PARENTING TIPS

GOD OF WAR is the best version of a masterpiece

- Morgan Park

NEED TO KNOW

WHAT IS IT? An action RPG family road trip

EXPECT TO PAY $50

DEVELOPER Sony Santa Monica

PUBLISHER PlayStation PC

REVIEWED ON RTX 3060, Ryzen 7 5700G 3.8Ghz, 16GB RAM

MULTIPLAYER No

LINK playstation.com/ en-us/god-of-war

God of War is a PC game. That still felt weird to say as I wrapped up my second playthrough over the holidays. Not far above it on my Steam library sits another game that is ‘of War’ for a different master—Gears 5. Just a few years ago, these two tentpole series existing on the same device was impossible. Now they share a virtual shelf.

Sony’s latest angry dad game is evidence that the PC is the ultimate videogame unifier, and a great reminder of how the platform can bring out the best in games. I’ve killed my way across Midgard at 30fps on a PS4 and 4K on PS5, but I don’t think I can go back to either after 24 hours of buttery smooth monster chopping at 90fps. This is a good port, at least on my higher-end PC.

If you skipped the PlayStation release, or haven’t touched the series at all, this is the God of War to play. All you need to know going in is that Kratos was Athena’s best murder man until he was betrayed and decided to kill all of the gods (including his daddy, Zeus). This soft reboot picks up years later. In that time, Kratos left a nowgodless Greece and wandered into the Norse lands, where he gained a wife (who has just passed away at the start of the game), a son named Atreus, and a glorious beard.