After his outburst over the weekend, God of War creator David Jaffe has returned with a more measured critique of Sons of Sparta, the new Metroidvania side-scroller from Mega Cat Studios.
To his credit, while this is still an expletives-laden tirade, he does dig into his impressions a little deeper, and brings actual examples of what he likes and doesn’t like about the title.
He also points out that he’s played several hours more than the initial hour he reported on, although he notes that his largely negative opinion hasn’t really changed within that timeframe.
Once again, Jaffe is not particularly impressed with the decision to base the game on a younger Kratos – “Go to Epstein’s island,” he rants – but he later goes on to break down the game design, which is genuinely interesting considering his background in the industry.
Jaffe gives developer Mega Cat Studios a little more leeway, and seems to pin his anger on the decision makers at both Santa Monica Studio and publisher Sony.
To paraphrase, he basically suggests the publisher should have provided stronger feedback on the title, and points to design issues like visual language, readability, UI, and more.
While it’s difficult to argue against the criticisms he raises, they do seem a bit nit-picky, although he admits that individually they’re not a big deal and they simply stack up. Some of these could be patched in the future, to be fair.
Throughout the video, Jaffe seems to target Santa Monica Studio’s new boss, Mary Olson, who replaced veteran Yumi Yang last year. He vents that, in his opinion, she’s someone “who is more about getting the pat on the head from executives rather than fighting the good fight”.
And while he concedes eventually that Sons of Sparta is a competent game on its own merits, he concludes: “But it’s a terrible God of War game. It’s a terrible first-party game. And it’s an embarrassment that Santa Monica Studio allowed this to come out.”
To be fair, we do think his criticisms carry a bit more weight in this video, as he’s able to better articulate some of the problems he had with the game.
But there’s an undertone of agitation throughout the entire video which suggests to us Jaffe is just no longer a fan of the type of games Sony wants to make.
As one of the original creators of God of War, we can certainly appreciate his stance, but he also needs to concede that he hasn’t been a part of the creative decision making for decades – and like it or loathe it, the franchise is more popular right now than it’s ever been.