God of War Sons of Sparta is the worst-reviewed game in the series

After months of rumours, Santa Monica not only decided it was ready to show its 2D God of War game to the world at last week's game show, but released it. Since then it's been hard to gauge what people think of Sons of Sparta. However, now that its review scores are settling in, the consensus, at least critically, is that it's the weakest God of War game we've seen yet.

Sparta's Sons of War is not well reviewed

Since Sons of Sparta dropped the shadow, there were no review scores at launch. User scores popped up pretty quickly, and with an 8.2, while not great compared to other war games, it could have been worse. Much worse is saved for the spinoff's review score, it seems, with Sons of Sparta settling for a 70 on OpenCritic and an even worse 69 on Metacritic.

To put that in perspective, its user scores are better than those of God of War: Ascension, Sons of Sparta taking over the crown of worst-reviewed game in the series from its PS3 predecessor 13 years later. Ascension has an 80 on Metacritic, which means that, even if some of the best scores for Sons of Sparta are out in the wild, which seems unlikely, it's hard to see the latter game returning another 11 points to raise that average.

The gap between Sons of Sparta and Ascension is actually quite small compared to God of War's typical review score. Many games have scored more than 90. Both Nurse games have a 94 on Metacritic, along with each of the main entries in the Greek saga, all of which have scores of 92 or higher.

If Santa Monica can complete the assignment, it bodes well for the remake of the trilogy.

Despite the dismal review scores, some of you will love it

A player defeating the Alastair boss in Gods of War: Sons of Sparta.

The overwhelming feeling when it comes to Sons of Sparta seems to be confusion. Rumored for so long and then thrown out there, and a game that doesn't live up to the high standards set by all the other war games that came before it over a 20-plus year period.

Poor review scores aside, Sons of Sparta has its fans. As already mentioned, its user scores on both Metacritic and PlayStation Store are much better than its review scores. There are also people dedicated enough to unlock what is a pretty scary platinum within days of release.