God of War

Intense overall intensity
Highest flag: Mutilation / body horror — player performs it
AdventureMythologyRPG
🏆 The Game Awards 2018 — Game of the Year🏆 D.I.C.E. Awards 2019 — Game of the Year

What's in it

Violence graphic & gore
High

Constant melee combat with an axe and fists against human raiders, undead draugr, trolls, and mythic beasts, with heavy blood spray during fights.

Mutilation / body horror player performs it
High

Cinematic finishing moves have the player rip larger enemies apart, dismembering and decapitating them on screen.

Language strong
High

Strong profanity including f-words appears in scripted dialogue between characters.

Dark themes intense
Moderate

The story centers on grief, death, and a father's buried violent past as he carries his late wife's ashes and confronts loss with his son.

Horror & psychological spooky
Low

Some enemies and locations, including undead draugr, trolls, and the realm of Hel, carry a grim, unsettling tone.

Animal combat combat mechanic
Low

Wolves, boars, and other beasts are fought and killed as ordinary combat encounters.

Who can reach your kid

What it is

God of War (2018) is a single-player action-adventure in which Kratos, a former Greek god now living among the Norse gods, journeys with his young son Atreus to scatter his late wife's ashes. Gameplay is built around frequent, weighty melee combat against soldiers, undead, trolls, and mythological beasts, with heavy blood and axe-based slashing, stabbing, and impaling. Larger foes are killed with graphic cinematic finishers that dismember or decapitate them. Dialogue contains strong profanity, and the story deals with heavy themes of grief, death, and a violent past. There are no purchases, microtransactions, or online interaction.

How it's framed

The game frames violence as the burden of a warrior trying to change; Kratos is brutal in combat but is portrayed as struggling to leave his rage behind and raise his son to be better, with death, loss, and self-restraint treated as serious emotional subject matter rather than spectacle.

Details

Developer
Santa Monica Studio
Publisher
PlayStation Publishing LLC
Released
Jan 14, 2022
Metacritic 93critic score (third-party) · out of 100

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