Autumn is upon us. Where I live, the leaves are falling in droves and the Glasgow rain is turning them into slippery mulch that makes every trip to the shops an obstacle course. But one hallmark of autumn is missing: a promising run of new video games to cosy up with as the nights lengthen. Usually this is when the end-of-year rush starts, but not in 2022. It’s as if the video games industry is giving us a little extra time to watch the absolute circus that UK politics has become in recent months.
The actual reasons for this relative drought are manifold, boiling down to the delayed effects of Covid-era development and, well, money. But there’s one game that could save these dreary few months, one that I’ve been looking forward to for years: God of War Ragnarök. I’ve been playing it to review and, for once, the developer is allowing me to write about a game ahead of its release.
God of War was an action-game series from the 00s involving a very angry bald god called Kratos who smashed up gods and monsters in spectacular fashion. Those games were fun but they were not exactly tasteful. It was rebooted on PS4 in 2018, with Kratos unexpectedly recast as a grieving widower with a tween son whom he struggled to communicate with. God of War from 2018 was among my favourites on PS4, a jaw-droppingly beautiful and unexpectedly touching action game that made your heart race one minute and pulled at its strings the next.
What a treat it is to be back in the company of gruff-yet-tender Kratos and his increasingly wayward boy. This is very much a continuation of the 2018 game: the characters are mostly the same, and so is the setup, as father and son explore the awe-inspiring realms of Norse mythology and encounter mythical beasts and demigods that are as fun to fight as they are intimidating. Kratos has an ice axe he can fling with one command and summon satisfyingly back to his hand with another. This alone makes fighting much more fun than your usual hack-and-slash game, but it’s also about the sheer physicality of the main character, the heft with which he moves and attacks.
Atreus, his son, is more interesting this time around – because the mystery of his mother’s lineage (and, therefore, his) was solved at the end of the last game, we now get to learn what he can actually do. He has gifts with animals and languages, and throughout the opening hours we see him establishing an identity independent of his father (even, sometimes, in competition with him). The banter isn’t the touchy back-and-forth of the last game, with Kratos withholding and Atreus provoking. They seem more at ease with each other, better able to understand each other – though most of the chatter is still provided by the severed head of Mimir, a figure known in Norse mythology for his wisdom but in this game for his Scottish accent and creative insults.
God of War Ragnarök is out on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 – good for the millions of people who haven’t yet upgraded, but mildly disappointing for PS5 players, as so much of this game is constructed around hiding long loading times that don’t exist on the newer console. There’s a lot of moving slowly through narrow passages, or crouching through tunnels before emerging in some stunning new dwarven cityscape or abandoned temple – all clever ways of making the game into one impressively seamless, continuous shot on the PlayStation 4, but totally unnecessary on the PS5.
The enforced breaks between areas, ingenious though they are, now make it feel ponderous and slightly dated. It’s worth putting up with for the immersion, though; every icon on the screen feels like an intrusion, as you glean all you really need to know from chatter between the characters and looking at your surroundings. God of War remains a secret puzzle game, giving you ample opportunity to wander off and find hidden places with intriguing secrets to discover, from dragon sculptures and carved murals to glowing chests and vicious creatures. There’s some Tomb Raider and Zelda in its DNA, I think. Hidden underneath the violence is a game about exploring – both places and relationships – and that’s what I enjoy the most about it.
What to play
If you want to get a sense of what that new Silent Hill game from No Code might be like, play the developer’s first game, Stories Untold. It’s an anthology of horror stories told through outdated technology: tapes, flickering CRT monitors, text commands, hisses and beeps. It’s best experienced without knowing much about it, but it is atmospheric, innovative and impressively clever.
Available on: PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One
Approximate playtime: 2-3 hours
What to read
Some developments in the story from last week’s newsletter: Bayonetta’s voice actor Hellena Taylor has clarified the fee she was offered to reprise her role in Bayonetta 3, after sources at Platinum Games went to VGC and Bloomberg to challenge her account of events. The highest she was offered was $15,000 – significantly more than the $4,000 that she was later offered, to voice some cameo lines, and more consistent with what other video game voice actors have reported is typical. (It’s also in-line with SAG/AFTRA union rules in the US). It is a shame that Taylor’s lack of clarity about her fee has muddied the waters, because video game actors are underpaid, especially because they do not earn royalty income like TV and film actors do. I spoke to several actors about their pay and conditions for this report. The new voice of Bayonetta, Jennifer Hale, released a statement reiterating her support of fair pay for game actors.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority is inviting opinions from the public about Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of the Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard. I’m sure that will end well.
Konami has exhumed its ancient horror series Silent Hill. Glasgow developer No Code, which made Stories Untold, mentioned above, and another very interesting horror game called Observation (a favourite of mine), is making a new Silent Hill game called Townfall. Bloober Team, meanwhile, is remaking Silent Hill 2, the ancient horror series’ best-known and most disturbing entry. Pyramid Head has haunted dreams for decades; now he can terrify a new generation.
Our new column High Scores has interviews with the people behind the best and most memorable video game soundtracks. Dom Peppiatt kicks off the series by talking to the composers of Deathloop’s fastidiously cool sounds, which were inspired by Swedish jazz and the rock band Yes.
What to click
Lost in Roblox’s Fifa World – everything wrong with the metaverse in one place
Gotham Knights review – a promising spinoff that wilts in Batman’s shadow
“An insult”: video game voice actors speak out to demand fair pay
Question block
Today’s question comes from reader RL Perrin: What’s the favourite easter egg you have discovered (by chance, or by being told) and why?
I used to love the idea of secrets baked into games by designers, hoping that a curious player would discover them and get a thrill. Unfortunately, a combination of the internet and the Marvel Cinemantic Universe has soured me on them, because geek media now involves an endless ouroboros of references for people to performatively notice on social media or pick over in YouTube videos. So my favourite gaming easter egg comes from a time before all that: in Zelda: Ocarina of Time, if you look around the palace where you first meet Zelda, you can see a few Super Mario 64 posters through a window. I found this organically when I was 11, and I felt as if I had seen God.
Finally, an announcement: Pushing Buttons is moving to Wednesdays as of next week, so look for us in your inbox on 2 November.
