Come on, God of War isn't a brawler, don't be ridiculous

Sorry there are more enemies in God of War than grunt and minotaur? They must've been hiding behind the sheer millions of grunt and minotaur corpses when I was playing. You haven't even gotten to the part where it's two straight hours of grunt fights ("the whole game lol!" no you don't even know). Pretty much everything about God of War's brawling is wrong, so starting from enemy variation is far too high on the chain. I think that's one place where it's bad, but not unforgivably so. The fact it's so noticeable is more a symptom of the failure of everything else.

Why doesn't combat with a single enemy work? The omnidirectional i-framed-up dodge move means position doesn't matter, so the game space is reduced to one dimension. Then the grab trumps everything (if you haven't already discovered), so we're in a volitional difficulty situation. Survival is only challenging so long as the player voluntary limits their options. Feedback on moves is near impossible to read because the chain is just a giant swath that hits eight enemies at once and conflates all their states (plus might have different effects based on distance). Who fucking knows how much damage anything does. Not to mention every combo looks like the exact same noisy mess. Then dial-a-combos for button mashing heaven, but also free interrupts (dodge) because it started to get hard. Stuff like "there's a launcher" is typical "we don't understand what is happening in the combat and why it isn't fun, what's something else that Devil May Cry has?" I couldn't tell you exactly from game to game within the series, but I believe the launcher is completely useless almost always. You can dodge to get out of combos, why would you need to be in the air? 1D game space. I think the toughest the game ever gets is when there's a boss that has an attack you're supposed to block, and you have to remember what button is block again.

But all that is totally beside the point, because God of War doesn't expect the player to take initiative and explore offensive capabilities within the combat. God of War is a game about having violent semi-realistic animations applied to spectacular mythological creatures. Everything else about the game flows from that. You can contend that Devil May Cry is a game about having a cool anime guy do stylish sword swings at demons; granting that this is of course wrong, the difference is that Dante's "style" is his offense, it is the sequence of moves he performs and that the player controls. God of War is centered on the baddies. This is why its primary novelty is extended cutscene kills, and why executions are the only thing it bothers to incentivize. It's why the boss fights aren't even beat-em-up style half the time. It even kind of explains why grab is so OP (it has a unique animation). The button mashing is just there to connect the dots.

I've played a few dozen 3D beat-em-ups at this point, and I can fairly confidently say that God of War is the worst. The only thing giving me pause is that I can't clearly remember the story mode from Tekken 6. But I don't think God of War wants to be compared to Devil May Cry - in its mind, it belongs to the same genre as Uncharted. To be clear, I don't think it's successful as a cinematic experience either. There's no excuse for filler, and it has especially arbitrary quick-time events (on part with RE4). Asura's Wrath is basically the same idea done correctly, though I think GoW2 and GoW3 are a lot better too.

What I'm Playing, October '14

In this feature, we commemorate games I have for the first time started and finished in the last few highly variable time units.

Well my initial push to finish games is looking pretty good.

Special Recognition for Starting and Finishing:

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Xbox 360)

That took all of five days. It's not the 8-hour playtime that makes Revengeance feel short, it's the swift pull-up halfway through where the earlier multi-tiered levels give way to reused environments, redundant stealth encounters, and sorta insulting stage numbering (one short stage doesn't have a boss, then the next is just a boss, etc.). You basically get 3 full and 4 quarter-stages. Still, I love the action here - it's a Japanese assimilation of the stealth alternating counter-driven style of popular Western games like Arkham Asylum and Assassin's Creed. The weird pacing just makes higher difficulty replays awkward, with the shockingly early climax leaving little to challenge your skills on the back end.

This is the peak of the game's difficulty. It is the Stage 3 boss. In a 7-stage game.

Kid Klown in Crazy Chase (SNES)

This one was done for the already-published Platformer of the Month Club, enjoy.

Games Finished:

Bayonetta (Xbox 360)

Speaking of weird endgame pacing. Bayonetta becomes wildly indulgent in the final act, giving too much time to variety stages (both Space Harrier and Motorcycle Madness), redundant boss reduxes, and fake-out endings. The main thing I like about this game is the bread and butter combat, but for the last two to three hours there basically isn't any. It doesn't help that (at least in Normal mode) bosses are excruciatingly easy, but still tediously long. Recently I've been starting action games on hard mode because why fuck around, but Bayonetta sadly does not permit that and is far, far too easy for any but the most novice players (professional reviewers) on Normal.

In also hurts that the game is a bit churlish with rewarding performance, as the only thing holding me back from platinum level rankings was that I didn't seek out the hidden sub-stages and thus had a bunch of zeroes in my overall score. Here's a bit of personal philosophy: action games should not have hidden sub-stages. Ever. That is explicitly, shamefully bad design.

Bayonetta had some uniquely paced combat, getting almost turn-based with its reliance on time-slowing dodges, so I could see myself playing it again. Still, it's very sandboxy and I think you'd have to be an idiot to rank it with the good stuff like Ninja Gaiden Black and Double Dragon 2.

Crashmo (Nintendo 3DS eShop)

I kinda can't believe I beat this. Technically there are still 20 or so bonus stages to go, but I got the all-important credit roll so I'm happy to call it done. The thing that kept Crashmo alive late-game was the introduction of gigantic puzzles with dozens of pieces that allowed free-form solutions. They probably rank as much easier than the more rigid challenges (at least for me they were), but they were a lot more rewarding to play, allowing me to prove I had learned and could reapply the many specific techniques developed through the game's course.

Street Fighter 2010 (NES / 3DS VC)

Okay, the last level here was insane. Most stages in this game give you 120 seconds to kill one boss. With the same time limit, this level featured three reused (but now harder) bosses and two totally new ones. That's 20 seconds a boss, and these guys have strict patterns that only leave them vulnerable in certain windows. I really had no choice but to cheese it with save states. Oh well. Lotta good bosses here, you can see the Capcom house-style that permeates Mega Man X and Gargoyle's Quest as well.

Super Mario 64 (N64 / Wii VC)

I have a bit of an OCD problem with Super Mario 64. I am really uncomfortable with leaving stars behind, so I end up 100%ing every world before moving on, which leads to a lot of time wasted on levels I don't really like. Still, this game is goddamn genius no matter which way you slice. Level greats include Whomp's Fortress, Lava Lava Lake, Hazy Hazy Maze Cave, Dire Dire Docks, Pirate Bay's Cavern, and Tock Tock Clock. Anti-favorites include: Shifting Shifting Sand Land, Snowman Blowman Land, Tiny Tiny Big World, and Boo House.

The improved resolution Virtual Console port proves that SM64 still looks fantastic

God of War (PS2)

Even back when it was the second or third modern melee action game I'd ever played, I really did not care for God of War. It has these insanely unwelcome "adventure" parts that usually involve mandatory backtracking or puzzles, the camera angles are very annoying (namely because the movement controls are camera-relative), and the combat is soooo repetitive. Sure, it feels nice and squishy, but that only gets you so far after battle #1000 with the same three enemy types and the same two combos that always defeat them. The game sorta tries to find some identity by spreading battles across different arena types (moving floors, small platforms, tiers) but it makes annoying choices that tend to backfire.

Games Started:

The Evil Within (Xbox 360)

Check up on my chapterly coverage for which I am being paid by Capcom to make as many Resident Evil 4 comparisons as humanly possible. In my defense, I see every game through the lens of Resident Evil 4. Or Mega Man X or Ogre Battle 64, as genre applies.

Wave Race 64 (N64 / Wii VC)

The international Commune Podcast game du jour for November, Wave Race is heavy on the waves and light on the races. I enjoy the wave-handling mechanics a lot, it's just that the sparse course selection and 1v1 limitation pretty heavily restrict this as a multiplayer alternative. Compared to this, it's no surprise that the de facto party racer for the eternally ripe N64 has become Star Wars Episode I Racer.

One and Done:

Hyrule Warriors (Wii U)

Just got this for the sake of it, it feels insanely well-polished - at least compared to the "budget" feel common to Dynasty Warrior games. I'll come back and play it for real sometime in the future.

The Firemen (SNES)

Another podcaster, this is a pretty easy top-down shooter that mixes in a little exploration and a timer. It's fun but it is hard to count it as a game-in-progress when the only thing holding me back from beating it is I just haven't played it a second time.

If Darksiders is a God of War ripoff, then call me Mark Pringles

I'd like to bring you a point today. A very special point that has been near and dear to my heart for almost my entire life. That point is: Darksiders reminds me so much of the PS2 Maximo games that claiming it's derivative of anything else not only proves the subjectivity of such claims, but also that everything is derivative of everything. I talked about this last week - everything under the sun has been done before. Darksiders is no different, God of War is no different, Shadow of the Colossus is no different, etc.

You don't need any incoming knowledge of Maximo or Darksiders to understand this argument; allow me to set you up with the basic facts:
-Maximo: Ghosts to Glory is a 2001 hack'n slash from the Ghosts'n Goblins series, receiving only one sequel, 2003's Army of Zin
-God of War is an ongoing series which has seen seven games since its 2005 debut and has become one of the most popular and profitable in gaming
-Darksiders is an original action/adventure property from 2009 with a big budget and blockbuster aspirations. Developed by Vigil Games.
-Though positively received, Darksiders has earned a reputation as less of an original game and more a greatest hits mishmash of mainstream giants like God of War, Legend of Zelda, and Shadow of the Colossus.

Before I get any further, let me remark that I do not care that few people have played the Maximo games. This post is not a case for those games or their significance in gaming history. Ghosts to Glory is novel and Army of Zin is a good time, but you haven't really missed out on anything if you skipped them back in the PS2 era. My subconscious picked them as my example when it interrupted my Darksiders session to say "hey doesn't this remind you of Maximo?" - plenty of other games could be used to make this same argument.

What bothers me is the suggestion that Darksiders couldn't exist without a handful of extremely recent pop games (ooooh, new term. Bet you can guess what it means!), as if it isn't a natural creation but rather some kind of Frankensteinberger's Monster. It strikes me as utter arrogance on a player/critic's part to assume that they know so much more about games than the developers at Vigil that they can dismiss their work as a bunch of "stolen" mechanics. Yes, a few bits of Darksiders' gameplay are tinglingly familiar: the don't-call-it-a-Portal-Gun Voidwalker, the fucking first tool-item being a boomerang. Vigil isn't trying to trick us into believing it created these ideas, they're providing their own take on recent innovations that haven't yet been further explored. Whether they prove successful in expanding these ideas doesn't affect that it's a worthwhile intention.

These references are mere asides to a game that otherwise fits comfortably in the action/adventure genre. If the core of the game was the Portal-mechanic or Panzer Dragoon flying stage, it might be worth complaining, but it isn't. The central gameplay is exploring environments and combating monsters. Yeah, I can see where God of War plays out much the same, but uh... it hardly invented that. If anything, calling Darksiders derivative of God of War is a testament to how generic the latter game is. In that case just about everything is inspired by God of War, since apparently it's the only game that ever had a character killing monsters in a fantastical landscape. Moreover, the gameplay of Darksiders conforms to expectations. It's pretty much exactly what I'm looking for in a game where I play as one of the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse.

If our protagonist suddenly burst into a musical number, then I'd be suspicious

Any game is just going to remind you of what you're familiar with. It's good to identify influences and become knowledgeable about both long-running trends and contemporary fads, and it's equally important to recognize that every game attempts to bring a new story to life. The means by which that is done can be new or old, but most of all should be appropriate.


asggggggggggggggggggG I', so tired eright now. I ewamted to make this oist post have anyhting to do wtih Maximo so it would make even a tiney bit of sience sense but ive given up ast this point. I wrote what you can fee abeove etis mornign and was gonna aediet edit after lkunch but now a[p[a[parrently oene cupo f coffeee is not eno=ugjh to trick me into staying awake to write, i can barely do work right now or not fall asleeepo at my dcesk. i'll right about darkeiders again later anythiway and mayhbe revisit this;.