Great Port of an Outstanding Game: God of War PC Review friv game
It has been four winters since console players first escorted the god of war to the top of the highest mountain. Now their path falls to the lot of husbands and virgins who own powerful Friv2Online. We share our impressions of the long-awaited port of God of War - "Game of the Year 2018" and one of the most impressive PlayStation exclusives of the last generation.
April 2018 sent some gamers to a dystopia, to save civilization in the outstanding Frostpunk, others to space, to fight against the great houses in BattleTech, but the eyes of the PlayStation owners shone brighter than others, who dared to visit the permafrost of the far north, where they settled with their son the aging god of war Kratos.
Despite the retreat from the Greek pantheon towards Scandinavian mythology and a sharp change in the genre from hardened, perhaps the most spectacular slasher of all time to a story-driven action adventure, the sequel to God of War III made a splash. The game received very high ratings from most reputable publications, took the "game of the year" at The Game Awards and DICE Awards, and was also awarded the BAFTA award in three categories, incl. like the best game.
Recently, Sony Interactive and its main partners have been willing to share gifts with PC owners, increasing sales and expanding the audience of their key titles. So, last year we finally got to meet Ala from Horizon Zero Dawn and Deacon from Days Gone in person, and most recently we had the unexpected joy of touching Final Fantasy VII Remake. We devoted a review to each of them and talked about each of the ports (you will find links at the end of the article).
It's time for God of War, in which we find Kratos settled in the far north. The god of war has a son, Atreus, and quite recently, some time before the events of the game, Fei's beloved died. After setting her body on fire, the Spartan and his son will have a long and difficult journey in order to dispel the ashes on the highest peak of the middle lands - this was the last will of the warrior.
As they explore the rebellious lands of the nine worlds, the stern Kratos and the soft-hearted Atreus will face many dangers and make new friends, temper their weapons with runes and spells, get used to working as a team and listening to each other.
A very long story campaign with mesmerizing views, spectacular battles and a great (also award-winning) musical accompaniment; a strong narrative and an emotional, sometimes very touching story - who would have thought that God of War would one day become like this.
Even with some regression in terms of the combat system (here is my personal opinion, as a big fan of previous numbered games), God of War gives an extremely immersive experience. The camera is now held strictly behind the shoulders of Kratos, instead of the usual blades, the Spartan uses a battle ax forged for Faye by the dwarf brothers Sindri and Brok, Atreus himself is actively involved in the battles - at first hesitantly strikes opponents with a bow, but over time becomes bolder and often goes into close range the battle.
Flashy pirouettes with the Blades of Chaos will be replaced by defensive maneuvers with the Solar Shield and crushing blows by the Leviathan, which Kratos can throw and call back into his hand, just like Thor his hammer Mjolnir. Over time, the god of war will learn special runic attacks, and his son Atreus will turn to the spirits of animals and call them to help in battle.
I dare to assume that most of you are already perfectly familiar with the gameplay features of God of War, so I propose to resolutely move on to the main topic of this article - to the quality of the port itself, because not every game that came to us from console distances took off equally well.
As for the general impressions of the optimization, I was very impressed. None of the above ports worked so smoothly and confidently on my PC configuration. And this despite the fact that some irregularities in the pre-release build were expected, about which the game developers notified us in advance.
The PC version of God of War did not receive significant graphical modifications (however, despite the four-year exposure, the game is in no way inferior to modern hits in appearance). The quality of shadows has improved, and their number has increased significantly: natural shadows appeared in many places and cut-scenes, where before they had to be eliminated for the sake of console performance.
Game developers have improved the algorithms for spatial shading and global illumination, using the new SSDO method (a modified and less resource-intensive version of SSAO). The picture turned out to be contrasting, full of colors and well-read textures.
In graphics configurations, the user is free to choose the quality of textures and models, effects and reflections, as well as connect one of the Nvidia DLSS or AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution dynamic resolution technologies, and manually adjust the scale and resolution of adaptive rendering in them.
But, I have to say, I didn't even have to use them. When configuring the RTX 2070 SUPER with AMD Ryzen 5 3600 at the highest possible graphics level, God of War raced like a longship along the rapids, only occasionally hitting river stones.
The game ran at a fair resolution of 3440 by 1440 pixels (the game supports ultrawide monitors) with a stable 60 FPS, squeezing all the juice out of the video card and loading the processor by an average of 40%. On a 4K display, performance dropped a bit, but my system isn't perfect either. But we managed to check the HDR level, which, by the way, is pretty well done and is also supported by the PC version. Support for Nvidia Reflex is also announced, but I haven't been able to test it.
Throughout the entire testing period (the first eight hours I simply could not tear myself away from it), slight jamming, if any, occurred only during the scenes of transitions to a new location area (Kratos lifts and holds a stone, Kratos climbs a cliff with his son on his shoulders) and disappeared before the control passed back to me.