Kratos is angry. For some unknown reason, his body is chained to a pair of massive pillars; his limbs stretched far apart as if to embrace whatever crime it was that he committed. He's mocked by one of the three Furies, ancient beings who, for some reason, have taken offense against the warrior. But he is no God, not yet. As a prequel to the prior installments in the series, Kratos (Man of War?) begins the game in this strange predicament. And yet once he frees himself from these shackles and the player is allowed to take control, one fact becomes immediately clear -- we've done this before.
Every action I took throughout the opening 30 minutes of God of War: Ascension resonated with what I've been doing over the course of the past 8 years. It was more than just muscle memory; it's as if the series is a vinyl album stuck in an infinite loop as it futilely attempts to find the next groove, doomed to repeat the same crumbs of a song. I defeated the hordes of minor enemies by smashing the square and triangle buttons, just as I had in the original God of War. I opened glowing red chests and used their contents to upgrade by blades, just as I had in God of War II. I engaged in a variety of simple but cinematic QTEs, just as I had in God of War III. And once I came to the lengthy battle with the gargantuan Hecatonchires, whose imprisoned body was the entire level, I couldn't help but feel like I'd done this before. This was how I slayed the Hydra in 2005. This was how I brought down the Colossus of Rhodes in 2007. This was how I scaled Mt. Olympus and dethroned Poseidon in 2010.
1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JANUARY 28 | VIOLENCE & PACIFISM
Arguing Against Realistic Violence
Cover Story: Why the leap in technology over the past decade has turned one gamer off certain series.
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ormally, I don't play much Call of Duty, but late last year, I was thinking about checking out Black Ops II. A big, dumb, fun shooter sounded like a good time. Then, the Sandy Hook shooting happened, and my interest in military shooters hit an all-time low. Oddly enough, I still enjoyed games such as Halo 4 or ZombiU immensely. I attribute that mostly due to the fact that generally in Call of Duty games, the focus is controlling a human killing other humans, while in Halo games you're shooting aliens or superhumans masked by Spartan armor. In ZombiU, you beat zombies to death, which as far as we know, don't exist. To some people, all violence might not be kosher no matter what, but to me, more realistic violence, especially as graphical power increases, is what bugs me the most.
Despite containing multiple design elements that would cater to an FPS -- dual analogue sticks, a gorgeous display screen, and excellent wifi capabilities -- the Vita just hasn't been able to find that special title to transition the genre onto a handheld. In the past, I've questioned that even if it were possible to have a shooter in the palm of your hands, I don't think I'd want to play it. The kind of games I gravitate towards on handheld devices, and specifically my Vita, are experiences that were tailor made with the specific strengths and weaknesses of the portable platform in mind. Things like Sound Shapes, which features ingenious stages short enough to tackle while in line for a movie. Or Gravity Rush, which uses the Vita's motion features to allow the player to manipulate the comic-vignettes in a way that makes it feel like you're actually peering into Kat's world.
At the exact opposite end of the spectrum is Call of Duty: Declassified, which tried to replicate the allure of Black Ops by clumsily jamming it onto the Vita and assuming that the consumer's average intelligence level was low enough to be won over by name alone. During my review/prison sentence with the game a few months ago, I mentioned how I don't want to play an FPS on the Vita, and furthermore, that the traditional model of a shooter wouldn't be able to work on a handheld at all. Well, this theory was recently put to the test with Guerilla Cambridge's Killzone: Mercenary, and though it's certainly the best looking FPS I've seen on a handheld, I came away from my time with it still skeptical of whether the genre could and should exist on a portable like the Vita.
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