God Of War Ragnarok review: calm down now, I’ve known this wolf for ninety seconds

Spoilers throughout. TLDR: fun, generous, beautiful animation and cinematography. Worked mostly fine on my PC. I would not have given it the best narrative award if it were up against Gran Turismo 7.

Writing of the frigid framing of Clockwork Orange’s atrocities, the film critic Pauline Kael asked: “is there anything sadder - and ultimately more repellent - than a clean-minded pornographer?” The lavishly directed and animated universe of God Of War Ragnarok is far from repellent, but it also feels spiritually squeegeed; a world of pulpy violence so chirpy and chaste as to strain belief that the scars that haunt its reformed anti-hero could have ever been inflicted there.

Part Disney film that says “fuck” a lot, part loin-clothed gorefest that cuts away before the grizzly bits, and part spandex-souled comic book subversion of the Prose Edda, Ragnarok is the follow up to God Of War (2018). That game, despite its success in escaping from the series’ rut, still found its most stirring moments in direct confrontation with a difficult past that Ragnarok feels emotionally evasive of. 2018’s focus is here replaced with a meandering plot plagued by fits and starts, but its scope is wider, combat deeper, setpieces more elaborate, and sights more arresting. It all makes for a generous, gorgeous action adventure that’s often hard to take seriously, but is very easy to get sucked in by.

Briefly: Fimbulwinter is here, heralding catastrophe. Son Atreus gets really into metal detecting/chasing his destiny. Dad Kratos is worried Atreus will cut himself on a rusty bit of tin, but ends up indulging him, and they go do some prophecy shit. Many chests and monster faces get smashed along the way, tantalising blood debts left hanging at 2018’s ending are hand-waved so the band can get together, and various prophetic IOUs are written, only to crumble under the late season Game Of Thrones trap: teased vagaries that feel weighty only because of the promise they lead to some spectacular denouement that scarcely materialises.

Hey, remember when Kratos murdered his wife and child and drowned half of Greece? Because I often get the feeling Sony want you to forget. Catch the ghost of Sparta in the right light (at my PC’s sweet spot of a fairly happy 40 fps on high settings), and you’ll catch the weight of centuries tugging on haunted eyelids, an almost ghoulish pallour to his ancient skin. It’s a rare sight, unfortunately: his default mode in Ragnarok is mildly exasperated dadliness. “I have been returning to my old ways” he laments at one point, bare-chested in his eternal hair shirt, after getting a bit loud about the proverbial thermostat. Ragnarok is a big fan of having characters holding up “the stakes are high!” placards with one hand instead of raising those stakes convincingly - while using the other to the trace the most convoluted routes between two points you’ve seen outside of Mini Motorways.

In an early flashback, his second wife calls him “grumbles”. I hope you like jokes about Kratos’s dourness, because they’re Ragnarok’s absolute favourite. Its second favourite type of joke are shit-grinned Whedonisms. Hey, it's a comedy squirrel! At one point, a character you’ve known for five minutes sacrifices himself during a quickly resolved action scene and Bear McCreary’s haunting, soulful music tries to tell you this the most tragic thing you’ve seen in your entire life. Later, you find the same character alive in a sidequest and when asked how he survived he says “I rolled!”.

Kratos murdered his wife and child. He spent four mainline games and few spinoffs as the most mentally ill man on PlayStation and one game dealing with that, and so Ragnarok’s cast of quippy funsters sitting around eating sausages in the comic relief dwarf’s house and working out how to save the world is a little hard to square away, sometimes, as even belonging to the same series. It’s not terrible! It’s just not the direction I expected or would have chosen. He’s in Astrobot now, isn’t he? I love that for him. I love the idea of doing cute puzzles in Astrobot and seeing Kratos and being like, hey, I know that guy! He murdered his wife! And his child!

Ah well. At least those murdering hands have never felt so good to puppet. Ragnarok’s combat never quite reaches the depths or spectacle of a Platinum game or a Devil May Cry, but considering the game’s other priorities, it’s impressively deep and chunky. Kratos’ dad knees prevent jumping, but varied arena design offers mobility with swashbuckling grapples and axe-smashing ledge hops. No moment is dead air; you can always be angrily adjusting the heating, frosting up your axe or spinning your blades for elemental effects, even when you’re not parrying or weaving between foes. It also works well enough with mouse and keyboard, although this gets a bit less comfortable as you unlock more moves, and you will of course miss out on those lovely haptics.

Boss fights were a sore point with 2018, and Sony Santa Monica got the memo, in terms of variety at least. They’re not all winners - a fair few boil down to simple parry-attack-parry rhythms at larger and more lavish foes. But for the main story at least, you’re fed a near constant stream of novel encounters: Writhing, spitting crocodiles and rampaging not-satyrs. Horrible little lizard monkeys that cling to ledges and fling toxic bum dumplings, and horrible actual monkeys that heal their allies. I did end up wishing for encounter design a little less reliant on plate-spinning chaos and more on straight duels, but you’ll find plenty of that in the game’s optional bosses.

Exploration and side-quests are dolled out in a sort of metroidvania-lite that has you revisiting past areas with new abilities for extra goodies, and most puzzles hit a sweet spot between taking long enough to provide a breather without slowing things down. New to this PC version is a menu toggle that lets you stuff a cork in the mouths of eager companions, preventing them from reminding you that your mythical frost axe can freeze things, and other such puzzle hints. Also, whoever designed the loot reward loop here is some sort of nefarious heroin wizard. You’ll want to open every chest and explore every side path, and huge optional areas offer all the massive jellyfish you could ever want to free from eternal captivity.

In the opening hour of the game, a wolf you’ve never met dies and - and you may sense a theme here - Bear McCreary’s haunting, soulful music tries to tell you this the most tragic thing you’ve seen in your entire life. This is, more or less, where Atreus’s story starts. It runs in tandem to Kratos, and could be argued to be Ragnarok’s main focus. Naturally, you’ll also play as Atreus for a good chunk of the game. He’s more agile than his pops; a rogue to Kratos’s lumbering barbarian. He's quite convincing as a mythically skilled archer, but most of his foes feel tuned weaker, meaning a lot of encounters take on the disappointing sensation of expecting a sneeze that never comes.

He’s not unpleasant to spend time with, although how Forspoken got the shit it did for its note-to-self dialogue and Atreus didn’t is beyond me. Still, a few of the game’s better scenes are from his sections. The Ironwood, allowed to breathe somewhat separate from the series’ baggage, stands out as a beautifully realised fairytale forest, and the scenes Atreus shares there with peer Angrboda stuck with me as an example of Ragnarok making its otherwise tonally odd Disneyness work for it; all charm and wide-eyed wonder. Great, too, is a running theme of Atreus fulfilling his role as the trickster god Loki almost entirely by accident.

If you get bored of picking fruit in the Ironwood, there’s always Valhalla anyway - a far more successful outing I would have happily paid 15 quid for and called it a day. It’s part pure roguelike - enemy rooms, upgrade chests, a progression currency - part epilogue. It’s also a more focused and emotionally satisfying arc for Kratos than the main story, if a little too neat in its santised retelling of Kratos' Greek arc. Kratos ends Valhalla more or less redeemed and content, a wife-and-child-murderin’ unproblematic fave, free of any baggage that might tarnish his bright future as the sort of iconic Sony first party protagonist you’d bring home to meet the family.

“Death can have me when it earns me!” boasts Kratos at one point, despite being killed by a drunk Thor an hour into the game, then only brought back to life because Thor fancied another punch-up. But that’s Ragnarok’s story, really; spectacular bluster. Sounds cool. Bit empty. The cracks in its facade are stark because it’s otherwise such an incredibly vivid work, and the life breathed into it by its animators, artists, and actors is potent enough to survive some deeply odd writing and tonal choices. There’s a wonderful story, I’m sure, to be told about Kratos’s journey from destroyer to conciliator - the glimpses at mythological wonders that are allowed to exist in his presence without getting suplexed into paste here are stunning - this one just feels like it skipped a few steps.