God of War (2018) review for PC

As it stands, God of War (2018) is one of the best games of the PS4/Xbox One generation. It helped bring the fan-favorite God of War franchise back from retirement while reinventing what exactly that series could be. It is one of my favorite games to come out in the past decade, and with the new release on PC, it is finally available to a whole mass of gamers who might have missed out on it before.

God of War sees players once again taking on the role of Kratos, who spent the entire original trilogy murdering the entire Greek pantheon of gods. You pick up as a much older, bearded Kratos chopping down a tree with his young son to craft a funeral pyre for his wife. You are now in the snowy Norse lands of Midgard, living hidden under the guise of a mortal man. As the story unravels, you will travel across the various realms, fight Norse gods both great and minor, befriend Dwarves, slay a dragon, and create a bond with your son. Kratos is a much more fully developed character than before, and he has grown far beyond who he was before.

In addition to a whole new story, the gameplay was a drastic departure from the previous entries in the series. A slightly slower, but much more deliberate combat style replaced the frantic action of the combo-based combat of the old games. A closer, third-person over-the-shoulder camera style (that seems to be the staple of Sony exclusives now) replaces the much wider third-person view from before. All of these changes shake up the core of what defined a ?God of War? game before, while also fitting into the series and creating what feels like a natural evolution into the modern landscape of AAA action games.

With Sony continuing to release some of their greatest exclusive titles on PC, more and more gamers are getting the chance to check out some of the games that made the PS4 the best console of its generation. God of War is the biggest one yet, and the one I was most interested to see in terms of performance. Even on the PS4, God of War is a visual feast, with incredible environments and detailed graphics. Making the jump to PC, I was excited to see just how far I could push this already incredible game.

I started my review on an ASUS ROG Strix GTX 1080, and was able to achieve a smooth 60fps on a 4K display, with resolution scaling turned down to 60% (roughly 1440p) on the ?original? graphics setting. Sony did a fantastic job crafting a customizable, intuitive set of graphics settings that make it easy for even the newest PC gamer to tweak the game to their liking. During the course of my review, I was able to upgrade to an MSI RTX 3070. This was a huge jump for me in terms of power, as my GPU was very much my bottleneck before. On the 3070, I was able to run in true 4K at 120fps on ?High?, and true 4K at 60fps on the top ?Ultra? setting. During some of the more particle intense sections, I did see the occasional dip under 60fps on Ultra, but never anything below 55. On both of these settings, God of War looks better than it ever has before.

On PC God of War also offers Ultrawide support (21:9), Nvidia DLSS and Reflex, customizable Mouse and Keyboard bindings, as well as support for both Dualshock and Dualsense controllers. I used a Dualsense for my playthrough and was impressed by the new haptic feedback features they take advantage of with the new controller. I was worried that although the PC supported the controller, I would still need to play on my PS5 to take advantage of some of those proprietary features. I was thrilled to find that was not the case, and it further solidifies the PC as the best place to play God of War.

For any achievement hounds (like myself) the Steam achievements for God of War seem to mirror the Playstation trophies, so it is a very attainable 100% if you?re interested in pursuing that. There was no post-launch DLC for God of War, so there is no ?complete package? incentive here, as the game itself is complete. Just like the other big Sony exclusive ports, God of War will launch at a reasonable $50, and though you can easily find it for <$20 on PS4, I think the updated graphics and availability on PC make it more than worth the asking price.

God of War was a masterpiece when it was released and raised the bar for what a game like it could be. It is one of the best games of that generation and sits somewhere in my top 10-20 best games of all time. This new PC port fires on all cylinders and elevates this already great game to further greatness. I experienced no issues with my entire playthrough, the game never crashed, I did not find any bugs or glitches, and the performance was always exactly what I expected out of the systems I played on. I cannot recommend both the game and the PC port highly enough.

Note: Sony provided us with a God of War PC code for review purposes