Tag: god of war

The Games I’ve Played

TiberiusLeave a comment

Reviewing my play time

Down to the wire, the 11th hour and 2025 is drawing to a close and I have time for the last in this wrap up trio before I get to things I was aware of this year but didn’t or couldn’t cover. Some of these will be games that released this year, others will be old enough to legally drink in the U.S. Looking back on it, I played more games than I watched anime and the problem with anime I’ve had is one of the same ones I’ve had with television, standard or otherwise. The commitment to a series is more than a game that can last between 4 and 400 hours, not to mention as much as I loathe the binge watching method, one benefit it has is that I can clear out my watchlist sooner, but the drawback I see is not being able to fully absorb a show, nuances and all.

For the games I’ve played this year:

  1. Grand Theft Auto III (2001)
  2. God of War (2005)
  3. Silent Hill f (2025)
  4. Mafia: The Old Country (2025)
  5. Call of Duty: World at War (2008), Black Ops (2010), Black Ops II (2012)
  6. Ghost of Tsushima (2020)
  7. Max Payne (2001), Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (2003), Max Payne 3 (2012)
  8. Spec Ops: The Line (2012)

This is neither an exhaustive nor ranked in order list. Just ones that I spent a lot of time on this year and yes, for those who know, Max Payne is up there again. It’s my favorite series after all. Actually, looking at this list, I have reverence for games as old as myself, beginning with:

  • You feelin’ lucky, punk?

Looking at the timeline, GTA 2 released in 1999 and III in 2001, October to be precise, and knowing what happened in real life a month prior, you’d think terrorism would at best lead to a delay, but loads of things were cut that would’ve made the game even darker and grittier than it already was, notably one such mission involving a fabricated aerial terrorist attack. Funny enough, anyone who was alive and old enough to remember 1990s U.S. politics would’ve suspected the decade to have something of a myriad of eye-catching headlines. Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center parking lot in 1993, the East Africa Embassy bombings, and several others, not helped by President Bill Clinton promising repeatedly to get Osama bin Laden, only for that promise to be fulfilled a decade after he left office by the Obama administration, but I digress.

Of the cuts made to the game, the color scheme referencing the NYPD’s liveries was changed to black-and-white when it was originally sky blue-and-white. Those iconic police liveries would’ve been making daily trips to help clean up the area alongside FDNY and the National Guard, so the decision to change it would’ve been out of respect for the victims and the first responders, I take it. Also, if it wasn’t for 9/11, the NYPD police union might’ve brought them to court for copyright or plagiarism. Who knows? Several missions referencing terrorism were dropped because of course they were; unused characters and dialogue was found in the game’s files over the years; and the rest of what was found in the betas was also thought to be removed, but Rockstar/DMA Design was cutting bloated content in the months prior that year. Probably even before that.

Gameplay-wise, there’s loads of hints and minor details that make the game seem like a passion project/brainchild with so many celebrities whose voices and/or music was being featured in the game in some capacity. One that stands out to me would be the use of the background music for Scary Movies by Royce da 5’9″ and Eminem.

Something you’d have to find by delving into Wiki pages and whatnot

The music, the use of celebrities for voice acting roles (Frank Vincent, Robert Loggia, numerous rappers, etc.), the gangster movie aesthetic that was prominent in the late 1980s and 90s, and to top it all off, it was originally designed for the PS2 and original Xbox with a port to PC coming a couple years later. None of those devices had a lot of processing power at the time, and the games they housed were nothing short of extraordinary. The use of limited technology really drove creativity, and before I get accused of sounding like some boomer gamer longing for the “uncomplicated days,” as much trouble as I went through to emulate and play GTA III, I know damn well that between it and GTA V and later VI (set for release in 2032 or whatever), it aged poorly.
Even it’s 2002 asset flip in Vice City was a better showing in comparison.

Tommy was essentially Claude with a functioning voice box and actual reasoning, all things considered

I really like GTA III, but I’m not gonna lambaste anyone who hasn’t played it or implore people to bother. If they do, great. If not, nothing was gained or lost. That said, the powers that be, the unchangeable forces of nature, and the gaming landscape owe a lot to GTA III. Rockstar’s successful venture into 3D with both this and Max Payne earlier that year show that with some refinement, 3D can and does work in the gaming sphere with nearly every video game releasing a sequel, if not debuting, over the course of the 2000s and the remainder of the 6th console generation in 3D. The open-world and nonlinear gameplay allowed for speedrunning and multiple different approaches to achieve the same objective so players can get creative with the sandbox. And this being Rockstar, the 3D graphics and depictions of violence led to lawsuits and court settlements for years to come.

Presumably less so for Max Payne and more so for GTA due to it being accessible despite having a slightly less dark story for the time period, GTA alone would see Rockstar in the hot seat by overzealous attorneys and aspirants harping on the zombie adage that “Video games cause violence.” A peek at just this blog and other, more respectable, researchers shows that that’s not and never has been the case–each one is unique, but ignoring nuance in the face of outrage is a time-honored human tradition that keeps us from discovering the aliens… or rather keeps the aliens from discovering us. We disagree on what a wall outlet should look like and the little green men are able to build advanced spaceships in galaxies lightyears away.

S[bark!]t like this is why we haven’t had any abductions as of late

And of course, Rockstar being Rockstar, not only kept trucking on in the face of adversity, but saw fit to take the piss out of their critics by putting their face on the Statue of Happiness in GTA 4, release Bully in 2006, and ride the wave until Jack Thompson was permanently barred from practicing law for his frivolous lawsuits. Rockstar may get s[gunshots]t for releasing one game every 30 years these days, but in a time when they put all of their heads together in a circle, they can give us the same magic used to make King Arthur’s armaments and accoutrements. The dark and edgy era of the 2000s isn’t here anymore, but I’d live to see a piece of media try something like this or Manhunt again, especially with all the cry-bullying that happens on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and parts of Reddit. Heads would roll and I argue that they need to.

Onto the next game:

  • Ares!!! Destroy my enemies, and my life is yours!!

We laud Kratos as the eponymous hero of the Norse saga these days, but I’ve learned ages ago that because of the Norse saga, few people realize he debuted in 2005 in the Greek saga. Now, fans who’d made the discovery, even if they picked up the 2018 soft-boot, have a bevy of a series to pick through, but for those who aren’t aware, the original Greek games were an homage to the old claymation, Greco-Roman movies of old like Clash of the Titans, The 300 Spartans, and the 1995 live-action Hercules series. David Jaffe and co. grew up with those and true to the meme, he turned 4, chose one of the several things little kids do at that age and based his entire personality on it.

In my case, it was medieval Japan and East Asia

Fast-forward to Sony Computer Entertainment crafting God of War the same way Hephaestus crafts weapons for Olympus, and it may be lost on those who haven’t or are unable to experience the Greek saga games, but God of War 2005 represents a shift in gaming that happened at the same time during its release. Quick-time events, which it helped to popularize in gaming years later for better or worse; hack-and-slash combat that would reach its zenith in this and other games; puzzles and intricate level design that would be a staple of the series and its several hundred thousand derivatives, and on that last point, several clones.

A stern critic could eye up the God of War trilogy and its PSP spinoffs and put them side-by-side with other games that tried to ape its formula, you’ll notice that several games attempt to rip it off in the years following to make a quick buck, but very few did so successfully or memorably. Something that happened to Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter in the 90s. No-name developers attempting to make a name for themselves by way of emulating a popular formula is a time-honored tradition in video games and sometimes movies. Sometimes you get a successful product like Bayonetta and other times you get a ripoff that deserves the “Like God of War But” stamp of disappointment.

Channel: The Escapist

A reasonable argument could made over imitation and video game clones, but the fact remains that if it was popular enough to sell, it’s also popular enough to steal. God of War wasn’t the only victim of widespread theft, but it was a very noticeable one. To this day, video games are getting cloned and nothing is really stopping the cloning process.

Numero Tres:

  • 化け物や！

Google Translate isn’t good for out of context translations…

My exposure to Silent Hill as a series was always through the grapevine. I didn’t know about it for years and by the time I showed interest in some of the better games, my financial situation and the trends of the time wouldn’t allow me to play them on obsolete hardware. Fast-forward to emulation and I have it saved on my PCSX2 emulator so when the time comes (probably in a few days or a week or so), I have Silent Hill 2 to look forward to.

I’ve been told many times that 2 is the peak of quality and the series gradually fell with 2007’s Origins, the following year’s Homecoming, the 2009 Shattered Memories remake, and 2012’s Downpour falling short of prior entries. A sycophantic Silent Hill fan may have more details on each, but the one game that got me genuinely interested in the series is one that can no longer be accessed by normal means thanks to Konami’s boneheadedness in the last 11 or 12 years.

Veterans got flashbacks and bad memories of a game that never was

From the viewer side of things, this was unsettling enough to simply watch–if I had a PS4 at the time, and I was made aware of the cancellation of Silent Hills, I would treasure P.T. like it was the crown jewel in my empire. Legendary horror writers and programmers in Guillermo del Toro, Hideo Kojima, and Junji Ito were, at some point, approached by Konami to work on, or at the very least contribute to the game’s development, but inheriting the same problems that Sega has — that being incredibly difficult to work with — Konami s[pig squeals]t so hard through the bed, the stool broke through the floor at Mach 7 and made a sinkhole that ate the house.

To make it worse, in 2015 during the Game Awards, a Konami-hired attorney barred Kojima from physically accepting awards for Metal Gear Solid V under threat of legal hell. My criticism of Konami is merely surface level, but I know there’s people out there who will die never letting Konami forget what they let slip through their fingers all those years ago by focusing mainly on profit over playability. Kojima’s expulsion was especially felt when Metal Gear Survive was crapped out, showing how much heavy-lifting Kojima was doing at Konami. To date, Metal Gear hasn’t had a release in over seven years and probably won’t unless we get something of a spiritual successor.

The whole point of detailing all of that was a reminder that even when a bad actor does good once in a while, a single move in the right direction isn’t enough to erase the past sins. I normally don’t like to bludgeon the point home like this, but in the case of recidivist behavior, the symptoms are still showing and a higher dosage is required. Having said that, Silent Hill f appears to return to form of sorts as a proper horror game in the same vein as the earlier entries from over 20 years ago. Coupling the psychological with the physical, the sense of foreboding and tension as you choose what part of fight or flight you want to emphasize really adds to the game. The use of a regenerating stamina bar and a regenerating sanity bar add to the experience too. You’re not some superpowered gorilla capable of smashing through everything from the grass going up like it’s Rampage; you’re a teenage schoolgirl in 1960s rural Japan where constant intrusions into your neighbor’s personal lives are how you get the news.

彼女の名前は深水雛子や。

AFAIK, prior Silent Hill games were always set in the titular Silent Hill or a surrounding suburb, but the decision to return it to Japan was to fully reset the series and remind everyone that it began with Japanese horror tropes, not western ones. Now my limited knowledge on East Asian, and specifically Japanese, horror boils down to Ju-On: The Grudge, One Missed Call, Ringu, and most recently Taiwan’s The Tag-Along, so I’m not an expert on East Asian mythological horror tropes outside of Japanese kami and various yokai. Still, there were several noticeable Japanese horror tropes that did tie into Shintoism and Mahayana Buddhism. I suspect that yokai are an influential part of the monsters in this entry, but it’s merely a gut feeling based on what I’ve seen and roughly two hours of gameplay ain’t enough to speak with certainty. I’ll be back for a full review of the game probably in February or something.

Quattro:

  • Il Regno delle Due Sicilie

I’ve talked about the Mafia series before because I like it, but not nearly as much as God of War or Max Payne, both of which I talk about and play at least once a year. For the Mafia series, it’s been a bit tougher with the original games descending into abandonware status and necessitating remakes, which are more accessible than the originals that they’d fixed, though they’re all long as hell, with Mafia III being one of the longer entries in the series for all the side content available in just the base game.

Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven takes place in the 1930s in the Midwest at the end of Prohibition, so you can still make a few pennies from rumrunning. Mafia II takes place between 1945 and ’51 on the East Coast and makes mention of the war effort and the lifestyle of the early 1950s. Mafia III takes place in 1968 in the Deep South during the civil rights movement, a pivotal time for the U.S. foreign and domestic policy concerning race relations and the Vietnam War effort seeing record anti-war protests and draft dodging. The Old Country is a prequel set in 1900s Sicily, at a time when Italy was whole but Italians as a national people were only just being made.

Much of my knowledge on Italian history came from the latter third of middle school, tenth grade, and my Italian language community college courses. So I know the generic stuff about the peculiar boot-shaped country, but not enough about specific regions at specific periods in time to criticize the historical angle, so learning that some families sold their sons to work in sulfur mines to pay off debts was interesting. The weapons in the games do reflect the era of combat, and in this case, the weapons used by the mafiosi would’ve been in use during Italy’s pathetic attempts to colonize East Africa.

The Mongols had better deserts to exploit, just saying

As such, rolling blocks, trapdoor rifles, and bolt-action rifles are a feature in the game. The machine guns and submachine guns of later mobster media obviously comes decades after all this. I’m not as far in this game as I am with some of the others on this list, but graphically Hangar 13 found their bread and butter back in Mafia III and have been using that with Mafia: Definitive Edition and this game, but left Mafia II untouched. But Mafia II: Definitive Edition has the appropriate promo art.

The tech also reflects the time period. Telephones, automobiles, entertainment; it all feels appropriate for the mid-1900s, which is to say primitive compared to Tommy Angelo’s definition of entertainment, and Vito Scaletta’s and Lincoln Clay’s, and the latter two had television. As a matter of fact, what I’ve seen of The Old Country so far reminds me of some mobster media about the earliest Italian-American organized crime groups. Less Commission and Lucky Luciano and more John Dillinger, Bugs Moran, and adolescent Al Capone.

Before he was dressing like this, though he might’ve always dressed like this

More needs to be explored before I share my thoughts, but for immersion, I’ve set the language output to Sicilian because English language courses as a part of the national Italian curriculum would be a century away.

五番目:

  • Seelow Heights 1945, Vietnam 1968, and Downtown L.A. 2025

I’ve played the Black Ops games before multiple times, but this year was the first time I got to World at War and playing through it, it has the hallmarks of a horror game. Enemies can pop up at you from nothing, notorious adversaries who famously courted death on the battlefield (Imperial Japanese and Nazi German fanaticism is still studied to this day), scarce ammunition, dark atmosphere in contrast to how this era is typically depicted especially in film; I shudder to think how many U.S. soldiers, sailors, and Marines were caught by surprise by the Japanese as well as the rest of the Pacific Allies. Same goes for everyone caught in the Eastern Front against Germany, to include collaborators and partisans.

I didn’t expect a war game to unnerve me while I was playing and here we are. Goes to show how far war games have fallen over the years. War has and always will be unpleasant. One thing to highlight though are a slew of historical inaccuracies design-wise. Of course, true historical accuracy is a concern for the reenactors and cosplayers, but to get to at least 90% accuracy requires a couple of mods. Some that reflect the ethnic diversity of the Soviet Union so we get more than Russian names; some that replace the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS with the Volkssturm, the last ditch militia propped up by Hitler at the 11th hour; some for the U.S. Marines’ gear in the Pacific so they look appropriate for the era; and some for the Japanese Army, presumably some variance in voice lines to denote Japan’s historical use of Korean, Taiwanese and Manchu conscripts, as well as ideologically-minded partisans. But that’s not my strict desire, that would be the desire of YouTube channel: The Frosty 1.

Treyarch really had platinum with these games. It was still there come Black Ops III time, but after IV, it wasn’t worth it’s weight anymore. Cold War and Black Ops 6 were up there, but the most recent entry necessitates a reboot yesterday.

The mighty have fallen and they can’t get up

Fortunately for me, I included a handful of those accuracy mods, so the next time I boot the game up, they should impact the experience for me next time.

Sechste:

  • 我が名は境井仁だ！

I briefly touched on shog我が名は酒井人だ！unate foreign policy when I was reviewing The Elusive Samurai manga for the first time, but to further elaborate on that, the Mongols didn’t realize that the emperor of Japan was a figurehead for the Hojo clan regents (shikken) at the time until they launched a naval invasion in 1274, which is what Tsushima is about. Contrary to popular belief, only the second attempt was deemed a failure by way of monsoons. The first one was enough to shake the foundations in Kamakura and Kyoto because the samurai had all put up a stiff and adamant resistance to Mongol absorption. Thus, the Mongols hyper-invaded the Middle East to make up for the shortfall of failing in Japan while Japan itself held onto its seat of power in Kamakura until Ashikaga Takauji double-crossed the Hojo and eventually the emperor himself to consolidate power.

For a traitor, Matsui really made him easy on the eyes

Although developed by American studio Sucker Punch, Ghost of Tsushima and its sequel Yotei are a love letter to Akira Kurosawa films. I’d lambaste the strict adherence to samurai blades if the time period was wrong. But it’s not bad at all. Portuguese missionaries didn’t bring guns with them to Japan until 1543, and it took another couple of decades for the Japanese to reverse engineer them domestically. It’s a technical marvel in its own right with the language also being appropriate for the time and archaic for modern Japanophones.

As for critique, it gets points docked for the Mongols being unanimously Mongolian speaking when the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty included Jurchens, Han Chinese and Koreans, and standardizing speech and vocal patterns would be an afterthought in this time period since nationalism is a more recent thing. A militant Mongol Empire could enforce a national tongue, but if what I’ve been taught about Mongol culture is true, then their territory would’ve been smaller and subject to further internal divisions after Kublai Khan. Then again, this video below explains why the devs did what they did:

Channel: Cool History Bros

Accurate or not, the cross-cultural pollination of east and west was a significant factor for this game seeing as the Japanese audience absolutely loved this game, same as how numerous western fans coined the adage “Git Gud” as a response when a novice Souls player asks for help with a boss, the Souls devs being Japanese themselves. One thing to note about recent titles like these is the wider variety of language options and seeing as I’m playing Sekiro and watching Japanese live-action shows in the original language, I believe I’ve become something of a purist in regard to gaming. I can’t really criticize voice acting and direction when I’m not a voice actor myself. The choice behind this is related to setting. Fantasy worlds are a free-for-all, but feudal Japan, rural 1960s Japan (possibly a stand-in for Shizuoka based on the kanji 「静岡」), and Sicily are all real places with their own respective languages and dialects. Doesn’t make a lot of sense that Sakai Jin, Hinako-san, and The Old Country protagonist, Enzo Favara, would know English. Also, I want the Kurosawa experience for Ghost of Tsushima.

The only great shame I can express for Ghost of Tsushima was the practice by Sony to limit exclusivity to sell consoles. Accessibility for more players who don’t have the necessary hardware to play the games is one thing to praise, or I wouldn’t have been able to see God of War 4 for myself personally…

…but if the player already has a Sony product on one platform, what’s the motivation to shell out for the console itself? Especially with cross-play becoming a thing in recent years? I can play Dead by Daylight on PC while my National Guard buddies boot up an Xbox or PS4 and load in with 2% of the issues that this brings. As for console gaming itself, though I emulate old titles, use ROMs for select PC releases, and game largely on PC when able, I’m not completely opposed to console gaming for good. Unfortunately, the pandemic unleashed the flood gates for a myriad of scalpers to buy and resell the 9th gen consoles at obscene prices. Not to mention, neither of them are making confident moves with their respective products. You can find numerous videos expressing confusion at Microsoft’s direction with the Xbox while Sony has been putting one too many eggs in the future of gaming while seemingly forgetting their roots. Crash Bandicoot may be awkward to look at today, but expecting perfection at the first hurdle is how you get imperfections. Did no one ever teach that to Sony?

Sétimo:

  • The Flesh of Fallen Angels

See this post for more details.

Okay, I’ll elaborate. My well-known love for the series goes without saying. The decision to replay it once again is something of a yearly tradition. The gunplay, bullet-time, story beats, writing, game mechanics; the series is a masterpiece of third-person shooting and the fact that it hasn’t inspired more clones over the years is striking. The only ones I can point to are 2007’s Stranglehold by John Woo, starring Chow Yun-fat reprising his role as Inspector Tequila and 2023’s El Paso, Elsewhere by Xalavier Nelson Jr.

One day, I shall judge Mr. Nelson’s work of art

I don’t really have to worry too much about the state of the third game, but the first two being as old as they are are subject to age. Not that they’re aging poorly, but that the tech is evolving without a means to reliably support them without issue. I can run the first game on one of my laptops, but I struggle on the big rig, yet the same big rig is able to run the second and third games issue-free. So the yearly gameplays are something of a quality test of sorts.

As far as gameplay goes, the first game remains a steady ass-kicker. It’s a game that has me quick saving every time I clear a room full of bad guys. It’s also the one with admittedly s[boots]t physics. It ranges from mildly annoying in regard platforming to downright nightmarish in the appropriate nightmare sections. Combine this with a few minor but noticeable glitches that initially had me clipping through the wall or getting stuck in a wall in pitched moments, and I have to risk exiting out to look for a hotfix and go through the bulls[urgh!]t all over again.

Enemy AI has almost always been strong ever since the first game, so from the frozen NY maze of brownstones and brickwork to the sheet metal, ramshackle Hoovervilles of Sao Paulo, I find myself planning my next moves even further beyond what I can immediately see. Typically, I tend to play it by ear and leave the door open for any type of surprise to come my way. It can be done in this series too, even after playing it as many times as I have, though not to a large extent. Max being a cop would be collecting evidence as he goes, and some parts of the games require more than gunning everything in sight.

The third installment is the black sheep of the series noted by the lack of involvement from Sam Lake and Remedy Entertainment, the first clue being the cynical, nonanalytical writing, but in defense of the third game, it’s a nine-year gap between it and the second game and a strong painkiller/opioid addiction would leave anyone in a dour mood, especially if you were still mulling over the death of your family by outside forces.

Just ask this guy.

Granted, Max didn’t turn New York inside out, but the destruction of Olympus was literally the last thing Kratos was trying to do

Yes, this is another recommendation for Max Payne, and yes I’m eagerly awaiting the remakes coming out in or after 2026.

Lastly:

  • Leopold II and the Congo, 1899; Col. Kurtz and South Vietnam, 1970s; and Lt. Col. Konrad and the UAE, 2012.

Personally, I feel that this game’s commentary and stark chastisement of gaming is one that aged terribly. It had a case in criticism of modern warfare games and U.S. foreign policy, like other media, but it wasn’t really meant to be rebooted. Suffice to say, it at least went out on a whimper than with a bang. The modern warfare military shooter was revolutionary when CoD did it in 2007, followed by Battlefield soon after, though both were starting to feel that there wasn’t any evolution and some critics were getting tired of the formula by 2011, absent of the individual plots of MW3 and BF3.

2012 would see the long dormant shovelware shooter series Spec Ops belch its profound words at the time in criticism of the modern warfare shooter. “You’re not a hero, you’re a gamer.” “You wanted to feel like something you’re not.” All well and good, Yager Development, but I don’t play CoD for the sole purpose of saving the world, I like campaign of select games and when I wanna turn my brain off I retreat to the zombies mode. Sometimes multiplayer if I can spare a couple minutes to an hour these days.

Admittedly, Spec Ops was asking familiar questions regarding the purpose of Iraq if the WMD scare was cattle manure and why we were still in Afghanistan with it being revealed that nation-building in a place like that hasn’t worked out well for anyone who tried. Not the Soviets, not the Brits, not the Persians, not even Alexander the Great, and we call him “the Great.”

Well, it asked what it wanted to ask at the time and knowing how the War in Afghanistan ended with the Taliban unseated and subsequently reseated in Kabul, if Spec Ops did spawn a sequel or a successor, it might’ve been even harsher on U.S. foreign policy. And I won’t be nice, I know that the U.S. hadn’t built a stable nation since South Korea and calling South Korea stable is putting their modern history very nicely. Vietnam proved to be more prophetic than we originally thought.

But on the whole Spec Ops: The Line’s commentary is critically kneecapped by the decision to make the gameplay so cumbersome. I default to medium difficulty because I’m not so stunted that I need someone to hold and shake my penis every time I have to piss, but I’m also not a badass who can eat Dark Souls for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and still feel starved for tougher games. Functionally, Spec Ops: The Line is not fun to play and maneuver around and that’s on purpose. Bad controls are bad controls, but I don’t know if it’s made worse when it’s accidental or intentional.

To be fair to Yager, I wouldn’t call this an act of malice or villainy; I take it that they didn’t like the direction war games were going at the time. Unfortunately, there seem to be efforts to de-list and bury the game for some reason. It was difficult for me to find it for emulation on RPCS3 and despite its graphical glitches, it was the best way to play it on short notice. I still don’t recommend it, even for its story. Just watch an analysis on YouTube or play the Modern Warfare Remastered games like I did.

Heroes don’t exist…

The last post for 2025 will go up next week and while I’ll be on leave for the holidays, I’ll try to push it out sometime on December 26. The one after that, the first post of 2026 may have to be delayed so that I can make my flight. So it may be out over the weekend on Saturday.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, dear readers. Don’t stop consuming your favorite entertainment products.

An Attempt to Fix the Original God of War Timeline

TiberiusLeave a comment

A week-long journey in rewriting a fictional storyline

Two weeks ago, I made a post in the midst of a memory lapse concerning the God of War timeline. My vague notes were misinterpreted as a detailed look at the timeline, but on reflection, I realized that it may have been more in line with making the timeline make better sense due to the plot holes as well as mythical inaccuracies. In a rough draft, I attempted to do this for the entire chronology of Greek era God of War and unweaving one thread meant unweaving another and, fittingly, this would mean further opening Pandora’s box.

Some of the points I brought up were based on The Mythology Guy’s videos on listing all the mythical inaccuracies in the series, and there are a lot. But then again, Mythology Guy did it all for fun. That’s kind of how it started for me until the script sprouted wings and flew south for the winter.

I still think it’s fun to look at all the inaccuracies in the games and at the end of the day, that’s what they are. It’s generally not that deep despite the lore built up, but I didn’t want to let it all go just like that. I do still think there are things to address in accordance with the series plot. Some of these changes might be radical enough to essentially rewrite one or more of the games, but even if we acknowledge more than a few inaccuracies (like nonexistent weapons and relics for example), there’s still a few things that need some TLC.

The length of my draft opened my eyes to how untenable rewriting six games to be more mythically accurate could get. I’ve always given the games leeway since myths tend to be based on a version of reality while also having multiple tellings and retellings over time, such is the case with Egyptian mythology, but one of the examples I think should be changed regards Kratos’ ability to kill gods. One of the most famous victims of his goals being Hades’ wife, Persephone.

As we can see from this picture above, in-game Persephone has a dark aroma about her. Wearing a dark dress, gloomy demeanor, and spoiler for God of War: Chains of Olympus, plans to use a titan to destroy Olympus in revenge for her kidnapping. Mythical Persephone was the goddess of springtime and her presence on the surface signifies the changing seasons while her absence signifies a coming winter. Changing this aspect of her isn’t a new thing for Santa Monica and it followed them well into the development of the Norse saga.

Just to clarify, I’m not trying to say fat Thor is inaccurate. His personality as a villainous god undyingly loyal to Odin is the inaccuracy. Still makes for an exciting game though.

The portrayal of Persephone as seeking vengeance against Olympus for abandoning her can be chalked up to different versions of the myths. Don’t quote me on this, but I think the version where she willingly wandered into the realm of Hades and grew an affection for the god of the underworld is a relatively recent retelling differing from the myths where she’s a kidnap victim. The kidnap victim angle works hand-in-hand with the double-cross from Olympus and makes for good villain. The point of change that I would say needed a change would be her death. For a while, I ran with the theory that she was a goddess of lesser importance, but commenters in The Mythology Guy’s video on Chains of Olympus stated that the Gauntlet of Zeus was the god-killing weapon specifically.

By this logic, Pandora’s box can grant a mortal the ability to kill god with any weapon since the sword Kratos used on Ares wasn’t all that special, merely acting as a bridge on the outskirts of Athens while the Gauntlet of Zeus bears the name and is the sole property of the king of Olympus, which would apply like the diamond rule where only a diamond can cut another diamond. In this instance, only a tool blessed by an Olympian can kill an Olympian, which also seems to be in line with the Blade of Olympus, from the Titanomachy in the games. So I’ll give the commenters in that video the W for explaining and confirming it, since this is before Kratos gets the powers to kill a god by any other means from the box of Pandora, but another point where Kratos kills a god without gaining the ability from the box or is in possession of a godly weapon comes from God of War: Ascension and the main baddies there: the Furies.

This picture also works to show that despite being a demigod, Kratos was also capable of mutilating a deity with just the blades of Chaos. And you can argue that the blades of Chaos, later Athena, later Exile are all godly weapons capable of killing gods, then Pandora’s Box would be unnecessary later unless the box is capable of making sure the gods, primordials and Olympians alike, but some of this hasn’t been confirmed, so it exists as a retcon.

There’s other stuff that, if changed, or addressed would essentially rewrite the narrative of the games. Personally, I’ve found a newfound appreciation for God of War II for the references and other heroes and characters who appear in the game like Theseus and Perseus, who have an indirect connection through Perseus’ descendant Hercules/Heracles. What I like about Perseus in this game come to the weapons on his person: the reflective shield, the helm of invisibility, the voice acting talents of Harry Hamlin who played the character in 1981’s Clash of the Titans. It’s all so good. To add to this, the point of divergence in his life comes from Kratos taking the head of Medusa instead of him which, in the myths, he was supposed to use on Cetus to save Andromeda from peril, and his quest to see the Sisters of Fate reflects the negative consequences of that in a “Rob Peter to Pay Paul” aspect.

But there’s different things about Perseus to nitpick. Highlighted once again by the Mythology Guy, the sword is the wrong shape and his boots don’t have wings as described in the myths. As for the part of him where he never sought the sisters or died in battle, I’ll leave that part alone. Additionally, before this point, Kratos encounters an elderly Theseus who works as the gatekeeper of the steeds of time, which Kratos himself pointed out was the last thing he expected out of him since Theseus was so famously arrogant and cocky. Something students of Greek mythology are also likely to point out just before the fight on one of the horses.

He’s still quite arrogant in the game, but him having decades on Perseus or even Heracles in God of War III is a strange direction for the developers to take since Perseus is the one who should be an old man instead. In the myths, their indirect connection comes from Perseus being Heracles’ direct ancestor and Heracles encountered Theseus during one of his labors. If we want to alter this slightly, perhaps have a disgruntled and elderly Perseus trade spots with Theseus who’d be obsessed with attempting to regain his fame as the founder-king of Athens.

On the subject of weird directions to take, Hobo Icarus doesn’t make much sense. In the myths, Icarus was warned by his father Daedalus to neither fly too close to the sun or the heat would melt the binding wax that holds the feathers, not too close to the sea or the water would wash away the adhesive. Failing to adhere, the sun melts the wax and sends the boy into the sea to drown and Daedalus buries him on an island.

This would make more sense if it was Daedalus seeking the sisters to see if they could do something about his son as opposed to him becoming a victim of the gods’ cruelty and being forced to work on that labyrinthine Rubik’s cube in God of War III.

In the same game, there’s the issue of the Fates. In Ghost of Sparta, Thanatos tells Kratos and Deimos before fighting them that the Fates determine the paths of everyone in the Greek world, but normally at the behest of the gods, which is also confirmed by Theseus before his own fight in God of War II as well as Lahkesis herself at her own temple before the sisters face their own ultimate fate. A major plot hole here is that the Fates meant for Kratos to beat the odds and get to the temple, but strictly state that there is no changing one’s fate. Whatever happens happens. By this point, Kratos is hellbent on angering his way to Zeus and burying him under the soil of Olympus (or what’s left of it) by the end.

But I have to ask why the Fates would bring him this far if he wasn’t supposed to win. Probably to live up to the prophecy revealed in Ascension and follow the trend of failing to avoid fate by eventually being the cause of it, coupled with Kratos never really losing those god-killing powers from the first game since the Sisters fall to him with more Olympians to follow suit in God of War III. That’s my explanation, but admittedly I’m only working with the powers of extrapolation so I know damn well I’m wrong somewhere.

Not as wrong as Heracles is with his own labors though. He claims in God of War III that he performed all twelve of them, but by my count three of them were taken by Kratos, namely the hydra, the Cerberus, and the Geryon. The first two appeared in GoW 1 as the first battle and the Challenge of Poseidon respectively. The Geryon was the teleporting monster on the island of Crete from Ghost of Sparta, which is fitting since the enemy appears in Heracles’ namesake city in the game. For reference:

Granted in the myth, it didn’t teleport and was described as a three-headed giant or a three-torsoed giant that got bodied by Heracles. I’d still keep the Heracles fight, but maybe change the lines to make the timeline a little bit more consistent than what we got. Going back to Chains of Olympus briefly, Morpheus was pretty much teased as a major figure and him being the god of dreams should have been a golden opportunity for Kratos to combat him in the hopes of getting some kind of relief from his nightmares. Just saying, the series uses the Rule of Three cliché quite a bit so why not give him a third deity to fight unless there were plans that were scrapped? Such a shame we didn’t get to see this.

Speaking of missed opportunities, God of War III has Kratos toppling Olympus in an attempt to reach Zeus. An awesome concept that honestly should have included more deities in the pantheon. We already know about the vacancies left by Ares, Athena, and Persephone, but others either made only one appearance or none at all. Why reference Apollo’s bow but omit the god himself? Or leave Artemis out of the last of the games? Would she have been too OP even for Kratos since she’s a goddess of the hunt? Well, that giant sword she gives him in the first game would suggest that she’s one of the gods you wouldn’t want to trifle with, especially since she turned one of her followers into a bear after an affair with Zeus.

Hades losing his wife to Kratos along with his brother and niece would be a sore spot of reference, and I imagine Zeus would force him to put up with it so he can lend him control of the dead in his fight with Ares, but Hades wouldn’t be the only one pissed off about that. Persephone’s mother should’ve also been there to stop Kratos. Lastly, there are Dionysus and Hestia. Admittedly, some of these omitted gods wouldn’t have any battle prowess, but with the chaos unleashed from the box of Pandora, I’d still think they’d put up a fight of some kind. Dionysus could’ve afflicted Kratos with drunkenness, Hestia and Demeter are both said to wield scepters, and Artemis and Apollo both have bows. Or if this would extend an already pretty long game, how about challenges bearing their names like the first game? Just a thought.

This is just what I think could be used to fix some of God of War’s plot holes, I don’t think they’re egregious and make the games unplayable or unenjoyable, and I understand that some concepts don’t always make it to the final product, like Atlantis getting scrapped and becoming a major plot point for Ghost of Sparta, but some of these points, when examined, don’t often make a lot of sense.

Before I move onto the YouTube channel recommendations, I want to briefly address one recommendation I made in the past. Two weeks ago, I recommended the YouTube channel iilluminaughtii because of her in-depth anticorporatist, anti-MLM documentaries, but earlier this week, it was revealed that former editors and collaborators on her channel and associated channels have dug out some skeletons from her closet.

She attempted to defame another YouTuber when one of his editors questioned the techniques of her editing team on Discord. This specific editor is a YouTuber himself and had simply asked for tips and tricks, which comes with the territory on YouTube, but when the same editing tricks made their way into a video, iilluminaughtii, or in this case Blair herself, got mad and falsely claimed plagiarism on Twitter, which others were quick to point out the hypocrisy as her channel has plagiarized other documentaries in the past.

Now there’s nothing wrong with calling someone out if you believe they stole material or even with referencing a documentary for use in a video or article you yourself are making. The points of divergence come with what Blair claimed and the YouTuber she attempted to accuse of theft. What she claimed was a practice that is common all over the site and the YouTuber she attempted to defame was Devin Stone, a real-life attorney operating in the Washington, DC area whose content focuses on real-life and fictional law cases from the trial in SpongeBob SquarePants to Better Call Saul.

Furthermore, ex-editors and such have come out on Twitter to describe Blair as a person and as a YouTuber personally and none of them have nice things to say about her. For a start, she doesn’t seem to keep a tidy dwelling and is quite accusatory as seen with the nontroversy she tried to start with an actual attorney. She’s also not a good neighbor and doesn’t always practice what she preaches, shaming and lambasting the uber-wealthy, but now that she’d found success from her own channel, she allegedly shopped for luxurious items like expensive clothing brands and cars, sometimes after publishing a video on why X brand doesn’t live up to its purported reputation.

Looking back, it was quite alarming that she could pump out so many documentaries in such a short amount of time considering documentaries take far longer to make than any given movie thanks to the research that goes into them. After what I’d heard about another documentary YouTuber, Jake Tran, I thought I’d be over hypocritical content creators becoming the monsters they sought to destroy, and I make this comparison because this was what I’d thought of with the Twitter threads and YouTube videos released this week that talk about this sort of thing amongst other YouTuber controversies as of late. But whereas Jake Tran took histories lessons as a handbook instead of a warning, Blair is doing the exact thing she often accuses real-life public figures of doing, so what gives?

I’ll still make recommendations for YouTube channels I like and I might cover the topic more in-depth in the future but I can’t make promises to the latter. I don’t really like delving into content creator drama. Personally, I stick around for the content. Online and in Hollywood there are too many examples of celebrities falling victim of their own hubris and I’ll always praise those who try their best to remain controversy-free and point people in their direction since they tend to have evidence of their services to the unfortunate, either through donations or fundraisers, but I can’t say everyone I recommend will be or remain a good person five, ten, twenty years for now. I only promise to try.

As for channels I recommend, to make up for the shortfall that came with Blair “iilluminaughtii,” I have two recommendations this time around. Yes, a two-fer! The first one is Monsieur Z.

https://www.youtube.com/@MonsieurDean/about

Monsieur Z, also known as Mr. Z, real name Dean, is also a history YouTuber who delves into alternate history most of the time. His channel is a bit more frequent than that of Cody Franklin’s Alternate History Hub et al and incidentally, both have been confused with each other because of their deep voices. Politically, Mr. Z leans conservative and has some videos that tacitly or overtly criticize left-leaning and liberal viewpoints, but he’s not a primary current events channel. Most of the time, it’s looking at different points in history that could’ve gone differently like the aforementioned Alternate History Hub.

To throw a bone to Devin Stone, I’m also recommending his channel: LegalEagle.

https://www.youtube.com/@LegalEagle/about

Devin Stone of LegalEagle fame is, as I stated above a real-life attorney who often examines real ongoing law cases as well as fictionalized lawsuits in media. He’s also active on the website Nebula with other similar YouTubers, and even has courses and guides for aspiring lawyers in the US. Whether you hope to become an attorney in the US, you want to know more about the legalese we laymen aren’t always privy to, or if you just want to see how fictionalized court cases compare to real-world practices common in a court room, check out the channel. For both Mr. Z and LegalEagle, they have dedicated Patreon pages and other such outlets for which to support the work that they do, found in their respective about pages.

Also, Devin was a good sport in spite of the dubious claims made against him by Blair. If you’d like, you can look around on YouTube to hear what others have been saying. To summarize, it’s not a very good look for Blair.

God of War Original: On Kratos

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Norse God of War looks impressive, but…

Going back to notes on future topics, I hadn’t really planned all that well for future topics. This week just says God of War original, but I didn’t really elaborate any further on what I meant by that; I was just listing things off for what I’d like to cover well into September of this year, though for reasons to be revealed much later as more details come to me, I doubt I’ll be anywhere near a device long enough to make regular weekly Friday blog posts.

For this week, I don’t remember whether I wanted to talk about what makes even Greek Kratos a good character along with Norse Kratos or if I wanted to cover a timeline of the Greek era games. I’ve seen more videos contextualizing and/or defending Greek Kratos to rebut the game journalists who were ready to discard him with very little knowledge of the rest of the series, and I’ve done this before as well. My first blog post defends Kratos while still acknowledge that his behavior and actions are downright brutal, so instead of repeating that, I think I’ll put together a comprehensive timeline.

Note: this will mostly before the Greek era and may only cover the games I’ve played, so although the developers claim God of War: Betrayal is canon, I currently don’t have a means to play this. I did find and save a comment on r/GodofWar that tells people how to play on a modern smartphone since it was developed for cell phones when they looked like this:

So I don’t think I can add it to the timeline I’ll create since I haven’t played it yet. Also, most people haven’t really played it either due to how much of a hassle mobile games were in the mid-2000s, so whether its omission changes anything or not depends. To my knowledge, it doesn’t all come to a head until God of War III, but let’s not jump the gun and follow Kratos on his journey.

The extras in the first God of War game set the stage for Kratos the character who coincidentally shares the same name of the mythological god of power and strength and one of Zeus’ best agents/servants.

Kratos’ Origins:

As I recall, the extras in the first game explain his origin story. A mortal woman with a child of dubious paternity in tow was cast out of her city-state and chose to make a home in Sparta and raise her son accordingly. Later, the same mortal woman mothers a second child but cannot establish his father either. The boys live the typical life of a burgeoning Spartan warrior in preparation for the lifelong training to be undergone by young boys around the age of 7.

Tragedy strikes the younger of the brothers. Born with a distinctive birthmark, the gods of Olympus are warned that a marked warrior will bring doom to Olympus, and set out to virtually erase this boy’s existence. Two gods, a brother and sister, take the younger brother and wound the elder. Normally, Greek gods seldom leave survivors so the older brother and their mother had to live with the fact that the younger brother had perished.

This failure to save the younger brother motivated the older brother to become a fully devoted Spartan warrior. Native son or not, this was his home and he was determined to fight in his memory, even gaining a distinctive tattoo to honor his brother’s memory.

Later in life, the older brother known as Kratos married the most beautiful woman in Sparta: Lysandra and fathered a girl named Calliope. In Ancient Sparta, the health of the infant determined their lot. Sickly children were often discarded and Calliope born sickly would surely have been abandoned pertaining to Spartan law.

Kratos made a promise that he wouldn’t be weak and fulfilling that promise, after hearing about the Ambrosia of Asclepius, god of medicine and healing, he sets out to find it to save his daughter. The problem here is that he’s not the only champion who sets out on this quest. Other champions, personally gambled on like race horses by the gods of Olympus, are also on the hunt for the ambrosia. Kratos eventually wins this wager without knowing he was being bet on and sees Calliope well into her own childhood.

After this, he set out on campaigns to expand and strengthen Sparta’s brutal reputation, but his relationship with his family suffers as a result. One such battle eliminates a large number of Spartans and almost spells the end for Kratos until he pleads to the god of war, Ares to save him from death. His offer was his life. Following on this, Ares gifts Kratos a brand new set of weapons to carry into battle. Their chains were seared onto his arms to remind him of his oath to the god of war, never to be removed.

These blades took the head of their first victim soon after, and would set a course for Kratos’ downfall. His time as a devotee to the god who saved him drove him to extremes, you’d grow to be scared of the monster he was becoming. Across the Greek world, Kratos’ name would be made infamous with one single act.

The final straw that broke the camel’s back came when he set his fellow devotees on a rampage against followers of Ares’ sister, Athena, the god of wisdom. The village was massacred behind Kratos as he set his sights on the temple in the middle of the village.

The associated oracle warns him not to go inside, but the prophecy falls on deaf ears as he slaughters the lot of these civilians, the final two pulled him to his senses. Through trickery and manipulation, Kratos slaughtered his family.

Soon after Kratos understands the horror at his feet, an image of his patron god appears to praise him on his lack of mercy and make him into a warrior with nothing to lose. Ares misunderstood though that Kratos’ family was what kept him going for so long. Now that he’s widowed and fatherless, he can’t bring himself to continue to worship Ares.

As punishment for spilling familial blood, the oracle fastens the ashes of his family to his skin, a sign to all of what he was, thus birthing the Ghost of Sparta, a derisive moniker to remind him of his crimes. Worse yet for Kratos, the Furies, keepers of oaths and goddesses of vengeance punish him for breaking away from the god of war.

Ascension:

Breaking away from any deity is a punishable offense. As an example, the Hecatonchires, Aegaeon, was punished by having his many heads and limbs turned into a living prison, or more accurately a zombie prison since Aegaeon’s corpse was used extensively as the prison and he doesn’t get to move until activated by the cruel Furies.

Megaera, Tisiphone, and Alecto all vow to bring Kratos back to Ares or kill him whichever one comes first. Along his journey, their son, Orkos, guides him on his path to free him from the crippling visions that have since followed him. Part of this journey involves seeking out the Oracle of Delphi, Aletheia. Guarded by slave workers and their owner Castor and Pollux (reimagined as conjoined twins), Kratos climbs up the the temple to seek an audience with the Oracle, though without tribute as would be expected. Castor attempted to turn him away for forgoing this rule, but learned first hand why he was the Ghost of Sparta.

The fight carries a third casualty; armed with the Amulet of Ouraborus, Castor destroys the temple and mortally wounds Aletheia, but fortunately for Kratos, she survives long enough to further assist him. His next move is to travel to the island of Delos, home of the statue of Apollo currently in disrepair to gain the eyes of the oracle.

At the same time, the Furies give chase and almost have him prisoner until Orkos intervenes and gives him the stone he uses to be in multiple places at once. At the same time, Kratos rebuilds the statue with the amulet and eventually gains the eyes of the oracle, but doesn’t hold onto them for long. The other mystical relics on this journey of his are confiscated while he gets chained to the Hecatonchires prison. He later regains them and fights off the Furies as they fail to entice or coerce him into serving Ares once more.

To this end, the last method used is the image of his family. But Kratos chooses reality and kills the Furies, seemingly freeing him of his oath until Orkos reveals that as a last ditch effort, Orkos was made the oathkeeper and Kratos can’t be free of his hallucinations until he kills Orkos, which he does reluctantly.

Chains of Olympus:

The journey of redemption is a long one. Kratos stopped serving Ares after it cost him his family, but still seeks to forget his past while under the service of the rest of Olympus. As such, he serves as the main guide for the Attica military in the midst of a Persian invasion with a basilisk in tow. Kratos fights off the Persian Army, their king and destroys the fire breathing beast, thus saving Attica, but Kratos, halfway through his decade of servitude for penance demands another challenge.

On cue, the sun falls out of the sky as a black fog engulfs the lands. At Helios’ temple, a statue of Athena reveals that Helios was kidnapped and without his command of the sun, Morpheus, god of dreams has taken over the lands.

Morpheus doesn’t physically appear in Chains of Olympus, just his name is used. Kratos finds Helios’ sister, Eos, goddess of dawn, who tells him that Atlas the titan kidnapped Helios. She doesn’t know where they went and can’t help any further weakened by the absence of Helios. However, he can still find him by activating the steeds that pull the chariot everyday.

We’re all adults here, but the images of Eos in game have her with her breasts uncovered and I don’t want to risk myself or anyone else reading getting flagged. I could definitely censor the bare nipples, but I chose the easier method of showing her back since I wanna finish this in time for lunch.

Anyway, Kratos activates the steeds and they take him to Hades where Helios was taken by Atlas. On his way, he demands the ferryman Charon bring him to where Helios is being kept. Charon refuses as the gods still needs him and soundly defeats him in battle and sends him to Tartarus.

Kratos breaks out and acquires the gauntlet of Zeus. Climbing out with this new weapon, Kratos returns to the docks to defeat the ferryman and take his ship further into Hades. An apparition haunting him since he was at Helios’ temple was that of Calliope, whom Kratos gifted a carved flute for her to play in reference to her namesake being one of the nine muses.

This apparition of his daughter takes him off his course to save humanity and he willingly sacrifices his powers to be with her in Elysium since there’s no other way for him to get into Elysium elsewise, at the instruction of Persephone.

The reunion is short-lived as the goddess of spring and wife of Hades reveals that she was the one who freed Atlas and used him to kidnap Helios. The next phase of her plan was to use him to destroy the pillar that holds up the world. Instead, Kratos traps the titan beneath the world and uses the gauntlet of Zeus to kill Persephone. The sacrifice he made though was his own daughter. If the pillar was destroyed then Kratos would lose her and her memory, but if it was spared and the world saved, he would have to abandon her. Nonetheless, he fulfills his promise and begrudgingly accepts his place as the servant of the gods.

2005:

Five years after the events of Chains of Olympus, Kratos onboard a ship combats the hydra and sets a course for Athens. Athena calls upon Kratos to save her city from her brother. This doubles as a chance at redemption and a means for Kratos get his revenge on Ares. Before he had to live with his crimes as nightmares, but with a chance to defeat Ares in sight, he jumped at the opportunity hoping it would mean his nightmares would finally end.

Chaos is ensuing at just the gates to Athens proper, and Kratos goes to the oracle of Athens to consult a guide on defeating Ares. He saves her from the minions of Ares and tells him that the power to slay even a god rests within the box of Pandora.

Still a risky picture, but there’s significantly less breast exposure. The oracle tells Kratos that the path to the box is through the desert and Athena, through her statues, elaborates that it’s hidden at the highest level of the temple which is in turn chained to the back of Chronos, who is forced to forever traverse the desert.

Along the way, Kratos comes across deadly traps and perilous enemies, while also being aided by the gods. Finally he reaches the box itself, but is then killed by Ares and has the box taken from him. He still has this task to complete and fights his way out of Hades to complete it with aid of a grave digger that he ran across earlier in the game.

I’ve seen the above photo several times, and only now has it dawned on me that the bottom half is like that meme of the elegantly drawn horse but half-finished. Back at the Temple of the Oracle, Kratos treks through the building to reach Ares, now proclaiming his possession of the box, and threatening to use it on Olympus.

Kratos hurls a Zeus lightning bolt at the chain holding the box, opens it, and uses its power to kill Ares. A mortal man defeated a god for the first time in history, and Athens can rebuild anew, but Kratos learned that he was only set up for redemption and forgiveness. He’s stuck with those nightmares for life. Taking this as a betrayal, he sought to end his own life, but the gods had other plans. Because of his service to Olympus, he’s given the seat of the God of War as consolation. But this wasn’t enough for Kratos.

Ghost of Sparta:

Now that he has the throne of Ares, a long repressed memory of his brother Deimos resurfaces. This time, though, he seeks an answer as to the true fate of his brother. Organizing a fleet of sailors, he sets a course for Atlantis where his mother, Callisto, rests in a chamber, ailing and waiting for her son’s arrival. Knowing his intentions, the gods attempt to dissuade Kratos by unleashing beasts like Scylla, but it doesn’t work out as they hoped.

Through whooping coughs, she reveals that she was forced to lie to Kratos about the fate of his brother at the behest of his father, whose identity she was also cursed to keep secret. Failure to do so transforms her into a beast that Kratos kills. In her dying breath, Callisto urges Kratos travel to Sparta and find a key to the Gate of Death, the realm of the primordial Greek god Thanatos.

After this battle, he travels through the Methana Volcano and acquires the bane of Thera which imbues his blades with fire. In doing so, the stability of the volcano’s interior is in jeopardy as Kratos also uses the fire to destroy the gears that operate the Archimedes screws that regulate the temperature of the volcano. Without all of these, the volcano begins to erupt and Atlantis sinks to the seabed.

The resulting eruption sends Kratos flying into the city of Heraklion, where the Grave Digger greets him, this time with a warning that the destruction of Atlantis will cost him whatever favor he gained from his prior service to Olympus, especially Zeus. Unfortunately for Olympus, occupying the god of war’s throne wasn’t what he desired, and so he sets forth to continue on his trek to Deimos.

Part of this path takes him through the Aronia Mountains where young Spartans are sent to conquer their fears. Going back to the god of death foreshadowing, he and his daughter Erinys are tasked with preventing Kratos from reaching his goal.

During the battle, Kratos conveniently returns to Sparta and his treated as a legend among his countrymen. While there, he comes across a dissenter in the jails who nearly gets him killed. Despite the results of his battle, there’s a small minority of devotees to Ares. Nevertheless, Kratos makes it out of the jails of Sparta and travels to the temple of the fallen god of war to retrieve the key: the skull of Keres.

With the skull in hand, he sets a course back to the now submerged Atlantis to activate the Gate of Death with the key. The realm of death (which I interpreted as Purgatory) is described as a place where neither god nor mortal dares enter willingly.

Navigating the realm, Kratos finally finds his brother, but the reunion is a bloody affair. The associated trophy suggests that Kratos held back because he just wanted his brother back even if it meant he died with hatred in his heart. Not long afterward, Thanatos took Deimos away again and when Kratos returns to save his brother from death again, the two engaged in battle with Thanatos, who admitted the short-sightedness of Olympus’ decision to take Deimos and not Kratos. Though it wouldn’t have made a difference which brother was abducted.

Deimos dies in the fight and after Kratos kills Thanatos, he lays his brother to rest for real this time. Now that it’s only him left, Athena arrives to bestow godhood to Kratos as he now lacks a familial bond on earth. Kratos doesn’t take very kindly to being forced to massacre his family piecemeal and promises to topple Olympus for it one way or another.

II:

Now a god, Kratos relished in the comfort of battle and war in defiance of the peace that Olympus desired in the world. Athena implores him to stop, but he refuses and continues to aid in an ongoing invasion of Rhodes. His brutality turned out to be worse than what Ares was capable of, so Zeus strips him of a fraction of his godhood while bringing the Colossus of Helios at Rhodes to life to fight Kratos and defend the city.

Kratos battles the statue, but Zeus feigns aid by lending him the Blade of Olympus. He’s tricked into pouring the last of his powers into the blade and uses it to destroy the statue soundly, but falling debris causes him to drop the blade and his mortality returns to him. He tried to save face and retrieve the blade, but Zeus beat him to the punch. He expressed his disappointment at what’s become of the Ghost of Sparta.

When Kratos refuses this last opportunity to stand by Zeus, Zeus killed him and annihilated the combating armies of Sparta and Rhodes, save for one lone Spartan. Kratos was then resurrected and encouraged by Gaia to return to the world of the living. He greeted the last Spartan and issued orders to return and fortify Sparta’s defenses while he prepared to face Zeus again, commandeering a Pegasus who doesn’t take him straight to his destination of choice.

A pair of titans has keys he needs to even stand a chance against the king of Olympus. Typhon’s Bane to be retrieved from its namesake’s eye, and the Rage of the Titans to be retrieved from sacrificing Prometheus to the fires of Olympus. With both, Kratos frees the Pegasus previously trapped beneath Typhon’s hand and travels with his new weapons to the Isle of Creation.

This island is the home of the Sisters of Fate, where travelers can request an audience with the sisters. As it turns out, others had similar ideas. The island is filled with numerous traps and guarded by the Steeds of Time which were meant as a gift from Chronos in a feeble attempt to change his own fate from what Zeus had done to him after the Titanomachy.

The steeds are guarded by the last person you’d expect to serve anyone before himself: Theseus.

The old man challenges Kratos to battle and gets trounced by the Ghost of Sparta who then uses his key to traverse the rest of the island and acquires some of Chronos’ lightning magic. Here, he encounters the first of his old enemies in search of a do-over from the sisters: the Barbarian King who fought on the Persian side all those years ago.

Long dead, he returns as a zombie in possession of an undead horse and the hammer that almost killed Kratos when he pleaded for a second chance. The barbarian dies a second time, and Kratos takes his hammer as a secondary weapon. He then encounters Jason and his Argonauts stranded around the island and in varying degrees of screwed. Jason himself in possession of the golden fleece when he gets eaten by a Cerberus beast.

Kratos retrieves the relic and now has the ability to throw attacks back and parry limitlessly. This acquisition of extra relics takes him through Euryale’s temple where he battles her and takes her head as he did her sister years ago in Athens.

The second person seeking counsel with the sisters is Perseus who failed in his myth to save Andromeda without Medusa’s head. Kratos kills him and stumbles upon hobo Icarus who attempts to reserve the right to seek the sisters of fate.

In their fight, Kratos takes his wings and navigates the body of Atlas. Before breaking out from the chasm, Kratos is discovered by the titan who is convinced to stop exacting revenge on the Spartan after hearing of his plan to use the Blade of Olympus on Zeus himself.

Atlas talks about the first time he encountered that blade and what he would’ve done if not sentenced to his position by Kratos. Now that they’re both enemies of Olympus, Atlas grants him his magic and helps him reach the Palace of the Fates. Kratos once again fights his way inside, dodging the traps and enemies inside to get reach the sisters, even defeating the kraken that Perseus was supposed to defeat.

Finally reaching the sisters, Kratos proclaims that fate doesn’t work on him and the sisters fight him in a last ditch effort to prevent him from fighting Zeus, expecting the death of Olympus to follow suit. Kratos proceeds anyway and fights the king of the gods on Olympus, but with Athena protecting her father, he misses the opportunity and accidentally kills Athena in the process. She used her dying breath to reveal what Callisto would have revealed in Atlantis about Zeus being his father and urges him to spare Olympus, which was his original goal.

Kratos declares that only Zeus is his target but won’t let anyone get in his way. Calling forth the Titans from the Titanomachy, Kratos declares war on Zeus and any remaining Olympians.

III:

Expecting heavy resistance, Kratos welcomed the challenge brought on by the Olympians, the first of them being Poseidon himself. The sea god is the first to fall and his death negatively impacts bodies of water across the world. Another confrontation with Zeus leads to Gaia losing her hand and Kratos falling to the underworld again after Gaia reveals he was a means to an end for the titans.

Kratos’ circle of allies shrunk rapidly and now that he’s in Hades, the king of the dead isn’t going to let him slip through his fingers again. Armed with the bow of Apollo, recovered from Peirithous’ corpse, Kratos kills Hades which unbinds the souls from the realm of the dead, and leaves the dead in limbo while Kratos gets to use Hades’ titular claws in battle.

Between battles, Kratos encounters the former Olympian smith god, Hephaestus.

Encountering the smith god, Kratos learns about the Flame of Olympus and is encouraged by the spirit of Athena to find it. After battling with Helios and taking his head (and blotting out the sun) Kratos comes across the labyrinth of Daedalus and more than once in this game. While here, the messenger of the gods, Hermes, taunts him as a challenge, despite the Spartan’s best efforts to ignore the little bugger.

For this, Hermes loses his legs and his death causes plague on Olympus. Traveling further, he comes across his stepmother Hera who would happily turn a blind eye to the death of her husband, but when Kratos asks for Pandora, whom Athena tells him is needed to reach her namesake box, she sicks his half brother Hercules on him.

Under the false promise of godhood over the ancillary nonsense from his labors, Hercules attempts to kill Kratos on Hera’s orders, but gets bludgeoned and robbed of his Nemean Cestus. The world now in ruins without the gods to control it, Kratos continues on in search of Pandora to defeat Zeus. This takes him back to Hephaestus who now turns on Kratos when he learns that Pandora is his new target of acquisition. He claims to need the Omphalos Stone to craft a fourth weapon, though Kratos deems it unnecessary considering the number on his hip already.

The stone turns out to be in Chronos’ stomach and is violently torn from his intestines. Kratos caught on to the double cross and once the electric Nemesis Whip is gifted to Kratos, Hephaestus follows through on his double cross and tries to kill him to protect his daughter.

He fails and Kratos continues on alone in search of the girl.

Along the way, he killed Hera for badmouthing Pandora and moved the cubes of Daedalus’ labyrinth causing his death as well. Pandora is found unconscious and when they return to the flame, she attempts to fulfill her fate. Then Zeus returns to stop Kratos from causing further chaos. In a final battle, Pandora attempts again to fulfill her destiny. At first Kratos prevents her but he was goaded by Zeus and let her go. The flame was extinguished and he learns that the box was empty. Now father and son end this rivalry once and for all while Gaia reveals she survived and isn’t happy to learn that her plan had destructive consequences. The battle continues inside the titaness and the two emerge, with the blade impaled in Zeus.

With the last of his might, he sentences Kratos to a nightmare world, but with the power of hope, he breaks free and beats Zeus to death for good this time. The cost of his revenge was the state of humanity, and when told by Athena to transfer his power to her, he takes his own life in defiance. Only Kratos is essentially unkillable and the post-credits scene reveals that he escaped to Midgard while Greece rebuilt likely under Roman supervision.

I omitted and reworked some stuff for this timeline to fit it all in chronological order since some games begin in medias res, but I think I did an okay job of mapping out the greek timeline. I say “timeline” when this is a recounting of the games’ chronology since calendar dates aren’t exactly shown. Mythologies may be based on a version of the truth, but with oral tradition birthing many different versions of the same story, it’s hard to put Kratos in the timeline in a way that doesn’t have him jumping back and forth between events.

Norse Kratos preceding Fimbulwinter makes more sense temporally as scholars and historians believe a real-life world changing event likely caused by a medieval volcanic eruption called the Volcanic Winter of 536 served as an inspiration for the Norse myth of Fimbulwinter. The Greek era prequels’ release order being what it is, one could believe erroneously that Kratos was in two places at once.

So the timeline is faulty, but keeping in mind that most myths are inconsistent, I’d say it tracks. Thankfully, next week, I know what I want to talk about and I have a better research method to use. I won’t reveal too much, but let this picture be a teaser:

Eagle-eyed readers know what to expect, but in case I need to provide a further hint, it’s about a series of video games.

For this week, my channel recommendation is iilluminaughtii, spelled as seen here.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpDmn2FfVYdPIDwRTcf5-OA

The channel, run by a woman named Blair, takes a hard look at companies and corporations and exposes their dirty laundry for all to see. Blair doesn’t give anyone the benefit of the doubt and dispels their friendly image, uncovers a dark history they thought they’d buried under history and legalese, criticizes them for a professed hypocritical message, or any combination of the three and then some. I don’t tune in to all of her videos. Some topics interest me, some don’t. The ones that do interest me, I can’t recommend them highly enough.

On her channel, her introductory video is an in-depth look at why we all hate PETA. Good stuff so far.

Before I leave, I’m gonna try something at the bottom:

Admittedly a censorship test. Sometimes I write these blog posts in public and if a reference image is NSFW/L, then the safer route is the most preferred, if it exists. The next time I bring up a mature series, the censor blocks will be used when I’m certain I won’t get in trouble for it. Some risks aren’t worth it.

Under the Mayo and How NOT to Review Games

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Hot takes taken to an absurd extreme

When it comes to video game reviewers and YouTubers, I bounce between creators for a time. One of the recommendations I made a few posts ago about Tactical Bacon Productions is one that I firmly believe is in his element enough to get the traffic he needs, even with YouTube jerking him and other YouTubers around with arbitrary strikes and claims due to a screw up that happened on their part. The channels I’ve been recommending for the month of February (and others to come in the future, especially at the end of this post), have been consistent to the best of their ability regarding content. They know what they’re talking about or what they’re doing and few of them have anything controversial surrounding them. The same can’t be said of the subject of today’s video: Under the Mayo.

I came across this channel while looking for content for God of War 4 last year and his controversial review on the game opened up Pandora’s box. Several other YouTubers had come to defend the new Norse era of God of War and call out Mayo for his contrarian viewpoints. And these viewpoints were very contrarian. The video below has a provocative title:

Controversy definitely sells and if it was just a hook to reel in viewers, I’d leave it alone. But viewpoints within the video sounded too ignorant, as if Mayo hadn’t payed any attention to the story of the previous games in the lead up to 2018. Gaming journalists tend to do that a fair amount with the countless number of know-nothings who’s exposure to the old God of War games is surface level or they just forgot. And to lend a straw to Mayo, this isn’t about him misunderstanding the difference between Greek Kratos and Norse Kratos. Hell, this post isn’t unique in what it has to say about him.

On YouTube and select Reddit posts, he’s taken hits for sounding like a hypocrite. Five minutes into a review he’ll praise an element of X and ten minutes in the same video he’ll critique it. Or he’ll highlight a feature of one game, wish for it to be taken out of an upcoming sequel if the game is successful enough and all of a sudden wish for it to come back; or conversely want something to be patched out and regret it when it has. You could argue that most people don’t always know what they want and that’s fair. Too much can be said about an indecisive populace making a generation-changing decision and that sentence alone probably gives you an idea from across the pond.

The point of divergence for Mayo comes in the harsh critique of most games in stark contrast to everything he has said about Doom and Doom: Eternal. Here’s where I admit that the rest of this post may jump into speculation. My exposure to Doom is also surface level, even though I played the original games on Steam and I have the 2016 DOOM on Xbox One that I haven’t touched in a while. I’ve got nothing against the franchise or id Software, my preferences lean more towards the action-adventure variety. I think Doom is an awesomely influential series that most games these days lend an oath of gratitude to, enough that first-person shooters needed a more appropriate genre name than just Doom clone that was the case for it in the 90s and beyond. That being said, if Doom went to court for something (and it probably did, video games that showcase or reference the Devil are gonna get theirs), Mayo is the type of guy that if he were an attorney, he’d drop everything and zoom on over to the courtroom with enough material to sway the jury after boring them to sleep for seven hours, and that’s because even the stenographer wants him to shut the hell up.

id Software’s flagship series has a permanent residence in his head and if his critics are to be believed, if Mayo hasn’t mentioned or shown footage of Doom or Doom: Eternal apropos of nothing, he’s liable to reference it in a review of another game. I’ve watched YouTubers take apart his God of War and Sifu reviews for the flip-flopping, backpedaling talking points, drawing on the conclusion that he says it without sincerity for contrarian’s sake.

Personally, I’ve ventured around this angle before on a few things I wasn’t all that serious about, but Mayo seems determined to die in a bunker with 60 years worth of provisions on his takes.

I hesitate to say that I’m 100% passionate about a singular thing these days, my tastes are subject to change and I could spend my money on things that actually help with survival, hobbies and pastimes coming second. Among Mayo’s critics, he’s come under fire as a hypocritical game reviewer with a singular thing on his mind. With what I know about his review style and what others have said, it seems as though he frames himself as the singular authority on what makes a good game based on only one game and that’s a bad lens to look through.

Speaking of God of War critiques, in GCN’s video on Everything Wrong with God of War 2018 in the style of CinemaSins, one of the criticisms lobbied was one I actually agreed with: games in this day and age need to let go of FromSoftware’s tenets and features of game design. Listing off a round of games that put style and substance front and center like Ninja Gaiden, Onimusha, God Hand, Devil May Cry and the original God of War series, the proof in the pudding there was that FromSoft’s Dark Souls franchise is not the be-all, end-all of game design. In a similar vein, Doom: Eternal isn’t close to revolutionary.

If I may get controversial for a bit, Doom 1993 was a phenomenal influence on the gaming industry. DOOM 2016 and Doom: Eternal are not special. Within the franchise and within the gaming industry, these FPS’s are always welcome to let players partake in the carnage they have to offer, but they don’t have anything new to offer that other games already have for better or worse. Fighting demons on Mars with high tech weaponry? Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Black Ops III all did it a year and change prior with sliding and jetpack mechanics for better and worse. Setting the story aside to focus on ramming a demon horn into said demon’s own throat? NetherRealm Mortal Kombat, Black Ops IV, and God of War either did one or both of these things before that.

For the record, I’m not saying that I think Call of Duty beats Doom; I’m saying that mechanically Doom doesn’t do much to make a difference anymore. The lack of weapon reloading gets back to the style of shooter that literally gave you a gun so you can blast away unimpeded, but beyond that Doom is just a more extreme, more based shooter. And you don’t need me to tell you this. Get the game or watch a Let’s Play and see demon limbs flood the next level in Viscera Cleanup Detail.

Don’t get the wrong idea from this. Everyone loves what they love and hates what they hate, but it’s never a good sign to go hard on one or the other, especially at the expense of the opposite. Mayo clearly has a boner for Doom et al, and he has the right to voice his opinions, but there’s better ways to do it. I don’t want to sound like the internet police and say being an asshole on the Internet is wrong when most people do it, ideally with little consequence to them in the real world (better pray no one knows where you live), but if you’re going to say something, have evidence, write down your thoughts, and if there’s a contradiction somewhere down the line, correct it and try again.

The last channel recommendation for the month of February 2023 is TheMythologyGuy.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheMythologyGuy1/featured

Since this post mentioned a product caked in mythology, it seemed fitting to mention a channel where that’s the specialty on display. TheMythologyGuy talks about various mythologies from Greece to Egypt to Japan to Norse just to name a few. Several of my favorite videos of his are about the mythical inaccuracies in the God of War games, followed close by movie reviews concerning other myths and franchises, notably that of the Percy Jackson variety. The link to his channel is up above and his about page will have links on where and how to support him.

This will be the last of the channel recommendations until April. Look forward to their return.