God of War Ragnarök is being review bombed on Steam as users once again protest Sony’s controversial requirement for PC users to link to a PSN account.
At the time of writing, God of War Ragnarök sits on a “mixed” user score amalgamated from almost 5000 player reviews. The majority of negative reviews mention their dismay at having to connect to a PSN account to play a single-player game.
Interestingly, several reviewers say they’ve been able to play the game without linking a PSN account at all.
Others are unhappy that even creating a PSN account in a country where the service is available requires “submitting a mobile phone number to verify your age […] or submit a photograph of your face or a government-issued ID to a third party site”.
“I get why people are upset about the PlayStation account stuff. It sucks when developers stuff online features into a single-player game,” said one positive reviewer.
“But I don’t even understand because I could play fine without logging in. It sucks because those reviews are gonna turn people away from an incredible game.”
“The fact that this game, a SINGLEPLAYER game, forces you to sign in to a network which is notorious for data breaches is absolutely ridiculous,” countered a negative reviewer.
“If it weren’t for the fact that I adored the first game and that I wanted to play this one since it came out on PlayStation, I wouldn’t have bought this game at all. Extremely scummy behaviour from Sony here.”
Others have left negative reviews due to the “state of the game”, reporting “constant crashes, audio bugs, visual bugs, ultra low FPS“, and issues even getting the game to “open” at all.
God of War Ragnarök arrived on PC this week, offering a newly upgraded version of the PlayStation hit with a raft of graphical upgrades and new PC-specific features. To mark the occasion, Digital Foundry’s Alex Battaglia spoke to Matt DeWald, lead producer at original developers Sony Santa Monica, and Steve Tolin, technical director of PC port developers Jetpack Interactive.
You may remember plenty of discourse around the high frequency of puzzle hints in God of War Ragnarök. Now, almost two years after its console launch, you can finally shut up talking head Mimir by reducing the frequency of puzzle hints from companions. Check the in-game “Gameplay Settings” tab to enable this feature.