God of War: Ragnarok

 

Ragnarok starts right where 2018's God of War ends. Midgard is now experiencing Fimbulwinter, the weather event that occurs right before Ragnarok is to begin. As Kratos and Atreus (Loki) figure out how they can stop Ragnarok, Atreus is on a quest to figure out his past and who he is to become. Subsequently, several stages feature Atreus as the playable character. Atreus begins working with Odin, who is responsible for Ragnarok. This angers Kratos and causes harm to his relationship with Atreus. They eventually resolve their differences, and team up with all their buddies from the 2018 game, including Mimir and Brok, to defeat Odin and prevent Ragnarok. Mimir and Brok are a couple of my favorite video game characters, and of course Thor makes several appearances in the game as well, which is neat.

The gameplay is essentially the same in Ragnarok as it was in 2018's game - a lot of hack and slash, with occasional puzzles mixed in. The one big difference is that when playing as Atreus, he has the ability to shift into various animals to fight during battle, which is cool. Generally I'm fine with the hack and slash fighting, though sometimes it is nice to be forced to think about the best way to attack an opponent. The game occasionally makes you think about this by flashing a blue light when an opponent attacks instead of a red light, meaning you should shield block first before attacking. This game does not do this as well as other games, however, such as Ghost of Tsushima. 

I want to spend a bit of time talking about the puzzles, which I find mildly annoying. I distinctly remember having this awesome battle with a larger than life wolf, which was immediately followed by a puzzle involving pulling chains and freezing a door in place, and thinking that all of the awesomeness of the fight was immediately thrown out of the window by the slow paced and boring puzzle. A few of them I couldn't figure out and had to look up their solution on YouTube, which was also kind of annoying (maybe I need to just be more clever?). They're not as annoying as the puzzles on Immortals Fenyx Rising, but I think in a game that tells such a grand story they can really slow the pace and storytelling. 

The story is where this game really shines in my opinion. Everything about Norse mythology is grandiose and larger than life, and Ragnarok does a great job of telling its story and displaying the awesome characters. It is one of the better game series that I have played in terms of story telling and character development and is the part of the game I enjoy the most. 

On a side note, the game developers for JEDI Survivor could learn a lot from the God of War games in terms of stage creation. A lot of the stage layouts between the games are similar, in that you are locked into where you can go. Because of how the stages are laid out, with subtle symbols indicating the correct way to go, not once did I have to look up where to go to advance the stage.