God of War: Ragnarok - PC Review - Kratos Just Upped His Game
When Sony first started porting their games to the PC there were a few early hiccups (and some big hiccups since) but it was their port of God of War that really made me think that Sony games had a future on the more powerful platform. It was brilliantly put together and took what was already a stunning game and made it even better thanks to the extra juice that the PC platform offers. Well Sony are back with God of War’s second Nordic act, Ragnarok and it has once again set the bar for what a Playstation first party title can do on the PC platform.
I am not going to say too much about the game, suffice it to say I think it is very likely my favourite Sony first-party title from the PS5 era. Everything about it really gelled for me personally and I think it is the standard by which all future action/adventure games should be measured. If you want to know more about the game itself, go and check out Paul’s review from when it originally hit the Playstation. Paul and I quite often disagree on Sony’s first-party titles, but in this case, everything he says still rings true today and I am in complete agreeance with it. What I am going to talk about is how it performs on the PC and just how impressive some of the features are.
Firstly let’s talk about how good this game looks. On my gaming rig (i9/4080 super) it truly sings. Ultra graphic settings, no frame rate drops below 60 (quite often significantly higher than that) amazing RTX support, crystal clear resolution and all in glorious ultrawide format. For what was already a stunning game, this really has taken it to the next level. I am not really big on the idea of the PS5 Pro, but if the current batch of Sony games have the ability to be pushed like this, then at least the extra power won’t go to waste.
But it isn’t all about the high-end stuff, not at all. The sign of a truly good PC port is the ability of the game to scale to a range of different systems. I am more than happy to report that Ragnarok does exactly that. I played it on both my laptop which sports a 4050 laptop card and my Rog Ally X. With some simple settings tweaks I got Ragarok running perfectly on both of these systems. The Rog Ally hit a very comfortable and stable 45 frames and the laptop 60. There are obviously sacrifices to be made, things like RTX being turned off and switching to a 1080p resolution, but honestly, the game still looked stunning. Sure AI solutions like DLSS deserve a lot of thanks but it is clear the PC porting team that was working on the game put a lot of effort into making Ragnarok as playable as possible on a wide range of system configurations.
I did, however, come across a few little gameplay glitches that I don’t remember being in the Playstation version. On a few occasions, my progression was halted because of an enemy getting stuck in the environment and me being unable to kill it. This forced a checkpoint restart in order to move forward. There is also the need to build shaders when launching the game. It seems that randomly the game needs to rebuild the shaders upon loading, something that usually only needs to happen once. When it happens it adds a few minutes to the launch of the game and while it is hardly a deal breaker, it is still an irritant.
Finally, I guess I should talk about the thing that seems to have gamers’ panties in a twist and that is the need to sign into the Sony network in order to play the game. Look, I get it, it is irritating having yet another log-in to remember on your PC, but honestly, you only need to do it once and then it can be completely forgotten about until the next Sony game lands on your PC. In the grand scheme of things, it is a minor inconvenience and one that causes little-to-no impact on your gaming lives. After all, the chances are you already have accounts for Steam, EA, Ubisoft, Xbox, GOG, Epic and who knows what else, what is one more on the pile?
God of War Ragnarok is a fantastic game, that was never in doubt, the question was how would it translate to the PC? Well, I can firmly say that it is an even better title here. There are a few very minor annoyances with the PC version but honestly, the stunning nature of the graphical improvements along with the already pitch-perfect gameplay mean that is a very very small price to pay. I have reviewed pretty much every Sony title to hit PC and I can say without a doubt that Ragnarok takes advantage of the PC’s power better than any of the other games from the Playstation family. If you missed the original release because you didn’t have a PS5 or if you want a game to really make use of your brand-new video card, don’t hesitate to spend some time with Kratos and Co. I promise you won’t regret it.
God of War Ragnarok was reviewed on PC with code kindly supplied by Playstation Australia
