That menu screen twang of scraping metal; the grandiose shifting battle-grounds and improbable ancient architecture; the lift-based combat scenes; the QTE's, the blood, the boobs - this is definitely a God of War game. And, for better or worse, God of War: Ascension knows it.
With the fixed-camera hack-and-slash formula well established in two instalments on PS2, and then refined by God of War III in 2010, this fourth outing sticks to what has worked in the series so far. Set ten years before the first game, and six months after Kratos killed his own wife and child, three powerful sisters called the Furies are on his back, spirits of vengeance out for blood after he broke a pact with Ares. They'll pursue him over an eight-hour campaign set in abandoned desert villages and great marbled temples, on the backs of giant mechanical snakes-cum-conveyor belts, and into a gargantuan puzzle-filled statue built by Greek inventor Archimedes.
SISTERS OF CURSEY
However, it's a journey that's blighted by the era in which it's set. This is a Kratos reeling from fresh trauma, a Kratos that, rather than shove an innocent off a cliff, will shove him away from a stray spear instead. Flashbacks to his pre-Dulux paint days are clear attempts to show a more human side, but they're misguided, resulting in a character with a newfound, mopey sentimentality - sentimentality which evaporates completely when he gets his knives out and starts killing.
If the game mirrored its opening level, Ascension might have been one of the generation's best
His business with the Titans not yet begun, there's a real lack of bite and scale to proceedings and, as a result, set pieces suffer. Of the three or four that stand out, the best is saved for first, set on the game's only Titan - a Titan who also happens to be dead. At points, one of the Furies, Magaera, infects it with living parasites: stadium-sized jaws are manipulated to snap at you, hands sprout metallic green pincers and swat the air, and eventually the whole level is brought to swaying, lurching life, turning walls into ceilings and crumbling entire floors. It's so epic that, if the larger game consistently mirrored it, Ascension might have been one of the generation's best.
But it doesn't. Barring an equally stunning last 15 minutes, the rest is less stellar. It's almost as if developers Santa Monica Studio splurged the budget on either end and forgot about the middle; a middle which is mostly spent solving block-pushing puzzles, running through beautiful but barren environments, and fighting successions of familiar monsters in familiar sequences.
Combat's still brilliantly tight, but it's seen little improvement. In fact, it's taken a step back. Where God of War III gave you mighty Nemean Cestuses, Claws of Hades and the Blade of Olympus, in Ascension you've got just one weapon throughout - the Blades of Chaos. They can be imbued with electric, fire, ice or soul power by praying at altars, but aside from a few unique moves the differences practically boil down to palette swaps, similar in both form and function. Discarded shields, pikes and swords can be scavenged mid-battle, but they're disposable items with one or two moves apiece.
Enemies, meanwhile, rarely require mastery of any new combat techniques. Like before, you've got cyclopes to ride, harpy wings to rip off, damage-soaking centaurs and swarms of one-hit-kill bugs. Bar foes whose shields need to be snatched away with a quick grab, and hammer-wielding golems who change colour and need smashing with the relevant elemental power, there's little innovation. Without doubt, it's still slick and satisfying, and scraps are always welcome, but it's hardly changed. A disappointment, since combat sits at the series' heart.
WHINE-A-TAUR
Later on, you'll acquire three powerful trinkets, which do modestly mix things up. The first freezes foes, the second conjures a clone to fight alongside, and the last destroys magical barriers. A long cool-down time means you'll use them roughly once in a battle, but they're worth upgrading.
Outside battle, there are time-control puzzles where you'll fix broken construction like bridges and waterwheels by either rewinding them to a state of decay, or fast-forwarding them to sparkling new. One example involves burning a basket of coal and dragging it over to a furnace. When the fire dies out midway, you'll rewind time to get the flames burning again.
You can also make clones of yourself to hold down levers while you run through a timed door, and use a pair of all-seeing eyes to pierce a veil and give passage. Problem is, none of these conundrums are particularly clever. If you do get stuck on that coal puzzle, for instance, it'll be because the coal you were meant to burn wasn't well signposted enough, rather than any complexity or ingenuity on the game's part. So, unexpectedly, God of War: Ascension becomesRatchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, and it does so with no real conviction.
Sights and set pieces are less memorable, but they still get the blood pumping
Still, while a sequel treading water, this is by no means a bad game. Far from it. By now, Santa Monica Studio really know what they're doing, and in the closing years of the PS3's life, never let it be said that its full potential failed to be unlocked. For one, everything is rendered in-engine - staggering when you consider perspective shifts seamlessly from side-scrolling swim to guts-exposing kill to close-up conversation to frantic mountain slide. Certainly, they aren't afraid to let you get close and personal to Kratos' impressively rendered pecs. And sights and set pieces, though altogether less memorable than the last game's, still get the blood pumping. A boss fight with a Manticore on some snowy mountain peak, a trip through a tranquil dock as crystal waters cast rays on cave walls, and your first brain-exposing encounter with an Elephantaur, are highlights.
Perhaps the reason the campaign plays it so safe with its ideas, and - in the process - doesn't live up the last game, is due to the series' first ever push into online multiplayer.
Here, you'll throw down with up to seven other players in multi-tired arenas from a fixed-cam perspective, scoring points by killing, raiding chests, and capturing alters. To start, you're plonked in a great sky rotunda and told to choose your allegiance: Ares, Hades, Zeus or Poseidon. Each grants different powers. Ares enables enhanced melee and the use of fire magic, while Poseidon gives players damage resistance and lets them freeze foes solid. Effectively, this gives you four unique incentives to play, upgrades aligned with one God not carrying over to the next.
It also means new players will start with a disadvantage. There are three categories of upgrade: armour, weapons and abilities. For newbies, all are lowest rung. The first helmet you unlock, for instance, will have half the elemental resistance of one you unlock later. Your standard spear is nothing next to one bestowed by Zeus himself.
The special ability powered by your magic meter, letting you conjure a wall of impassable lightning or burst into the sky and crash down for wide-ranging attack, won't match the force of one upgraded, using skill points, to its second or third level. God of War: Ascension plants players on uneven footing, and while it's not the first game to do so, here it feels extra potent.
GODS AMONG US
There's nothing like a couple of matches in which to improve, though, and here the flagship is Favour of the Gods. In it, one team of four attempts to beat the other to a points target. Points are given through popping chests (a little), killing (more), and capturing alters (most). It's a curious concept, part way between a beat-'em-up and a third-person actioner and quite unlike anything else in recent memory - except perhaps Dreamcast gem Power Stone, on a larger scale.
Fighting's central, but there's room for tactics. Scattered around levels are traps dealing damage from distance; you might wait around a corner with a flamethrower turret, or defend an altar with a mortar. Towards the end of the match, traps change the complexion of the level entirely.
One level allows you to take control of Medusa, but using traps makes you vulnerable
In a night level set to the backdrop of a besieged Troy, for example, you can manipulate a gigantic catapult to fire at a statue of Apollo - whichever team destroys it wins a thousand points. In the great labyrinth built by Dedalus, sneaky players can crank a handle beneath the central structure and turn the level on its head, sending others to their doom. One level set in an idyllic garden even allows you to take control of Medusa's famed, er, laser eyes and melt enemies in one hit. Keep in mind, though - using traps makes you vulnerable. Weapons scattered around also mix things up. Like in single-player, the Circle button lets you strike with warhammers, spears or shields, while holding it down in conjunction with L1 launches it at the nearest player, in the process relinquishing it.
Both weapons and traps come into play during Trial of the Gods, where two players co-operatively kill increasingly tougher waves of AI enemies to extend a time limit, as well as Match of Champions, where only kills count, and then finally during Capture the Flag. The latter is the strongest of the bunch, typically tailored to first-person-shooters but here made to fit third-person. Flag-carriers are slower, and their positions alluded to by trailing icons, but they aren't defenceless, able to perform rudimentary attacks and shake pursuers.
A neutral flag also enables players, who don't fancy marching into enemy territory, to grab a little glory, albeit for less points. Combined with warp tunnels, and a little light platforming where players bound up certain glowing structures and grapple from glowing green spots, players are offered multiple options besides flailing with weapons.
SMACK AND SLASH
But flailing with weapons is sadly what multiplayer comes down to. It's all too easy to get stuck in a corner whilst two members of the opposing team alternately hack your defenceless body to bits, smashing you with heavy hits and juggling your body in the air while you redundantly hold block. You can employ the same tactic against them later, but it doesn't make it any less cheap.
While the L3 button sprints, legging it is pointless since anyone chasing can simply grapple you back like a naughty dog on a lead, and though enemies about to launch an unblockable attack glow red, the dazzling spectrum of colours in the heat of battle makes it impossible to tell, eeking any nuance out of solid combat mechanics. One-on-ones work because you've got the time and space to feel each other out, jabbing with spears, double-bluffing your blocks, and luring them over chasms ready to punt them into the abyss. The minute others wade in, so begins the button bash. Sometimes you'll win, sometimes you won't, but a measured contest becomes a lottery.
Multiplayer works fine, but it lacks that special hook
Ascension's multiplayer shares a similar sensibility with Uncharteds 2 and 3: both are primarily single-player games attached to an initially ill-favoured online component which, as it turns out, works... fine. It works fine. Nothing remarkable, but perfectly functional and, just like the Uncharted games, potentially packing a dozen or so hours of entertainment. But those dozen hours are summed up by boring words like 'practical' and 'solid' - and the real truth is that multiplayer lacks that special hook.
And yet despite samey combat and a story low in scope, Ascension remains a visually stunning reminder of PS3's pulling power, its sprinkling of incredible set pieces and time-refined combat laid on top of a familiar - too familiar - blueprint. The QTE's, the gore, the rampant nudity, it doesn't move the franchise forward in any meaningful way (the robust if uninspiring multiplayer mode definitely fails in its remit where that's concerned), but it's a new God of War, and, even at three-quarter power, that makes it worth seeking out.
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