Port Report: God of War PC

Let's be honest, we are all very fond of PC gaming. Be it for the variability of choices present such as playing with ultrawide resolutions or getting to choose our own controllers, we all have a reason to love PC gaming. Unfortunately, not all ports are properly done. Maybe they are lacking some options that should be available to PC users, or maybe it lags to hell and back before you finally get that one last frame to kill the enemy that has been giving you trouble for the past 50 hours, regardless, not all companies do justice to their games when porting them. Needless to say, no one wants to buy something that is wrongly ported, so that is why I'm writing these reviews, plunging into possibly terrible ports to prevent you from making the same mistake.

God of War

We're all crying. Of joy, of pain because we played it on PlayStation 4, of sadness because we have to re-experience the traumatic story, but the culmination is that we're all crying. Sony is finally opening its doors to PC and we're getting to experience some of the wonderful stories that have been gated behind exclusivity for years.

It started with Horizon Zero Dawn, which led to Days Gone, and finally — Sony's biggest port yet — God of War. The release shook the world with a total of 73,529 players all joining in to experience this masterpiece of a game.

What does the port include?

Screenshot taken at 21:9 aspect ratio.

The first thing I did was jump into the settings menu. What could I edit, what could I change? Display settings are present, including ultrawide going as far as 21:9 which is definitely welcome, 4K60FPS, FPS limit, and DLSS, FidelityFX Super Resolution, and Render Scale.

Sure, these are all technicalities, but to a lot of games (such as myself), these are all very important features. Whenever I used to play on ultrawide monitors, I was astounded at the lack of support for some games.

Ultrawide resolution moves all of the HUD elements to the corners to make a nicer and clean image that doesn't seem unnatural. However, this means that players will have to turn their heads quite aggressively to be able to see the health bar, rage bar, and runic cooldowns from Atreus' arrows. That being said, although 21:9 is supported, 32:9 requires an external fix, meaning that those with monitors such as the Odyssey G9 will need to find a workaround. However, it is still possible to fix these issues!

The cutscenes are also compatible with ultrawide, which makes the game feel far more cinematic even when playing on a 16:9 display. The top and bottom black bars on the 16:9 display can have a grain effect on them.

Performance is phenomenal, especially when including the DLSS features that are present. Although I under no means have an everyman's (everywoman?) computer, I have been able to play just fine at 2560x1440 120FPS "Ultra" quality with no drops that I could perceive personally. This is without making use of the DLSS feature. Although it can be a bit tough on CPUs, I'm quite astounded at how well God of War can run.

You may have noticed the "Ultra quality" comment. Well, God of War includes graphics settings options that let you change a preset from Low, Original, High, and Ultra, with the last two having graphical qualities higher than the original PlayStation 4 release. A much welcome addition, given the massive power that some PCs sport that allows them to render higher-intensity graphics without sacrificing performance.

The option to map controls is also heavily welcome, especially with the tremendous amount of buttons you have to click to get through a fight. While this feels very comfortable and intuitive in the PlayStation 4, the PC port makes it difficult to play everything whilst focused on the right hand, and has proven to be a struggle to do so without mapping any buttons to the additional mouse buttons present on my UtechSmart Venus Gaming Mouse.

The controls on the game can feel a bit uncomfortable and overwhelming with how many things you have to do, and being able to map everything is a very welcome feature. Although with time you get used to the controls, the mouse & keyboard certainly doesn't beat a good ol' controller. It does get close with the capability of mapping and having a nifty mouse with several buttons due to the aiming necessity throughout the game.

How good is the port?

Not relevant, I just love this picture.

Shockingly... perfect!

The options added along with the smoothness of the gameplay, God of War takes the cake and eats it too (did I use that right?), being not only one of the greatest games of all time but also a wonderful port. Although the way the controls are mapped are a bit uncomfortable and it warrants a trip down into the controls menu, there isn't a much better choice due to all of the different buttons in the game. In fact, if you told me that the game was originally released on PC, I'd believe it in a heartbeat. It feels natural, smooth, and comfortable to play.

And although 32:9 isn't natively supported at the moment — with no confirmation for a future patch to fix this — it's a negligible problem due to how few people actually have monitors that support that resolution, and also the external fix that resolves the problems.

If you were scared of the quality of the port, don't be. God of War has possibly one of the best ports I've experienced in gaming, and it's surely worthy of your money, time, and effort.