@tommero6584NeverKnowsBest gives more in some ways. Matthew would never make a review for a game like Skyrim or Cyberpunk. So NKB is filling the gap.
The new Spider-Man game on PS4 also has a lot of Move Assist for its enemies. I've lost count of how many times I got sucker punched by a thug that came in sliding from off screen.
I fucking hated that from spiderman. I don't mind some tracking attacks to spice the combat, but making tracking attacks the norm is bullshit.
You got sucker punched because you didn't dodge
@@frogglen6350 That's the point. If the enemy is far away you'd think "ok, now he can't reach me", but then he comes gliding towards you so you have to dodge every single atack "just in case".
Frog Glen yeah that’s the thing, the clear part of the problem.
In order to dodge, you have to press the “dodge button.” You can’t just rely on precise character movement. You can’t “dodge” like someone in real life would “dodge.”
I replayed Bloodborne not too long ago and I have to say one of the most satisfying feelings is learning the limits of a strong enemy’s hit boxes and attack patterns and using character movement alone to weave around them, no dodge roll required. Allows you to be so much more creative and efficient with combat, because the hit boxes aren’t being magnetized towards you.
@@IanZWhite00 in DS and BB people call that spacing, you want to be distant enough not to get hit but cose enough to punish.
And theres another thing called strathing. If an enemy does a vertical slash you can just walk to the side in DS, or "duck" below a jumping atack.
In GoW and Spider-man enemies turn 180 degrees to hit you and come gliding from afar. The only strategy is "dodge" or "block" every time and that's so lame.
Game designers have faltered hard and are now held down by pretentious writers. The strive to be "cinematic" and "taken seriously" has warped where the effort needs to go.
It's strange to think about, but storytelling and design has barely evolved, its gotten blander. The art however, has just blossomed and become astonishing.
You ....literally just summed up every metal gear game
You outdid yourself with this one. Along with the microgames ones, I've been rewatching this video a lot over the past year. Your arguments are sound, but above all else, the way the script flows and the visual match that flow makes it very watchable. 40 minutes is far from short, but it all felt tight and concise. I never felt like a minute was wasted. For what it's worth I really like it.
Ok, since there are many people commenting on Ragnarok I would like to comment on a few things. The first thing is that there are many obtuse people who take pains not to understand the current problem of the franchise and release empty takes.
First of all, I'm not a fan of this game. I think the combat system leaves a lot to be desired but I also think the story is lacking (no matter how good the script is). This game is an image wash for Kratos and for everything that this saga represented as a Sony banner. A horribly violent and bloodthirsty franchise with clear blockbuster intentions that became nastier and more misanthropic the further it went. GOW 2018 was limited to cleaning up Kratos while forgetting that he represented an important era in gaming history, one in which violence made its way to the masses. It was not a deep or intelligent game that invited you to reflect on Kratos' past, it was a story of escape and oblivion.
But if there's one thing the new game wanted to do (and did) it was get closer to Kratos. As much as I hate the camera (and believe me, I hate it), his goal was to bring the violence closer to the player, a much more complex violence but also more complicated to perform. The sequence shot was a dazzling and unnecessary visual paraphernalia, but it served very well since in my opinion it gave a dreamlike and personal feeling to the trip of Kratos and Atreus (although I would remove it anyway). There are a couple more questionable design decisions that prioritize the game's feeling over combat. And that was wrong, yes, but they had a reason. They were decisions that the team took. Decisions that a GREAT majority applauded. I do not want to say that the masses are right (because they are not) but if such award-winning aspects of the game as the sequence shot, the camera and the cinematic sequences are so well received and celebrated by the public, why should they change them?
People have a misconception about the design of the current triple A, they believe that every decision is deliberate by members of the design team and that is not always the case. They can be the product of the lack of economic, temporary, labor resources, and many other things, such as obtuse directors who insist on complying with what market studies tell them. The bigger the game, the more conditioned it will be. Do you really think that in Santa Monica studios there are no people with opinions contrary to what the game ended up being? That everyone got together and unanimously decided to fill the game with the worst decisions possible?
In this video Matthew makes an important reflection with doing the best you can with the situation that you are given, why don't more people think the same?
And I want to get this out of the way, if a game is not difficult does not make it worse, of course, the feeling of gratification of overcoming challenges is satisfactory and there is nothing more pleasant than observing that the game is designed in such a way but the self-imposed challenges are served so that people can do them. As flawed as the combat system is, higher dificulties than the standard one are going to present challenges even if they do it wrong. We can complain how the platforming and exploration system of the game is a fucking joke with no option to fail but that is what it is. It's okay to complain when they do it the first time but for Ragnarok they clearly didn't change it because the game design isn't like that. And in my personal opinion, since it is not one of the central points of the new games, this does not represent a big problem. Having NPCs telling you what to do during combat is NOT anything new un videogames, don't kid yourself.
Making cinematic games or being a walking simulator isn't inherently inferior and playing them doesn't make you casual either. To think that is to be elitist and obtuse.
And I clarify again, I'm not a fan of these games (I'm not even a fan of the Greek saga anymore), I always play niche ps2 games, blockbusters don't interest me in the least but you don't have to be closed-minded either that there is only one good type of action adventure games and everything else is inferior.
This game and Ragnarok MUST be criticized but not for trying to be cinematic, but for the fact that in reality its cinematic appearance belies questionable design decisions that have their origins in an industry that has found a safe way to make money, gain prestige and make players believe that what they play is transgressive, when in fact it is not.
OK but it's still way better than any fromsoft title
Best review on gow
Less whining about how it does no justice to the franchise
And more points and revelations about how it could have been better
When u say it has potential gives me hopes that the developers will make the next game better
And i love ur channel mate
I mean but you do have to agree games like GoW2 and GoW3 are objectively more enjoyable games than this lmao
@@shu830 i agree, but enjoyability is not a metric of objectivity
@@shu830 Enjoyability isn't objective.
@@edgyboi1995 After seeing the gameplay trailer of GOW Ragnarok in the Playstation Showcase... it seems you are right, they will just expand on it, and that's it.
@@edgyboi1995 Nostradamus...
I keep returning to this video and NakeyJakey's The Last of Us 2 video. I think it might because they feel more like an industry critique rather than just a video game analysis.
Same but I also think I keep returning to this one because I often find TH-cam criticism disappointing. This video has so much nuance and foresight then any other AAA game review I’ve seen.
I just beat Ragnarok on GMGOW and I found myself thinking about this video a lot. Most of the criticisms hold true for the sequel. There are a couple things they did improve though.
For one, you can now disable abilities in the skill tree. Not a huge deal, was probably easy to implement, but hey it’s there. Also I feel like the damage sponginess of enemies has been reduced. I have not rigorously tested this but I distinctly remember the opening section of norse god before you have access to any side content being fucking miserable to get through on GMGOW. I did not get that feeling this time.
On the other hand, I think the “puzzles” have gotten much worse. That clip you played of waiting for the waterwheel to turn to jump a gap just to get some hacksilver replayed in my mind a hundred times while I worked through Ragnarok. So many “puzzles” were just exercises in tedium. Many times I found myself thinking “do I have to?” I would see how a puzzle is laid out, know what I had to do to solve it, and not want to go through the motions. It was so much of “climb up this ledge, hit a switch, climb down, do another thing, climb back up and hit the switch again” etc. they were all exercises in patience rather than problem solving. Given that, the forced unskippable cutscenes, pseudo cutscenes, and parts where you had to play as atreus, I cannot see myself playing through the game again.
Also, the ending felt rushed and it threw out a lot of what was built up during the rest of the story.
The part about the ending being rushed I feel like they had some big ideas they had to cut and we are left with what remained like the cut content about surtr and sinmara. Other than that the entire Ragnarok portion feels like they placed a lot of payoffs in this tiny portion of the game. Not the war part but the boss battles and the way one of the bosses seemed to have been sacrificed to make the player very emotionally invested in defeating the other one. Not that it wasn't a good payoff or that it at least lines up with what has been set up in the game and the previous entry, but more that it feels weighted to make you feel it was epic whilst being a very small portion. It's as if 40% of the importance of the game took place in 3% of it's run time. It felt quick.
Ayo stop giving that frog guy attention it actually hinders this comment section to be civil, just ignore him and dont reply, i still want to hear opinions but nothing of sense is being created since everybody tryna argue with him
So you ignore free speech
@@frogglen6350 No, they're ignoring you.
@@jondoe7036
Just like how ragnarok devs ignored this garbage faux intellectual video
@@frogglen6350 cope
He's a funny troll man live a little.
They didn't learn.
Unfortunately.
Remember, if it makes a lot of money it doesn't matter if it's of good quality or not.
What was there to learn, exactly? maybe try playing the game instead of pretentious youtubers
@@ezzahhh
You can apply that to every fromsoft title :)
@@frogglen6350 Spoken like a true Fanboy
As much as I enjoyed God of War 2018, I can't deny it feels like so many other video games I've played in the last 4 years. It falls into that category I call 'good generic'; not bad, but terribly familiar. I'm getting increasingly tired of the nearly identical game mechanics and gimmicks showing up everywhere these days. Crafting. Skill trees. Simple puzzles. Upgrades littered everywhere. Uneventful climbing sequences. Following a slow moving AI to the next plot critical area. The game taking control away because it doesn't trust me to do the thing (unless the thing is killing enemies). These mechanics/gimmicks are not inherently awful, but the gaming industry is relying on them too much, almost to the point where sometimes it comes off like a sloppy copy and paste job.
In short: I agree wholeheartedly with your observations. Also, I'm really glad to see a new video from you!
Gimmicks aren't bad at all and wished people realized that. It's more of a positive good thing than anything else.
AAA games these days often go through a similar cycle for me: 1. Almost uncritical praise at launch while critical voices are unwelcome, 2. a sobering revelation while playing it myself that - while good - it's not "the best game ever made" and that it indeed does have some flaws, 3. more and more critical views appear after some time has passed and the initial hype has died down a bit.
a bit?
after 1-2weeks like horizon dawn even farcray5 nobody said a word about those games anymore! = marketing scam!
marketing these days means buying youtube = buying the populist reviewers and a lot of likes.
I never believe those numbers!
After consumerist hype dies down, and the hastily made day one reviews launch, more critical, academic minds that truly want the past for the medium have a go. That's how it's always worked. Good constructive criticism takes time. Time is not something more mainstream outlets have. Time is money after all.
3 actually is the fourth phase, that's after attention has died down. The real third phase is while the game is still being talked about, but the hype has down, and is more in the form of a backlash than thoughtful reflection. It's where you draw in the audience who don't like the game, and are desperate for anything that's not overblown praise, that they will lower their standards to see some angry person tear the game to pieces in rage.
Every game gets a ridiculous high score, Knack 2 got a 7 out of 10, dead cells got a 9.7 out of 10, so is Knack 2 a great game and dead cells one of the greatest games ever made?...... not at all, businesses give favourable reviews for exclusives to boost profits
God of war was a great game, not the greatest ever made, but this game seems to be unfairly devisive, why do people love to hate on this game so much when games like Call of Duty get 9/10s religiously and no one bats an eye?
No one bats an eye on COD's 9/10? are you serious?
This is about as fair and honest as you can be while being harsh on a passion project. Once more I commend you, Matthew.
I finally got to play this game and was left with an experience akin to eating a lot of cotton candy at once. Sweet, but hollow and brief. I could clearly see the game struggling between what it wanted to be, contrasted with what it was pressed down into being. I do hope this formulaic approach gets the door once people had enough, so we can usher in a new era of focused experiences and game design devoid of safe, market research fueled industry meddling
Well said
Yeah. You don't appreciate good games. aMaybe fortnite is more up your pea brained size ally
Honestly why I love souls games and Nintendo games so much. They’re not trying to be movies, they’re trying to be games. A lot of indie games are good examples as well.
I played pretty much every Souls game pretty much my favourite franchise but I actually like the combat in God of War more. It is just as skill based and deliberate as the Souls games but much more aggressive and with potential of some crazy improvised combos. The criticisms in this video of the combat misses the mark completely in my opinion. You can watch high level gameplay videos of God of War from GBG and SmvR and see the complaints made in this video are mostly from inexperience.
@@weaverquest There's high level gameplay of any game. It's not a good argument. Why do crazy combos when you can just do the same thing, easier and faster. Also the enemy variety and the tools aka two weapons just makes the game more boring and frustrating.
@@Drake00000010 Notice how the reviewer is struggling and complaining at the large health pools of the enemies in Give Me God of War mode. That's why you do the crazy combos or play strategically. That mode is the true way to enjoy the game and developers give some genuinely awesome gear for beating the game at that difficulty. After reaching a certain skill level the lower difficulties feel quite unsatisfying. The Leviathan Axe and Blades of Chaos combo is simply amazing. Axe is for insane damage to a single enemy and precise long distant attacks while blades are for crowd control and very effective at that. Even the fist/shield combat is immensely useful if you have to play defensively against certain enemies. The two weapons, shield and the fists feel really satisfying to use with proper weight behind each attack and the right feeling of impact. Most action games fail at that aspect.
@Mr.Tweezy007
Huh?
Everybody back then cried about how the chains were too overpowered and made the other weapons useless in the older games.
Take off your nostalgia bias
@@frogglen6350 one error dont justify the other
You are one of the few critics that truely understands how this medium works. I unironically watch your vids to get better at realising the potential of video games to their fullest
If I can make a suggestion, I recommend MrBTongue. His videos discuss various non-mechanical components of games.
Pan Z the guy that hasn't made a video in quite some time?
If you're looking for more content by MrBtongue he has been doing a lot of writing for a blogging site called twenty sided headed by one shamus young. His most recent work is an ongoing multipart analysis of The Witcher 3.
Hbomberguy's videos on games are the same kinda quality as Mathew's. With the focus on stuff other channels don't seem to focus on like the storytelling of the game mechanics as opposed to the narrative and cut scenes. Like his video on the game LISA is one of the best videos on gaming I've ever seen, it's great, I learnt a lot about what makes games a unique storytelling medium compared to films, books and so on. How games can tell stories in ways no other medium can, and why that should be focused on instead of trying to make interactive movies which don't at all exploit the possibilities of what games can and should be. Their channels compliment each other as I believe his movie-length video on Dark Souls 2 was a direct response to Mathew's video. It's worth watching both to see where your opinion lies.
@@duffman18 Hbomberguy's DS2 video is one of the worst "analysis" videos on this site. Full of golden statements such as, "DS2 was the blueprint for Bloodborne" and "DS2 disincentivizes shield usage" even though it has like 50 shields, and a ring that buffs shields.
That video is an hour-and-half of a bitter nerd raging over the fact someone didn't like a video game the way he does. I've seen multiple people who like DS2 say that video sucks. It makes DS2 fans look like whiney morons.
Holy shit that move assist.
I never noticed it in other people's playthroughs but now I can't unsee it.
The fact that enemies also benefit from it is crazy and feels possibly unintentional or at least misguided on the part of the developer.
also clarity and consistency, the two most important metrics enabling efficient and effective radio communication.
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."
Just a neat quote from some rat movie that I feel emphasizes much of what you said at the end. While I like both God of War 4 and negative criticism, your account of the difficulties of creating a game made me link the two in a way I was close to for much of the review. It showed you scare, because you care. Thanks.
good criticism is vital to improving ones skills so I dont see how it would ever be less meaningfull then a piece of junk
bad criticism on the other hand well that could be
Pedda Z Yes but clearly in the context of just someone referring to the stereotypical hyper negative critic who isn’t looking to be constructive at all... which is a fair amount of people to say the least
Constructive criticism doesn’t really happen often and I wish it did.
@@speeddemonji9547 expressing dislike is constructice enough most of the time
Take the "the elders scrolls" series
Do you have to explain in detail why dumbing the game down is bad? Or is it enough to let the developer know that you dont approve
Or do you have to explain in detail why you dont want pay to win or microtransacrions or a buggy launch
So yeah I think most of the time expression alone is good enough
Pedda ZZ well, I wasn’t really speaking in reference to those pointing out such glaring issues anyway but I suppose you’re right.
@@peddazz2365 No, expressing dislike is not constructive. You might as well tell a kid that you didn't like the way they put the toys in the toy bin without explaining why. Literally the only thing you're doing is making people dislike you. Now if you provided actual constructive criticism, keep in mind that constructive doesn't have to be negative at all, then that is perfectly fine and might actually help the creators.
11:28 it took me really long to get used to the fact that, in this game, I'll get hit by attacks that just shouldn't hit because the enemy was a mile away and I didn't expect it to glide to my face in an instant. I'm glad that someone pointed this out.
I don't know if this is something unique to this new "case study" format, but I really enjoyed how often you brought up other games in comparison to GoW. Show's off how knowledgeable you are with games and illustrates your arguments a lot more clearly. Loved the vid as always Matthew, hope to see more long form videos like this in the future.
I love it too. It really contextualizes everything he's saying. I hope he continues doing it. The gaming industry, its journalists, and consumers all have problems learning from the past, so doing callbacks is really nice.
That's one of the biggest issues I have with most modern games criticism. I love how he contextualizes his criticisms with comparisons to other games in order to highlight its shortcomings. A lot of sites like ign will flip flop between reviewing a game on its own merits or within the context of the games industry as a whole (they mostly lean towards the former). Doing only the former isn't as helpful as it's a sequel and an action game so it will inevitably be compared to not only prior games in that franchise but also prior games in that same genre.
While there is merit to reviewing a game by itself it also ignores the fact that games do not exist in a vacuum. They are built on the shoulders and backs of other titles, taking what came before in order to make something new. Comparison serve as a way to examine what certain games do wrong and how some other games are better.
When thegamingbrit did that everyone was shouting ''U SHOULD JUDGE THE GAME ON ITS OWN MERITS''
It sort of blew my mind how he basically just grabbed every possible comparative example I could think of.
God Hand, RE, Dragon's Dogma, Bayonetta, DMC, MGR, Dark Souls - it's all there. These are the games that comparisons would be drawn from, and they are both new and old.
MM says that it might be unfair to compare God of War to every possible apex of its genre, but frankly I disagree. It blew my mind that The Witcher 3 would put so much effort and budget into such an amazing world with great character animations and content, but then gave a comparatively pathetic amount of attention to the combat system which comprises so much of the game itself. What exactly at CDPR prevented them spending time on the combat so it could provide a satisfying basic experience? There are so many existing examples in Dragon's Dogma, Dark Souls and DMC to draw from and it's like they pretend these games don't exist - you just get spamming attacks and auto-lock on. WHY? Why can't western devs just copy good combat from these japanese games, get that down to a good degree, and THEN focus on the aesthetic stuff. If the core gameplay is good, then it can carry everything else.
God of War is the same. You have a library of incredible games to draw from, but you just...don't. Frankly I don't care about developer effort, or whatever - there is no excuse. There is no excuse to have these iconic games with perfect combat systems ready to inspire you, and just ignore everything they do. Eventually a western dev will get this, and they will make all other western devs look like lazy morons.
Thank you so much for the comments regarding good combat not needing number upgrades. It's something that's always really annoying me about games that dress their entire combat around passive numeric upgrades, without fully embracing an RPG/customization aspect that could allow this to mean something.
The moment you introduce this sort of system, you almost entirely need some level of customization in there to keep a sense of player expression active, or else it ends up meaning very little, outside of a loose way to increase/decrease the difficulty manually for the player. Few games balance their number scaling well enough for the latter to ever happen successfully, and a designer needs to be able to trust their audience regarding customization to truly take place. So it's a shame that it often gets used the way it generally does. A way to make people feel more "skilled" because they increased a number that makes the game easier. It's a false sense of progression.
That's why I enjoyed Furi so much. No unnecessary stuff
Aboveup Very good points, I have the same problem with health upgrades which are more common in this genre I’d say. Lots of action games end up being hardest at the start because you don’t know what you’re doing yet and you have a minuscule health bar. And then the end game is much easier than it should be because you can now take so many hits cough dark souls cough. Game designers should try to balance their games around a static amount of health, and make the bosses and enemies slightly more punishing as the game goes on, to accommodate your increasing skill. Just my two cents :)
@@uraveragedude9957 Although RPG not need to be always bad in action games, Dark Souls and Monster Hunter even with their shortcomings i think those games do it very well, it doesn't feel tackled on.
@@alfredoamendez4299 it's because of how scaling works in those games, it's not just a static stat bump
Just to clarify on Kratos's son's sudden change in personality, apparently the devs had to cut some of the story, this part in particular, in order to meet the early 2018 release date. They clarified that the original idea was to have his ego grow over time instead of instantly, which would have been far better.
But the game was already so long...
i think its another point in the long list of excuses they had like a mile long list of things they removed one of them was jump attacks, more bosses, and re spawning enemies so the world isnt just empty 90% of the time once you cleared an area. Pretty much they spent the entire 8 years trying to make a sad dad story with a child character with a one shot camera and everything else was either unimportant or very secondary to them.
@@chellejohnson9789 I honestly, and as much as I lament losing some of the best parts when Atreus is blinded by his ego, just wished they had cut those sections instead. Make Atreus a bit of a dick, sure, he can quickly recover and it wouldn't matter as much.
But imo, his behavior reached points of ridiculousness, like him killing that God without any remorse whatsoever, being a dick to that dwarf and fucking shooting an arrow at his own father. What the fuck. You can't expect me to believe it all got resolved because Kratos told him to shut the fuck up for 5 minutes the moment they fell into Hellheim again. They only thing needed from those sequences is the death of the God but that easily solved by... I don't know showing him dead and a conversation would imply he was killed by Thor (his own father or whatever). It would add tension to their relationship. I mean, this writes itself, I know making a cutscene is hard, but come on!
No, the devs were lazy and stupid. They never notice any shortcomings of their work at all, and simply put it out as is, because they think we are dumb consumers. This guy is the debbie downer of game reviewers. I watch, and appreciate what he puts out and the effort, but he analyzes game narratives like they are literature. It can be difficult, because unlike literature or film, games can be poorly written and still be enjoyable. It seems game narratives want to be taken seriously, so I suppose its alright to rip them apart. Yet, I feel like if I ever watched any of these prior to playing, I wouldn’t bother.....but am glad I did.
@@chellejohnson9789 You can have a super long game that feels like it was cut and disjointed. If you were planning to make a 100 hour long game and cut it to be 20-30 hours, then yeah, it’ll feel pretty jarring.
I was listening to a few interviews with Cory Balrog and apparently GoW 2018 was supposed to be a much grander story than the one we ended up getting. They had to cut a ton of plot points and I feel it shows in the final product. The climax especially felt like it was sort of slapped together writing wise and didn’t leave any strong impression after the game was over.
they did it again
Good.
How to get Matthewmatosis excited in just three words:
The Wonderful 101.
isnt that five words
Miyazaki68 No, the word "one" is used twice and "o" is just a letter so it's still only three words.
1: The
2: Wonderful
3: One
+gghhghhghgh gghhghhghgh
That's not how word counts work though.
Anyway, "one-oh-one" is a single word.
Thanks pedantic youtube, for never being any fun.
How about 2 words: Dark Souls
lmaaaooo the Atreus pawn made me crease
it means laugh
StaySkeptic laughing really hard
@@stayskeptic3923 probably a British thing
Because when you laugh your face creases up.
Mad lad crease
Thank you! It was really something! By now, having watched most of your videos, I can safely say that you're the best critic I've come across. You offer deep insights (not only on games but on art as a whole) and you are infinitely entertaining and at time quite funny in your own way. Again, thank you!
35:20 That made me think... The Norse Games pretend to be oh so mature, but their bloated amount of repetitive overly simple puzzles beneath the level of Zelda-Games which are aimed at 6-12 year olds, tells a different story of whom this game is aimed at.
.God of war....has always had simple puzzles....go play zelda of ya don't like it
@@frogglen6350 god you are so cringe i really tired of this hollywood games they are not mature as the stupid gamers think they are
@@frogglen6350 The older games had slightly more difficult puzzles anyway. And they didn't have a small child pointing hints out to you before you even realize you're in a puzzle room.
@@thebuddah1253
I had no difficulties at all with the older games. And I think God of War 3's only real puzzle was Hera's garden. Which isn't even hard
@TheBuddah
"They didn't have big hints"
Yes...let's ignore the very obvious Giant Red Circle Button or shiny spot on a lever
Tacked on RPG mechanics have been on a mind a lot lately. I think a stat based leveling system has no place in a skill based spectacle fighter. If you want to have something like that you need to go all the way and make a full RPG, but in a game like God of War anything other than new combat skills is just adding pointless number crunching on top of a fun combat system. All that min-maxing bullshit is just unnecessary padding that takes away from the core gameplay. That stuff is better left for turn based combat games and the like where preparation and strategy are more important than good reflexes and thinking under pressure.
Super Bunnyhop created a video titled "Boring upgrade systems" a few years ago. Might make for an interesting view.
Lackluster Player I'll check it out then.
I think it could work, if it were balanced. Like, for example, you upgrade Kratos’ attack, but your defense goes down. Now you can kill enemies faster, but _you’re_ also easier to kill. Do you take the damage boost, or play it safer and keep the HP? That might make things more interesting.
Adorni
But that sucks tho because then why not just include an entire game mode where the point is that both you and the enemies take more damage like Heaven or Hell from Devil May Cry?
Because it plays to the idea of setting up a build. I don't know if you ever played any of the early Fallout games, but the "Perks" from that series had this interesting little setup where it would give you an advantage, but also give you a drawback to balance things out. That's different than a difficulty setting: In Heaven or Hell Mode, both you and every enemy in the game can die in one hit. That means it's painfully easy to kill enemies, but it's also painfully easy for YOU to die. But that applies across the entire game, start to finish.
The idea behind a build is to try to maximize your strengths, and minimize your drawbacks, and to do this over a period of growth as the game progresses. A lot of people have a lot of fun figuring out what the best builds are, and a lot of other people enjoy the work that first group put into making that build, or tweaking it in small ways to make it more unique to them. God of War's "build" mechanics, however, are painfully boring and simplistic, and offer nothing of actual value to a game of this type. So if that's the case, why even have the build option at all?
Still, I opted my opinion as a way of figuring out how to make something like this work for this type of game. God Hand does something somewhat similar with it's "Moveset Build." You figure out which moves to put together in your "deck" to maximize your offensive potential, while minimizing your openings or downtimes. That's a much more engaging mechanic for this type of game, and still incorporates the concept of a "build." So, maybe in the future God of War could go with that?
Couldn't agree more, great video! Thanks for giving a voice for that cubconscious frustration I had when playing this game. This camera was a nightmare, and pulling into to many directions it the best description summarizing industry problems.
This is exactly how I felt why I couldn't sit through God of War - even when I played it back in 2018 until today on a high refresh rate gaming PC. The only commendable thing is the narrative which is tragic to realize when this medium should thrive in its interactivity. Because the gameplay aspect of this game is just unengaging to me. The mechanics get arbitrarily changed to fit the story and it results in a hugely inconsistent experience that obviously feels like a roller coaster instead of a real adventure.
In contrast, I just played and finished Resident Evil 4 this year and it was one of the best adventure games I have ever played period. Progression may be linear on paper, but the design in that game is very consistent in its delineation between gameplay and story - without compromising either side. What you can do at the very start of the game, you can always do whenever you're given control right until the end. How the game adds tension however, is by designing elements outside the player that challenge the established mechanics progressively. Yes, there were quicktime events, but they were few and far between. And they helped engage the player during cutscenes - instead of putting the controller down because they're unskippable.
The same thing can be said about Max Payne 2, which came out in 2003. What's funny is that game was extremely cinematic - but it knows how to put gameplay first and preserve its consistency by ensuring cinematic moments DO NOT interrupt the established mechanics but supplement the gameplay instead.
The main problem I have about God of War, and modern Sony exclusives in general, is that they are cinematic experiences first, and gameplay second. Even Spider-Man which is out on PC, feels more like an interactive marvel movie that's loud and pretty, but lacks any mechanical depth that feels satistying to interact with. These games always feel like control is given to you just so you could unlock more cutscenes.
.....Um. Gid of War has always been cinnamatic. That hydra battle in the 2005 game should have already made this clear. This just wasn't for you
And Resi 4 got ruined after you had to babysit
@@frogglen6350 cinnamatic lmao
In most games you are the character helping to shape the story. In these games, you are the stunt person doing a job.
Finally, someone who doesn't worship Spider-Man PS4 and actually acknowledges the issues it had.
This is such a good video. I find myself coming back to it every so often, it also makes me wish you did an analysis for every single game you mentioned, God Hand and Dragon's Dogma especially.
Monster Hunter it's another that comes to my mind, especially after seeing him mentioning briefly the franchise in his most recent video, "Context Sensitivity".
I guarantee nobody in the development team listened and they doubled down on everything.
Well this video is catered to the loud minority. Don't like it? Play something else. Or go make your own game. I bet...
you'll change the industry Pffft
@@frogglen6350 Shut up Shill-san! this video speaks for a lot of people. And IGN Korea agrees, go read their review of the new game.
They learned nothing.
It's even worse considering the Santa Monica Studio itself addressed this video replying to it but it seems they either didnt care or thought they knew better
Someone on the writing team also thought it would be worthwhile to have Thor yell, "KEEP HER NAME OUT OF YOUR F***ING MOUTH!" during the final fight when Kratos tries reasoning with him. This in an "epic" story about Norse gods and mythology. Just let that sink in...
@@frogglen6350 least fanboyish god of war stan
It's a bit of a bummer to read reviews and watch videos for God of War Ragnarok and it doesn't look like anything has changed.
Don't fix what ain't broken
Remember. All Devil May Cry games play the same.
@@frogglen6350 DMC games do not all play the same. What are you talking about?
Finally watching this, just wanted to say thank you for your ability to be both thorough and concise in your videos that aren't a full game commentary. I can much more easily digest and rewatch a 40 minute video as opposed to say a 3 hour one.
Hands down one of the best critiques on your channel, looking for more!
Tieing hit reactions to levels is such a bad idea. It's the worst part of Nier Automata's combat.
DreamedLint N:A would be better off without levelling. The modding scene of that game is really light but I hope one day someone will do a mod which will always scale enemies to your level.
@@stardust_2339 Personally, I agree but I do acknowledge that the developers were trying to make a more accessible experience for fans of more strict action rpgs like Nier. A mod is a good idea, though. In fact it would have been brilliant for them to implement it as an optional difficulty rather than just increasing enemy damage.
DreamedLint N:A has a lot of great ideas but it barely ever utilize them. You are never required to experiment with combos, the starting weapons are the best in the game and you can carry 4x99 healing items.
Weapon upgrading is not done well, the dodge mechanic is overplayed (why make blocking a chip? dunno), enemy levels and damage scaling is really bad (as it kills consistency) but the worst offense is how quickly the combat becomes stale or a chore.
N:A has the foundation for an extremely good combat system but it paddles back on it for reasons I don't know.
But I am biased and despite all this N:A is in my holy trinity of favorite games.
EDIT: Closest thing to level scaling in PC is a mod menu which allows you to set your level. The only problem with this is how often you must do this and still can't adjust to all enemies you encounter in one combat scenario.
I felt The Witcher 3 had a similar problem. Despite being an RPG, tying enemy power to levels created artificiality and inconsistency in its combat. For example., if Geralt is level 20, he can easily slay a level 10 Griffith that's been terrorizing a village, yet be nigh unable to kill a level 30 unarmoured country bumpkin with a club.
Indeed. It does not even make sense in the narrative. Witcher 3 on PC thankfully can be modded to resolve these problems. The problem with W3 is that I see a competent combat system in the game but it quickly turns into a numbers game because of the leveling system.
I was shocked how nobody talked about the useless walking, the meaningless automatic-platform section, the boring repetitive enemies, the useless rpg elements, the openmap and free roaming system that just does not work and the continues mcguffins. Thanks as always for making such tight critiques.
Frank Damn. The analysis of why the cut scenes masking load times is trite, and the lumbering walks with conversation and weak jogging when preforming tasks in uncanny. I knew there was a reason I did get this game. Something about said it was just to much, and despite all the grand graphics and scope that was advertise I now know why?
To an extent, I believe the walking, RPG stuff and Open world have benefits. The walking helps with loading, cooldowns between intensity and lets the story shine for a bit (the older games did that as well). The RPG stuff can add a lot of depth (I feel 2018 didn't campitalize here). The open world and quests were pretty good as they added to the themes of the story
@@luxeternity
Not really. See other games in the action RPG Genre like Dark Souls in how there can be lots of different enemies
I’m convinced I’ve stumbled to a small corner of the internet where people determined to hate the God of War game because it’s popular and most other people like it get to gather together and yell their nitpicks together because it makes them feel better than others for some reason
It’s not determined to hate so much so that not everyone is a fan of hodgepodge games that have no real focused identity and instead cater to trends that are supremely popular at the time.
Cory Barlog wanted to make another Last of Us, but with hack and slash mechanics even though these mechanics are heavily hindered by Cory’s base desire to follow in Naughty Dog’s footsteps when it comes to game design.
The move assist has actually gotten much worse in the newest game. It’s even more intense on the enemies making the tracking nonsensical
First thing I noticed during the first fight with Thor. He's just ice-skating everywhere which completely subdues how intimidating his size factor was made out to be in the cutscene.
@@rustycheeseknife Yeah I felt the same way. It’s strange because the RPG mechanics make the normal difficulty too easy but the move assist and tracking making the harder difficulties feel very cheap.
There’s a reoccurring drauger boss fight named “The Hateful” I believe and it’s a good example how how strong tracking and move assist can ruin a fight.
@@ShadowedAgony I still don't quite understand what is meant by "RPG mechanics" in cases such as this. RPGs in the past were far more about preparation than about the fight itself. 90% of any battle took place in your inventory, casting various protections and buffs on yourself and coming up with a plan of attack. These GOW games have no such mechanics. Even the health bars of certain enemies are unreliable because you never know when the "cinematic experience" is going to kick in and just refill the boss's health before heading into the next phase of combat.
It's incredibly daunting to thoroughly pummel, stab, bash, slash someone like Baldur only for him to walk away unscathed. Yet, after all that, snapping his heck is what does him in. That's it. You can run the guy through a meat grinder time and time again, but in the end what gets him is a neck snap. GOW Ragnarok has similar issues. Thor dies because Odin stabs him with a spear which happens AFTER you've hacked him to pieces with your weapons.
One of the worst instances of this is one of those Traveler enemies who will slam his sword down and then pull it back up. He will literally turn on the spot while doing this if you dodge out of the way. These are games where people think the combat is good because it can look cool and "cinematic" but it's just a really terrible system under the hood. They need the gear system in the game to give players a sense of progression because there is no depth to master.
@@amysteriousviewer3772 I like the combat because of the dogge offset which lets you be very aggressive if you time your steps well also the game rewards you if you don't get hit by buffing your weapon withL1 triangle also I find the minni bosses and moves of the weapons to be a lot better in ragnarok especially the blades the biggest problems are the health of the enemies and the camera I think the game becomes a lot better if you use the armor set that gives a realm shift after every well timed step also I like that some enemies have weaknesses like the asgard soldiers if you hit their helmets they will take a lot of stun damage and the boss fights are incredible especially the valkary queen and thor I don't mind the move assist because in most games I always dogge if an enemey attacks and I never use spacing so it wasn't a problem for me but I understand how it can be annoying.
amazing video, probably one of my new favorites of yours- your insight and analysis on the medium is very inspiring, comparing the similarity of the game industry to the film industry in terms of budget and safe practice growing exponentially is scarily accurate, all in favor against improving and pushing the medium itself or taking risks- something I've felt about the film industry for a long time. Keep up the great work!
Gesamtkunstwerk refers to evaluating a piece of art as a whole. When various facets of a piece of art fail to synergize with one another, the end product is weaker than the sum of its individual parts.
The parallels between the film and game industries hit even harder when you look at the cultures surrounding the indie label.
The indie label might be a sign that a particular form of media has “made it” in terms of its recognition within society.
Indie games are mostly the prententious arthouse films
@@chrislee5268 i agree, but there are occasional gems that justify the label.
Thing is right, how are you supposed to avoid the whole increasing budgets? Isn't that just a reflection of the growing popularity of computer games?
Simechanical Honestly, I think it’s a balance between passion and greed. If you get involved with big publishers, you need to make big sales. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t care as much about visuals compared to good storytelling and good gameplay. It’s on the studios to create great works without falling victim to big publishers.
Big publishers forces everything created by a studio into homogeneous, lowest common denominator drivel.
@@wuwei473 Couldn't agree more, I'm just curious as to why the games industry is going (or has gotten) like this in the first place. Why can't you have a triple A game that isn't as homogeneous as God of War be as profitable? That's what it looks like to me anyway.
Not that I should really give a shit about TH-cam BS, but Joseph Anderson’s clickbaity bollocks getting more views than this genuinely well thought out material is depressing as all hell.
A 3 hour long dissertation is a lot of things but not clickbaity bullshit.
+Nick T. I fail to see how that conflicts with my statement.
Matt isn't a spotless critic either, but Joseph is so self indulgent and ranty. I feel like people get off on that stuff, but it just agitates me. He'll make a good point occasionally - it isn't worth all the other garbage though.
This is honestly one of the greatest videogame critique i've ever consumed.
just say "ever seen" or "ever watched", christ
@@amesoeurs critiques can be read too.
@@lanskyzxc You read by seeing, Jesus Christ.
CONSUME
the guy rambled half of the video about the camera which is not an issue at all; i suggest you to consume better criticism; read ian bogost books for example
YO Mr Matosis, great video but this comment is totally unrelated.
Do you think could add closed captions to videos in the future. Not personally hard of hearing but I feel it helps me appreciate the pieces more. Given the whole script you can actually just copy and paste it into the video’s caption settings in video manager and TH-cam will take like 20 minutes to auto-sync it for you.
It’s a pretty low effort thing to do but adds a lot of value to viewers and your own seo.
Anyways, bless up fam!
I think this has come up on ask.fm, his podcasts, his streams, or more likely all three. His answer at the time was that it was something he wanted to do, but that his final recording diverges from the script when he thinks of better ways to phrase things while recording, or when he reorders sentences while editing the video.
That question might have been more about translations for other languages as closed captions, but all the same reasons would still apply. And even if viewers can submit captions themselves, he still has to approve them, and I get the impression he doesn't want to do that without reviewing the whole video. In that case, he might as well do them himself, but like I just said, he just doesn't feel like he has the time.
He's mentioned multiple times that he's always and greatly appreciative of fans' translations and he's just tardy when it comes to checking and approving them.
Or you could watch his videos at .75 percent speed to help you understand.
I just watched 5 minutes of the video with automatic captions on and there was only a single error. It even got his broken Spanish joke right.
While proper captions are nice, I can't say TH-cam itself does a bad job at all. His videos have little to no background noise so his voice is clear and easy to understand, both for us viewers and the caption algorithm.
Hell, you can use the "show transcript" option to basically get the entire script.
AckmanDESU YO that’s true, it is pretty good. Only issue is it lacks punctuation and it’s kinda off putting, hard to read pacing lol
This is a great video dude! The part at 24:10-24:30 made me think a lot about the interactions between Booker and Elizabeth and your amazing video on Bioshock infinite. So when you referenced it during 38:00 I was somewhat taken aback and I thought that your introspection was quite interesting. It is startling to think about how similar the long term trend on these type of AAA video games are. Your critique of Bioshock Infinite was the first video I saw from you and I try to put a lot more thought towards my gameplay habits and analysis because of you. Always love your work and I really can't wait to see what you make next!
I just found your channel and this is the first I watched. I can’t believe your attention to detail! I didn’t think about most of these things!
You’ve got a new and excited subscriber. You’re extremely well spoken and make great content, contrary to 99% of other gaming youtubers
the conclusion to this was legitimately satisfying, thank you, i needed to be reminded of a lot of what you said. Great work.
So with God Of War Ragnarok out let's see the changes they made and to see if they listened to the criticisms of the video.
Things that weren't fixed
*Move assist
*Lock-on still breaks with evasive maneuvers from enemies
*RPG mechanics
*Unskippable walking sequences
*Unskippable cutscenes
*Puzzles are as braindead as before and the game tells you how to solve them.
*Runic attacks still operate on cooldowns
*Single shot camera is still around
*Enemies can still level up mid-fight
*High level enemies become immune to Juggling, freeze ,tripping etc...
*Weapon swapping on the fly is still not here (Keep in mind GOW3 had this)
*Platforming is still context sensitive
*Radial attack indicators are back due to the poor camera
*Wall pins are still inconsistent with the environment
*Give me God Of War is still a chore to get through due to the inflated health pools of the enemies and bosses
Things that were fixed
*The flash indicator now happens at the beginning of an attack
*Certain techniques can be disabled now
Overall it seems that the devs didn't take the criticisms into the game at heart and passed it away as if they knew better, there are some positives elements but these additions aren't enough to cover all of the problems that the sequel possesses.
In conclusion: It's a mediocre sequel.
you left out the most important fix of all! you can now kick down those conveniently placed chains without having to mount them 😃
Damn straight
why fix what ain't broken? you're just mad cuz the new formula is better. stay mad
"puzzles are braindead"
so like every God of war and dmc game, essentially
@@frogglen6350 just stop sucking dick publicly, bot
36:55 this game really makes you FEEL like batman
Matthewmatosis may be the exact only person on the planet who can say that line and have me doubt whether it's an intentional dunkey reference or on purpose.
Still think it was on purpose though
I can't imagine anyone ever saying the line and not make a dunkey reference. His famous critic video has over 7 million views and he has one if not THE biggest videogame channel on youtube. Every youtube videogame critic on Earth saw that video.
*by Earth I only mean English-speaking part of Earth, obv.
Matt claims to not watch other youtube channels in fear of copying their ideas, so it's still possible
@@msr0685 you seriously can't believe that someone couldn't come to their own conclusions and write that sentence without it being a reference?
i mean the reason that dunkey made that joke is because literally every games critic says that. the reason they say that is because the game is unironically good at it.
I’ve watched this video 3 times. It’s so incredibly well done, thank you so much, I’ve already shared it in 3 different places
I only just came across this but god this sums up every thought I had about this game. Bless you sir
35:09
Start of the “you’re not trusted to...” segment.
Thanks
*most viewed twitch clips so far*
Awwwwww yiss found a good reason to remain on the toilet for another hour
good luck getting off after
I probably spend an average of 2hrs a day on the potty so I should be aite but I appreciate your concern mate
You could just carry on watching more porn instead you know.
This vid ain’t too far off, though, is it?
Good luck with the leg paralysis lol
I saw the developers messaged you on twitter... I'm very happy for you Matt, it's amazing to see such a relatively small channel get noticed, it speaks volumes about the quality of your videos :) keep it up
Link pls
What’d they say?
@@stolensentience it's been 3 years so my memory is hazy, but I remember the developers (maybe Barlog himself) complimented his video and told him the criticisms were fair and well articulated. They said some of those were because of time and money constraints, as usual, and wanted to do better in the sequel
@@errigog2151 yeah that’s dope and thanks for the reply!
@@errigog2151 And it looks like they didn't do much improvements in the sequel either.
Is kinda amazing (and sad) that MGR a 10 years old game pretty much made in a single year with 1/10 of Sony AAA budget got a far better combat system and boss battles compared to Dad of Walk.
pffft. Mgr is the worst metal gear game. Just discount dmc.....God of War sold better and has the higher review scores. Mgr ruined raiden
@@frogglen6350 MCU movies made more money than The Godfather, Terminator 2, Reservoir Dogs, Goodfellas, that mean they are better? Such a dumb way of thinking.
And yeah MGR has much better combat system than GOW clown, the camera is not a disgusting mess filled of indicators and you actually feel like a god rather than slow ass Nu-Kratos.
And saying MGR is a "DMC clone" only shows how ignorant you are, DMC is a combo heavy based action game, MGR is not, in fact it has more in common with other parry heavy action games like Sekiro rather than DMC.
Then again, your are a fan of these shitty movie like nuGOW games so I dont expect you know shit about action games or combat systems.
A final battle against a politician felt bigger in scope and with more spectacle than a final battle against fucking Odin and Thor, that is how lame these new GOW games are.
@@bladewolflq-84i86
You think Mgr is god father quality? it's just a mcu movie with ninjas 😅
*Go play a Real Metal Gear title*
@@frogglen6350 what is a real Metal Gear game though? The series changed so much since PW that the series lost its identity a lond time ago, MGSV barely is a "real MGS" game, it lacks everything that made the series popular in the first place.
MGR is a spin off so it can be whatever it wants, is not a core entry or main numbered game, if anything these nuGOW games are everything you bitch about, they are barely GOW games, they are this weird TLOU/Dark Souls hybrid with shitty camera combat and tacked on RPG lite systems, its like Santa Monica made a mash up of every modern popular gaming trend.
Excellent video, can't agree more with the God Hand comparisons, when I first played it I was so used to games making it easier for me to win without doing right timings, it made me angry that I died so many times, but the thought didn't leave my mind that all those times were my fault not the game and so I kept thinking of strategies to beat the enemies and I got better at knowing what buttons to press and when. That was much more satisfying than me being happy that the game let me kill dudes right away without me putting much effort into dodging and using certain abilities. Also the recommendations you make for the interactivity with Atreus are great.
Man this video is so on point. I really was blinded by the visuals and cinematic aspects. But grinding out crappy combat situations, and getting all the best gear to just be teleported to the top of Jotenheim was immensely disappointing
I went through the main story and was over the combat a while before that
He also completely nailed how masking the loading screens would be a terrible decision long term. I'm used to SSD loading times on PC and I played it on PS5 and while other games load in 5 seconds, God of War feels like an eternity, fast travel isn't fast at all and the elevators are as bad as the first Mass Effect.
I hope you keep making videos, your analysis is concise, meticulous, extensive and utterly captivating. Keep up the great work.
It's already been a year since this video was released, so I'm not sure Matthew will see this comment, but I just wanted to point out how much I appreciate the editing in this video. At 34:52, for instance, you cite Majora's Mask as a "race against the clock," so to segue into the next clip you begin the footage of MM with a sharp tilt of the camera upwards to the moon and Clocktown's clock all in the same frame. This is clever editing, because the quick movement of the camera creates anticipation, which immediately grabs the viewer's attention for a brief moment before you hit us with the main subject, the clock, bringing the focus back to your main point about time. (Side note, it's just a really pleasant angle. You get the imminent threat of the moon in the center of the frame, looming above you in the sky, and juxtapose that nicely with the ticking clock, which also looms above you at the top of the frame.) Then, to end this sequence, you tilt the camera back down in a manner reminiscent to what you did at the start to indicate a clear ending to the shot. This is strong editing structure, as you've visually created a hook, held it just long enough to make your point understood, then dropped it once it lost interest in such a short span of time. It's a moment where both the script and visuals align perfectly in their intentions, and this video is littered with little creative moments like that that I believe go unappreciated.