Almost 4 years after the initial launch, God of War has finally appeared on PC via Steam and Epic Games Store. PlayStation 5 also has an upgraded version of the game that gives new benefits to players. Coming from this, graphical upgrades and frame rate boosts aren’t all that are included.
On PC, there are additions like NVIDIA DLSS and Reflex which helps with react time while DLSS can boost frame rates and make graphics clearer. Ultra-wide support and customized controls are among other improvements. So how does this game benefit from being on PC versus the console counterpart? Find out here with our God of War PC Port Report.
God of War
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Developer: SIE Santa Monica Studio
Platform: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Microsoft Windows (Previewed)
Release Date: April 20th, 2018 (PlayStation 4), January 14, 2022 (PlayStation 5, PC)
Players: 1
Price: $59.99 (PlayStation 4), $49.99 (Microsoft Windows)
Picking up where the PS4 version left off, God of War is still a stunning game. This still rings true for this game now on the PC platform. Graphically, this game is among some of the best; one wouldn’t think it normally, but the bump to 60 frames and above helps.
When I started playing on the PS4 years ago, I couldn’t deal with the sluggish 30 fps and dropped it. I’m not such an elitist that “30 fps hurts my eyes!” but it was genuinely hard to deal with the 30 fps and motion blur. This has been remedied since the upgrades for PS5 and PC boost its performance.
There a handful of textures that had a resolution bump which makes this game slightly better looking than before. It’s not a huge leap but it is noticeable in almost every scene. A lot of facial features on characters and environments are detailed greatly but it’s hard to say it is a massive upgrade.
The settings menu isn’t vast like other games that have been ported over, sadly. There are some settings scattered throughout options you can change. Mainly, presets go up to Ultra, and playing on 4K is my general go to to stress test what I can feasibly do.
In Display, you can toggle between Windowed or Borderless, so no Fullscreen option. You can limit the FPS via a slider and/or enable Vsync for a steady presentation without screen tearing. More options for output and render resolution are present with support for 21:9 aspect ratio for ultrawide monitors.
Additionally, in the advanced portion, you can enable NVIDIA Reflex which allows for quicker reactions via low latency. NVIDIA Reflex technology is designed to reduce input lag up to 80%, so your presses are even more on the dot than before. These features are a great tool and show the level of features that console games can get.
Previously, I mentioned the graphical upgrade to the game, but what about performance? On my 1080 Ti and 4K monitor, I was always getting a consistent 60 frames. I did notice some drops below 60, but they weren’t anything too intense never going below 50 in most cases.
Some animation stutters appear to happen, maybe where they might have overlooked some frame data tied to them. Besides that though, it’s a solid running game where I’ve only had one crash throughout my time playing it. It happened during the segment after Kratos falls into the pit after the bridge breaks and you have a fighting gauntlet.
All of those things from before are now at the touch of your connect controller of choice. You can play God of War now with a DualShock 4 controller or DualSense controller….or an Xbox One controller and many more. As apart of the PC experience, you can choose how you want to play and this game supports many input methods. If you want to play God of War with the mouse and keyboard setup, you can and it works very well, as expected.
Many PC ports have come out recently showing their strengths, and in some cases, their weaknesses. God of War does miss a little bit with more customization for settings but it’s not by much. The performance this game can squeeze out is good and even if you have lower end hardware, you can still game around 60 fps with certain settings.
On NVIDIA GPUs, you can expect more performance than the AMD counterpart even at 1080p at “original” settings. This is the upgrade you’ve been waiting for to play God of War the way it was meant to be played.
If you’re interested, God of War is available on PC via Steam and Epic Games Store for $49.99 and I would recommend playing this with new shiny bells and whistles. You can also check out our original review for the PlayStation 4 version here.
