2022.2 | God Of War 1 HD

i will forever hate sony for not subtitling the soft re-boot. i'm talking about the original PS2 god of war game in HD for the PS3 (through PS Now streaming).

this was part of my trophy clean-up. i had most of the trophies and no way was i not having this classic game in my platinum collection so just re-played it for under 5 hour speed run + rest of missing trophies

this is one of those games you play as an adult and wonder how the fuck you ever beat it as a kid. especially the rings of pandora challenge i was like "wait wut" even as an adult, i had to get the guide out. granted i was going for the under 5 hour completion trophy so didn't want to spend time to figure shit out but even knowing the solution, i was like "how the F did i ever solve this as a kid?!?". just more proof i'm getting old and dumb.

outside that, combat is the perfect mix of juuuust involved enough but not so much you gotta memorise combos or some shit (just 2 or 3 easy ones that become muscle memory anyway) and honestly holds up well. i still think there is room for a throwback classic god of war style game as a spin-off title or something. the fixed camera as well aged a lot more gracefully than i remember and in fact makes the framing of some scenes very beautiful and artistic thanks to it.
this is something i really appreciated as even in game with full camera control, i try to frame the action well. but obviously when the developers have full control of camera, they can do cooler things (zooming, panning etc).

anyway, still holds up extremely well, and based on these two games so far, is easily my GOTY.