God of War (2018) PC performance review

The tale of Kratos has been long but surprisingly straightforward. Every problem can be fixed with a good ol’ knock on the head. That’s pretty much how this hack and slash game evolved through the years. Fight first, ask questions later. That personality and temperament of Kratos seeped into the essence of God of War games. Although cinematic boss fights, new and exciting weapons and labyrinth-y level design glued the whole package together as well. The 2018 reboot takes all of that and pours in a personal tale of Kratos as a father figure. 

This mature God of War is unlike anything we’ve seen before and thanks to Christopher Judge (Kratos) and Sunny Suljic’s (Atreus) stellar voice acting, the game never ceases to rest on its laurels. If you’ve been a PC gamer for all your life, then getting your hands on the previous God of War games is quite unlikely. However, if you managed to borrow a PlayStation from a friend like some of us had, then God of War and its Greek mythology might not be news to you.

That said, the game doesn’t really indulge in the old. It quickly and smoothly shifts the narrative from a hulking God of War that decides to kill every Greek God in his way to an unlearned father trying his best to keep his child from stumbling on the realities of being a Norse God.

The story and graphics are still banger for 2022 standards. It’s the smooth frame rate and between graphical control that make playing this game an absolute delight. I have finished the whole game twice on the PlayStation and done every side quest as well. Yet, the gameplay feels absolutely fresh because now I can do the whole thing at 120 frames at 2K resolution without dynamic scaling or in true 4K.

Obviously, the gaming experience will differ from PC to PC but if you have a beefy system like us with an Nvidia RTX 3080 and an Intel i9, it will not disappoint. Nvidia’s DLSS and Reflex have been added here as well. Lathering significant amounts of buttery-smooth gaming experience that was otherwise not available on the PlayStation console.

The Nvidia’s Reflex reduces the latency between the button pressed and the animation in the game. Yes, these are millisecond adjustments but here’s the kicker — there’s a measurable sense of quickness on the PC with Nvidia’s Reflex enabled as opposed to PS4’s Bluetooth connection on the controller. We hooked a PS5 controller with a cable to the PC and played the game. The delay between parrying attacks in God of War has reduced enough for us to get through the PC version of God of War on Hard mode. Who said Nvidia’s Reflex is meant for competitive games only? God of War can get very difficult if you’re sloppy to block, parry and dodge.

Nvidia DLSS is another super addition to this PC port. We got around 120 frames on the highest settings on a 2K resolution monitor with DLSS set to Quality. It can push to 150 frames when reflections and other GPU eating assets are not plastered on the screen. On a 4K monitor, we got around 80 frames with DLSS set to Quality. You can get more by setting the DLSS to Performance but we rather stick to a steady 120 and not nudge the beautiful graphics.

We even tested the game on the Dell G15 5515 that comes with an RTX 3050 and a FullHD display. Kudos to Sony Santa Monica Studios for optimising this game for entry-level gaming laptops as well. We got a stable 60 fps on the ‘Original’ settings with DLSS 2.0 set to balanced. Although, between Balanced and Quality there’s not much of a difference in frame rate. You can expect the game to perform marginally better in places with less draw distance and reflections. However, if you want more frames, then turning off reflections altogether is a good better option. When DLSS is set to Performance, the experience is rather jittery on Original or higher graphical settings. The DLSS magic is visibly downscaling the visuals from time to time but without being subtle. So better stick to Balanced or Quality.

The game supports a keyboard and mouse, Xbox controller and any generic control scheme. There’s no haptic feedback from the PS5 controller though. 

Make sure to play it on Windows 10. Our game didn’t even crash once on Windows 10 and the PC port without the first-day patch worked flawlessly. Dare I say, Sony managed to port God of War better than Xbox could with Forza Horizon 5. Although, God of War crashes on Windows 11 at the time of writing.

Even after four years, there’s a sense of timelessness in the God of War (2018) game. It still feels graphically superior by current gaming standards and the gameplay and story are still the best in business. God of War has been a console seller for gamers with the pocket to indulge in PC and console gaming together. It’s rare and surprising for Sony to bring this blockbuster to the PC but we’re not complaining.