@ghosts4ever: Funny thing about Rage is I don't think it was necessarily a failure as far as gameplay. The shooting, enemy AI and animations was the best I had seen at that time. Think that was one of the things that most loved about the game.

Funny my recent library has been filling with single player focused games and I have a backlog of them. Makes me wonder if I even need to be paying for Plus and Gold right now.... well nevermind I did pay for the year so I guess I have no choice

Recently been playing A Link Between Worlds.... Love it. Classic Zelda feel but on crack

Donkey Kong Country

Dr. Mario (Gameboy)

Nier Automata (specifically the machine village song)

Recently Persona 5, I just started playing

Warhawk and JetMoto

If any game chooses to have simulator in the name, that means the devs have focused on providing an experience that is as close to real life as possible. I believe Gran Turismo was going for that at one point.

Last game I played with simulator in the title was flight simulator and I just don't get the appeal unless you're training to be a pilot or something. It's boring and I spent the majority of the time intentionally crashing the plane but mind you at that time I was probably 13.

COD is definitely not a simulator. You could construe the campaign in some of the games to be that but I think if they really want to go for it, remove the hud, wear and tear on guns, limited ammo, only one life, and no pickups outside of looting fallen enemies for more ammo and even then no instant replenished magazines. Some shooters (I believe the old R6 games) have tried to make it to where if you reloaded a magazine that was still half full you'd lose the ammo in that mag from your stores. This put emphasis on making every shot count and firing the weapon until the magazine was empty. Not the COD style of gameplay where you shoot two rounds and reload

@RSM-HQ: I agree if we were to use the term exploit, level design can intentionally or unintentionally get you out of some hairy situations. I believe the second time you encounter a revenant in-game, he spawns with two brute draugrs and I believe two projectile draugrs. Once you get the revenant out the way, you can funnel the brutes to the bridge to isolate the projectiles since they will rarely change position. Atreus can aggro one brute while you deal with the other in peace. If things get out of hand, you can jump back across the bridge that leads to that area and in true AI form, the enemies forget about you.

Do you capture? Would like to see some gameplay of you tackling some areas on GmGOW

@npiet1 No I don't think it's that bad.

@RSM-HQ: I’d agree that the timing is generous but being off could prove fatal when you’re out numbered and once again when it doesn’t take much to kill you, parrying starts to lose it’s appeal so i wouldn’t necessarily call it an exploit.

That’s what I meant by “in every encounter.” For instance. You can get by with taking on the brute draugrs with parries but throw some projectile tossing foes in the mix, and the lesser draugrs and those opportunities for parries start to dwindle.

@RSM-HQ: Clue me in on some of these exploits you've found. Only thing I've been successful at is knocking some weaker enemies off the stage with Spartan Rage. The axe toss is completely useless, and enemies don't flinch from standard attacks. Maybe after you level Kratos a bit but early on you're weak. Perfecting the parry in every encounter will get you far.

Playing on “Give me God of War” setting and the first set of Draugr at the very beginning were giving me issues. Either it’s been awhile since I’ve played god of war or this game is looking to be taxing going forward.

I’m wondering if the difficulty curbs a bit as Kratos gets upgraded. Right now it seems he does minimal damage while one swipe from the enemy is half the health bar. Starting to get in the groove of things and learning from my mistakes but I know now that whatever difficulty they’ve been playing in all these gameplay vids it’s definitely not this one.

Tip: I’ve learned that it pays to be a bit aggressive. Seems most enemies so far can buff themselves during battle to sustain more damage. (I swear some even heal) so it’s good to go on the offensive before they do that.

Anyone find that this iteration ups the challenge level over the rest of the games in the series? (On the hardest difficulty of course)