The Gaming Paradise

[Steve's Right Peg of Doom]

Love that I have to sit through a patch as soon as I get a game because women's groups got all pissy about the name of a trophy in a game where you slaughter hundreds of people.

Pray tell, which game and what trophy?

[Iron Ape]

Love that I have to sit through a patch as soon as I get a game because women's groups got all pissy about the name of a trophy in a game where you slaughter hundreds of people.

It wasn't women's groups that took issue with that little nugget of misogyny, actually. It was a predominantly male gaming press that raised the alarm, and rightfully so.

[Tomsta666]

It's obviously only a bit of tongue in cheek humour. The phrase "Bros before Hos" is hardly anything to get your knickers in a twist over. I don't know the context of what you have to do to get the trophy though, what's the deal with that?

[KJ PUNK]

It wasn't women's groups that took issue with that little nugget of misogyny, actually. It was a predominantly male gaming press that raised the alarm, and rightfully so.

Still the fact that they got upset over it in a series where every female character in the ENTIRE SERIES is only seen as a sex object besides Athena and Pandora is laughable.

It's obviously only a bit of tongue in cheek humour. The phrase "Bros before Hos" is hardly anything to get your knickers in a twist over. I don't know the context of what you have to do to get the trophy though, what's the deal with that?

I don't know, it's a hidden trophy and I haven't come across it yet.

[Iron Ape]

It's obviously only a bit of tongue in cheek humour. The phrase "Bros before Hos" is hardly anything to get your knickers in a twist over. I don't know the context of what you have to do to get the trophy though, what's the deal with that?

From Polygon's review:

At this point in Ascension, I had been stomaching the graphic gore that saturates the game well enough. It was gross, but it was all cartoonish and over the top. I violently collided with my threshold an hour or so later during the latter point of one of the key boss fights in the game, which, without divulging plot details, involved a scene which forces you to violently beat a female character to death with Kratos' fists.

Yes, this character is an antagonist, and yes, you kill other female characters throughout God of War: Ascension. But there's an almost pornographic level of intimacy to the violence here that pushed things too far for me. The brutal, bone-shattering assault on a realistic female avatar was horrific regardless of its context, the imagery too loaded for me to shrug it off as just another God of War Moment ^TM. And then the assault was robbed of any narrative impact whatsoever by a throwaway story device. It didn't matter. I had to watch it happen and then it didn't mean anything. And then approximately 45 seconds later, I unlocked a trophy called "Bros before Hos."

If I wasn't reviewing the game, this would have been where I stopped. I didn't stop, but regardless, this is where God of War: Ascension's campaign lost me. I could go on about the nonsensical puzzles Sony Santa Monica closes the game with, or the brutal combat sequences that practically demand that you've found all of the health and magic upgrades in the game in order to successfully clear them. But after the moment I just described, it all just seemed gross and disturbing and unnecessary. It makes any trivial attempt at humanizing Kratos via God of War's now routine evoking of the wife and child he murdered while under the spell of Ares even more hollow.

Given the context, I couldn't disagree more in regards to your knicker twisting dismissal.

[Iron Ape]

Still the fact that they got upset over it in a series where every female character in the ENTIRE SERIES is only seen as a sex object besides Athena and Pandora is laughable.

I don't know, it's a hidden trophy and I haven't come across it yet.

So, wait- you've decided it's no big deal without understanding the context or what people are even upset about? Seriously?

[Viperfish]

From the quoted Polygon review, I would've been more offended by the physical assault of the woman much more than that three-word phrase... unless there was a very good plot justification for that beating. Given the genre of the game and how many sequels there are, I highly doubt that the plot justification is there though.

[Iron Ape]

They did take umbrage with the beating. The trophy was just the particularly tasteless icing on the cake.

[IrkenInvader]

New Daredevil game announced, it's gonna be first person. The screenshots look great.

[KJ PUNK]

So, wait- you've decided it's no big deal without understanding the context or what people are even upset about? Seriously?

I had decided that it was idiotic to get upset over the trophy in a game where the whole point is to murder as many people as possible.