Kratos’ latest game finally hits PC, but is it better than the PS4 version?
Thanks to PlayStation for providing the review code for the Steam version of God of War.
The God of War has changed… and this is not the Kratos you know. A difficult and unfamiliar road awaits as you explore a stunning retelling of a classic story. Join Kratos as he adventures through a deep and reflective journey of growth, violence and the desire to become a better man for the sake of his son. In a world of monsters, dragons and gods, the weight of responsibility rests heavy on your shoulders — and when your life is filled with blood and chaos, how can you prevent the mistakes of the past in order to protect your future?
I reviewed the 2018 PS4 version of God of War here and gave it a perfect score of 10. A few years on, the PC version was announced and while I was looking forward to going through it, I did wonder if maybe I was too generous back then, so I was in two minds about going back through Kratos’ last title again. Having played the PS4 version to the Platinum trophy point and extensively playing the PC version, I can say if anything I don’t think I was generous enough…
I don’t normally review PC games, mostly because keeping up with the hardware has always felt like a losing battle, but I was hopeful that even though my gaming laptop is a few years old now, it’d still be able to run God of War with only a few issues. Luckily this was the case and while I couldn’t push the game to its Ultra settings without grinding the framerate to a halt, I was able to get it to a reasonable level where it still surpassed the PS4 version.
As with most PC games, you can either play with keyboard and mouse or gamepad. I was able to connect my DualShock 4 controller to Steam to play the game as I remembered back in 2018 and it still handles just as well here. While it may appear to be a fairly standard PC port, this is still the better looking and performing version of what I considered to be the 2018 GOTY. The PS5 can get the game to run at 60 FPS now, which is impressive but only the Steam version can seem to fully maintain that and on better hardware, go beyond it.
The gameplay of the original game is intact and while there aren’t any QoL changes or extra content, the Steam version is the definitive version in my opinion. I just wish Sony were able to implement their own trophies into their PC ports like Xbox does but that’s just my trophy/achievement obsession seeping through.
I didn’t experience any bugs or glitches during my playthrough and once I had the game on the optimum settings for my laptop, I didn’t notice any framerate drops. The game still looks amazing, more so now with the PC version and superb voice-acting and epic soundtrack from the original make it across with no issues either.
The Verdict
God of War for PC is a fairly standard port, but it works incredibly well, even on older hardware. It was great to go back through Kratos’ story and makes the wait for Ragnarök all the more painful…
Score: 10