Two Warnings About These Crazy ‘God Of War: Ragnarök’ Review Scores

God Of War: Ragnarök reviews are out in the wild, the review embargo having lifted yesterday, a full week before the game’s November 9th launch.

The reviews are in and they are overwhelmingly positive. As of this writing, 116 critics have penned reviews, or at least that many are showing up on review aggregator site, Metacritic where the game is sitting pretty with a 94% rating.

Over at OpenCritic, 94% of top critics give the game a positive review and 98% of critics recommend the game.

This means that the God Of War sequel is one of the best-reviewed games of 2022, behind only Elden Ring (on PS5 and Xbox Series X) Persona 5 Royal (on PC, Xbox Series X and Switch) and the Portal Companion Collection (on Switch). Call that 7th place or 4th place, but either way it’s doing quite well, thank you very much.

It’s also one point higher than God Of War’s PC port, which is #10 on the list with 93.

So what are these warnings all about if the game is doing so well with critics a week before launch?

Okay, two things—and the latter is definitely more important than the former.

#1 — Glowing Review Scores Mask The Game’s Problems

One problem with scored reviews and with review aggregators is that while useful, they can also obscure legitimate critiques. For instance, lots of critics are calling the game’s story messy and scattered. The pacing is off. Some very positive reviews say that it feels like a very big DLC for the previous God Of War, with similar plot beats and combat. Others complain about the menus and the micromanaging you have to do with gear and skills.

Our own Paul Tassi wrote that the “environments are sometimes overly linear and oppressively claustrophobic” and that while there are some cool, “quasi-open-world” areas “a lot of it is narrow hallways with similar-feeling puzzles and the all-too-present “shimmy through the tight space” mechanic that is wildly overused.”

But Paul also notes that “most of the areas are gorgeous, fun to play through and engaging, especially the further you get into the game” so I guess there’s balance. He gives the game a 9.5 out of 10. Every single review at the time of this writing is either 8 or its equivalent or above. Will a rebel reviewer piss everyone off by giving it a 4/10 or a big fat F? That remains to be seeen.

I’m not saying don’t trust the critics, either. I’m just saying that there’s a lot of gushing going on but if you peel back the layers you’ll see a lot of similar complaints about the story and pacing and some design elements. It’s a near-perfect scoring game, but obviously not perfect.

Ars Technica’s Kyle Orland writes that “there’s a constant, extremely heavy-handed motif of the nature of prophecy and fate and how much control even gods have to change either” later noting that he “also became tired of the game’s tendency toward occasionally tedious conversations about the philosophy of war” and that it all “ends up feeling like a forced, surface-level treatment of the subject that never really advances beyond a late-night dorm room talking session.”

And many, many reviewers simply note that it’s more of the same in many ways, which isn’t a bad thing if you enjoyed the 2018 God Of War at all. I enjoyed it quite a bit, so I’m not too concerned. More of the same good gameplay sounds good to me!

Okay, now on to . . .

#2 — There Are No PS4 Reviews

Sony has sold over 25 million PS5 units. But there are over 116 million PS4’s out there. This game was made for both last-gen and current-gen, and you can guarantee that a lot of PS4 owners will pick it up.

But how will it play on PlayStation 4? I imagine few reviewers cared to find out—why bother with the old when you can fire up your shiny new PlayStation 5? I imagine Sony wasn’t particularly interested in sending out PS4 review copies, either. Why offer up a subpar version of the game ahead of launch when you can dazzle everyone with the better version?

We do know that God Of War: Ragnarök will not look or perform quite as well on PS4 thanks to this helpful performance modes image:

On PS4 Pro you can favor performance and get a variable 1080 to 1656p resolution with 30 frames-per-second. You’ll probably want to choose that over the Quality setting, which only appears to improve the resolution a smidge—1440-1656p—while still only achieving 30 fps. A standard PS4 will manage 1080p at 30 fps.

On PS5, choosing any Quality mode will mean you have to settle for 30 to 40 fps. Performance modes are where it’s at, granting you around 60 fps, which will make this action game far, far more playable and enjoyable.

So we know already that even if the game looks really good on PS4, it’s not going to be as smooth a gaming experience. You won’t be able to achieve that ideal framerate even in Performance mode on PS4 Pro. It’s just not happening. That’s not really surprising but it is a shame. Or maybe it’s a shame that they bothered to even make a PS4 version given those resources could have gone into making the best PS5 game possible.

Either way, it looks like the tens of millions of potential PS4 GoW:R gamers will not be able to read reviews of the game until they’re able to write them themselves.

In this sense, PS4 owners would be wise to keep expectations in check.