Posts Tagged ‘god of war’
VGP Ep 130: Isle of Hot Witches
This week involves trigger finger, prostate exams, hard rock, and…right…video games!
- 1:00 – Trees’ Week
- 22:30 – Fred’s Week
- 49:00 – The Witness
- 53:50 – Hot Wheels Unleashed
- 56:30 – Fortnite
- 01:29:00 – Trials of Mana (Remake)
- 01:50:00 – Tormented Souls
- 01:54:30 – God of War
- 02:02:00 – Scorn
- 02:06:00 – Dead Space 2
- 02:09:20 – Blasphemous
VGP Ep 129: Beat That!
This week is largely business as usual but the rotation gets switched up!
- 3:00 – Trees’ Week
- 43:45 – Fred’s Week
- 1:04:30 – PSVR
- 1:23:10 – Fortnite
- 1:42:00 – Tormented Souls
- 1:53:45 – God of War
- 2:04:15 – Scorn
- 2:17:30 – Wish.com
- 2:19:20 – Hard Space Ship Breaker
- 2:23:30 – The Witness
- 2:36:00 – Hot Wheels Unleashed
VGP Ep. 128: Bowling Walker
This week is about justifying rappers, avoiding gutters, and dented steelbooks.
- 22:40 – Trees’ Week
- 1:00:50 – Fred’s Week
- 1:28:15 – Fortnite
- 1:40:10 – Ghost of Tsushima
- 1:50:15 – Hard Space Ship Breaker
- 2:16:10 – ME3 Finale
- 2:25:00 – Papers, Please
- 2:28:50 – Lego City Undercover
- 2:37:15 – God of War
- 2:45:00 – F.E.A.R.
- 2:50:00 – Tormented Souls
Podcast: Community PS2 Top 10s and Mailbag
We asked you all for community PS2 top 10 lists and boy did you oblige. In a massive push of lists that takes nearly 2 hours to read off Fred and Jam delve deep into the many games PS2 owners love. It’s a widespread list and a great celebration of Sony’s sophomore console. As a result we’ve pushed a few of the scheduled game nights, but a friendly reminder to get started on Kingdom Hearts if you haven’t already for August’s 2-part game club.
The points totals document can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RuNTDd8ZXTQcvXQJu0wbmZMMZBYJ136qRPK2FoWzgi4/edit?usp=sharing
Podcast: Playstation 2 Top 10
40 games enter – 20 from each cohost – and only a fourth emerge in the coveted Top 10. We have various debate mechanics, odd conversations, and personal bias to get this unique take on a traditional topic. Don’t agree with us? Of course not. Please send us your own top 10 for the community episode in 2 weeks.
Podcast: E3 Franchise Legacies
Lots of games were announced at E3 this year and many of them come from long running franchises. With Jam on holiday, Fred brings in guests Vos and Shawn (from the Horribly Awkward podcast) to discuss the lineage of what was announced. Some franchises are stronger than you may remember, whereas others…not so much.
Now & Then: God of War 1 and 2
God of War feels like a series that just exploded in popularity but has now been lost in the gaming community abyss. Last year the God of War Collection (featuring the first two games in the series) was released to the Playstation Vita to such a poor reception that a lot of friends were generally surprised it was actually released. Then again the same group of friends were gob smacked that Borderlands 2 also came out on the Vita. Now, it could be argued that this lack of enthusiasm may be due to the lack of interest in the Playstation Vita. But forgotten or not, I’ve played through both God of War games so it’s time to see how they hold up today.
I was originally a massive fan of the very first God of War game on PS2. When I was first introduced to the game by a friend I got so into it we played through the entire game together in one single sitting, something that I rarely do with a video game. We spent a lot of the experience just gob smacked by how the PS2 was able to include great graphics and set pieces. Of course a lot of the great visuals are attributed to a fixed camera control and the set pieces being controlled entirely by quick time events (a feature I’m glad has started to disappear in the gaming industry). The game felt like a breath of fresh air. Although the game did not introduce a completely original experience it seemed to take elements that worked with other games like an anti hero storyline, hack and slash gameplay and upgrading your character with orbs. The game was not perfect, even for the time people criticised some of the challenging sections in the game most notably the infamous Hades area where you had to get pass various traps and obstacles. If you were hit just once you died instantly, leading to some massive gamer rage grinding your enjoyable experience to a complete halt. What made God of War stand out at the time was the epic adventure, where you travel into areas no man can supposedly enter (and the game clearly displays this by having dead bodies littered everywhere). You really felt like you were on this impossible quest. Every time you beat a gigantic boss or got pass a deadly trap you really felt a sense of achievement. The bosses were also enormous like the infamous hydra, a fantastic way to open the game and a design feature that seemed to carry over to all future games in the series as well. The game was well received by critics and gamers so it pretty much guaranteed a sequel. The developers seemed confident of this as well as the message “Kratos will return,” appears once the credits have finished at the end of the experience.
Generation Gap Pt 5: “Last” Gen
This installment will conclude our Generation Gap coverage. Please note that upcoming coverage on handhelds, arcades and microcomputers will follow. A lot happened just over a decade ago – the gaming market changed and one strong competitor bowed out as another took to the plate.
Fifth Generation – 1999 – Present (technically)
Sega Dreamcast – Launch Price: $199.99 – Released: 1999
Launch dates are getting more technical by this time, so from a Japanese standpoint the Dreamcast was a 1998 launch but we didn’t get it here until much later in September 1999. Although it is a 128-bit system, consoles had stopped toting the strength of “bits” and instead focused on a sleek design – most likely because Sony did it with Playstation and it worked. Dreamcast was Sega’s final nail before bowing out of hardware manufacturing and has been argued to also be its best offering. Regardless, the Dreamcast was definitely ahead of its time. It featured things that no console would dare launch without today and basically had the same features that Microsoft would include in its console just a few years later. A few years, that’s the difference between success and failure.
Until the Dreamcast most video game consoles were specified hardware that was far behind PCs. By all accounts the Dreamcast was a simplified PC, even running Windows CE, a modified version of the operating system that would be put to greater use on later pocket PCs. The Dreamcast had a built-in modem on all consoles, which supported the earliest form of online console gaming and provided a web browser service to those fortunate or rich enough to afford the high cost of long phone calls. Furthermore a keyboard attachment allowed players to truly use their console as an Internet device and even gave way to early MMOs on the console. Memory cards included LCD dot matrix screens and were called “visual memory units” or VMUs that not only held data but gave the player on-the-go mini games and Gigapet-style games. Aside from that Dreamcast boasted higher storage with the proprietary GD-rom format (1.2 GB of storage space), impressive graphics, and a slew of solid titles.
Revisionist History
March 16, 2010 was an important day for Playstation manufacturer and video game publisher Sony Computer Entertainment. It marked the release of God of War III, a technological stunner that promised to be every bit as fun as it was beautiful. Not only was God of War significant for being the third in the series (and subsequent end to the second title’s cliffhanger), but it was to be the first outing for Kratos on the Playstation 3 console. God of War II had been slated for the PS3 at one point in development, but Sony opted to keep the title on PS2, marking it as one of the best titles on that console and a fitting end to usher in the PS3. There was just one big problem.
Starting in November, 2007, the Playstation 3 consoles had removed backwards compatibility with Playstation 2 titles, rendering them unable to play God of War or God of War II. When the decision was made to put God of War II on PS2, it was always thought that new PS3 buyers would be able to use this feature to replay the previous titles. In an era where storylines are significant and a series like God of War required you to know the storyline of the previous titles to understand the current one, Sony was in trouble. Fortunately a long rumored concept ended up coming to pass – a high definition remake of the first two games on one PS3 compatible blu ray, and at half the price of a contemporary release. In November of 2009 the God of War Collection was released to masses, an impressive appetizer to the third iteration, which still loomed more than four months away. Not only that, but it was a great deal, amassing an impressive 1 million+ sales to date and a solid holiday season. Not bad for two titles that had released a generation ago. At $30 apiece gamers (myself included) ate it up and IGN’s Chris Roper even declared it the “definitive way to play the game” (guessing he meant games) in his review.
Gaming History 101 