God Of War – A biblical resurrection for PlayStation
Kratos was not the only one in exile for the past few years, the Studio behind the Greek hurricane have been absent of late. With an entrance fitting of a God themselves, they have thrust themselves firmly back into the spotlight and public eye with a triumphant return to form. With the guidance of Corey Barlog at the helm and the broad collection of talent within the studio from across the globe this is much more than just a technical showpiece for them and the hardware, Kratos is back but leave your expectations at the door as nothing can prepare you for the events that unfold, God of War may just be the most biblical resurrection we have ever seen, let me show you why……. It has become almost an expectation now that Sony 1st Party studios are at the forefront of the technical, Audio & visual possibilities within modern games. An ensemble of studios, talent and teams from across the globe that regularly do battle, raising the bar, to our collective benefit, and that bench can be harder and harder to press, well for some… and can equally fall hard if you do not keep up the pace. Santa Monica studios were amongst the very best on the Playstation 3 and left that generation, in my opinion, with 2 of the most technically and artistically impressive games shipped on that complex hardware, proving that it was not only Kratos doing battle against immense odds. They have been suspicious by their absence during the PS4 era, helping publish other titles and shipping a remaster we have yet to enjoy the fruits of their labour, until this week. From the moment the game starts the leap from one generation to another is obvious, the model of Kratos himself is front and centre on just how big a leap that really is. All the subtle improvements add up, higher quality textures, PBR based material shaders, greater normal maps, higher polygon and the quality, accuracy and coverage of the lighting and subsequent reactions to all these elements leave you with an in-game model that exceeds anything prior, even in-game. What left the last generation as a high point, has already aged more than the lead himself. Something equally present at the astounding details and fantastical world you are transported in the game. From dense foliage that reacts to movement as you slam the poor fools sorry enough to cross you, to the expansive vista’s, light starved caves and all manner of dreamlike environments leaves you in no doubt this they have gotten as close to the concept artists vision as possible. Volumetric lights are spared no reprieve to enhance many of these areas as is volumetric fog as it floats inside caves or across streams, light bounces colours and breaks through trees that juxtaposed a peaceful serenity against the harsher and more desolate moments. The beautiful sections can also fool you into a false sense of security but they can allow you to admire the effort poured into them, scale is present with you able to admire and appreciate better from this new single shot camera, this is God of War and scale is still ever present and our David is far from helpless. Each tree bark, weathered stone face or worn wooden floorboard looks to been painted on your screen from a real location, polygon count has increased but they have used it wisely, not swamping them across objects, instead balancing that load and certainly being far more conservative (relatively) with the culling. Occasionally you can see points that show this and Kratos dome is a good point, vertex edges can be seen if you really look hard enough. Pixel Power With this generation straddling the lines of arguably the biggest demand in resolution increases we have seen, an understandable level of fear has immerged for base console players being left behind with these new mid-gen refreshes targeting those 4K resolutions, Santa Monica have managed to straddle that delicate line almost to perfection, evident by all that you have seen thus far in this section coming from that very same base console. The drastic texture hike, artistic effort and vast detail packed into the game throughout play had me scratching my head as to how they managed to make a game on the base PS4 look this good, move this smoothly and present one of the sharpest, artefact free and overall pleasing presentations the console has seen. From the cracks of the bark, to the scars of a Troll mid-battle, nothing is missed within the native 1920×1080 display of this “base” paltry 1.8TF machine. The image quality is remarkable, a careful balance of mip-map bias, Depth of Field, textured layers, decal additions, normal maps and one incredible particle system had me wondering if they had somehow managed to supersample the image, with a sharpening filter that reduces the smudging affect it can have. I think some level of EQAA (see MSAA) has also been used to sharpen up the polygon count the engine shifts, something they also excelled at on the PS3. This meticulous attention to keeping high frequency details to a minimum combined with the Temporal Anti-Aliasing pass leaves a game that is a confident argument in favour of 1080P not being outdated just yet, in isolation you would never ask or expect more from your machine than what you get, fill-rate wise. The temporal solution is clearly one of the best so far, a method of using previous information and the current frames to improve the image stability whilst in motion. This is of course more of an issue if you are playing on a large 4K screen, signs will emerge of the non-native image, but for HD screen players (and this includes the Pro players who have 2 excellent choices) I doubt you will yearn for any more pixels than delivered here. Staying with resolution for now the Pro offers up 2 distinct options that have become a
