God of War is one of the most emblematic video game sagas of PlayStation consoles that, in 2018, changed course with a new installment that served as a unique starting point for Kratos’ adventures that moved to Norse mythology, offering us a playable formula different from that of the original deliveries (although retaining part of its essence) as well as a more mature narrative, conquering PlayStation 4 players and overwhelming them with an excellent technical display for the time.
Now, this new epic of Kratos comes to PC, which means both the debut of God of War on our computers and a further confirmation of Sony’s new strategy, which is betting heavily on compatibility by sending us part of its most important works to our game platform with adaptations that little by little are improving and hitting the key of the needs and peculiarities of computer gamers as demonstrated by this version of God of War that we have been able to test and that we are going to talk about during the following few lines.
Of course, before starting, we want to clarify that in this analysis, we are going to focus on the technical options, the adaptation to the keyboard and mouse and the performance of God of War on PC, and we are not going to talk about the story or its mechanics at a playable level. (which are the same as on PlayStation 4). If you want to know more about what you are going to find in this regard, you can refer to our original review.
Plenty of options to satisfy everyone on a technical level
Something fundamental in any self-respecting video game adaptation to PC is the technical options since, precisely, one of the significant assets of computers concerning consoles is that freedom to choose how we want to enjoy the experience, that versatility that allows us to play on more modest computers or on ” NASA ” equipment capable of moving anything or choosing the resolution at which we want to play or the rate of images per second that we want to achieve.
In this sense, we are pretty well served in God of War, which allows us to choose from a good range of graphic options that you can see below, somewhat less than those of Days Gone for PC but more than enough for this type of game. However, we miss minus the possibility of modifying the FOV, even more so if we consider its compatibility with ultrawide monitors.
Something interesting that more and more PC games offer and also this adaptation of God of War is that while we are selecting different graphic options such as reflections, an image appears at the bottom that allows us to preview how each option affects the title at a visual level. . In addition, it also offers us the possibility of playing with the original graphics of the PS4 version, improvements in certain technical aspects such as reflections or high-resolution shadows., unlocking the fps rate or having support for ultrawide screens that will surely be very well received by those who have this type of monitor, which is becoming more and more common among some PC gamers.
One point that we want to highlight regarding the benefits of the PC version is that NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR are included, two technologies for smoothing and resizing textures that will allow us to improve the game’s performance on our computers (we will talk about this later). ). In addition, NVIDIA Reflex technology is also incorporated, which reduces latency, allowing us to enjoy the best response time from the moment we press a button on the controller or the mouse until our character (Kratos, in this case) reacts in God of War.
Next, we leave you with the main graphic options available in God of War for PC:
Display
- video device
- Display
- screen mode
- output resolution
- render resolution
- aspect ratio
- v-sync
- FPS limit
- motion blur
- film grain
- display calibration
Advanced Settings
- NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency
- latency markers
- latency flash
scaled
- DLSS
- FidelityFX Super Resolution
- render scale
Graphics
- preset
- Texture quality
- modelling quality
- Anisotropic Filtering
- Shades
- Reflexes
- Atmosphere
- ambient occlusion
Excellent performance with almost instant load times
Going to the heart of the matter, God of War has shown to have a good job behind when it comes to making this adaptation for PC, offering us good performance at all times, without jerks, tearing and without bugs or noteworthy failures beyond some minor animations ( like some vegetation movements) and some cinematics that seems to suffer a bit with rates beyond 60 fps, but nothing serious, something that future updates can also solve with the usual game launch patch.
Focusing on our test, using a computer with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, Intel i9-11900K processor, 64 GB of RAM, the game installed on an NVMe SSD and Windows 11, we have obtained a rate of about 85 fps on average playing at 4K with graphics on Ultra and using NVIDIA DLSS in Quality mode. NVIDIA Reflex “On + Enhance” technologies to improve responsiveness, all with no jerks or sudden drops at any time, let alone when we set the frame rate fps at 60 to capture gameplay .
In terms of loading times, we are also quite satisfied. When starting our first game or when we press Continue when we open the game for the first time, the loading time will be about 15 seconds, while if we die and reappear at the last available checkpoint, the loading time will be just under 2 seconds. Please note that these loading times may vary depending on the storage unit you are using on your computers.
A fully customizable keyboard and mouse adaptation is more enjoyable with a controller.
Another point we like to go over is how the game adapts to the keyboard and mouse. In the case of God of War, the predefined controls have seemed somewhat strange to us at times, especially when it comes to combat, although luckily we have the possibility of changing them to our liking and needs, so there is no problem… nor is there with the reaction of the mouse when moving the camera or aiming, perfectly capturing the movements of this peripheral. Despite all this (and even though the person who writes to you is a faithful defender of playing most things with a keyboard and mouse on PC, with few exceptions), we believe that due to its mechanics, God of War is more enjoyable with a controller ., being able to play it with any PC-compatible controller, including Xbox ones, of course.
Final Thoughts
God of War comes to our computers with a good adaptation that has satisfied us and allows us to enjoy one of the best games of recent years on our PC, with graphical improvements in shadows or reflections excellent performance. Stable on our computer, with hardly any bugs and well optimized, beneficial technologies such as NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA Reflex or AMD FSR and a good range of technical and control customization options that allow us to enjoy for the first time on a computer the epic adventures of Kratos… and, of course, the boy.
We prepared this review with a digital copy of God of War for PC Sony.
