New God of War game Sons of Sparta's early Metacritic score places it as the worst in the series, with even the divisive Ascension over 10 points higher

God of War Sons of Sparta's Metacritic score has landed after some early reviews, and so far it's not doing quite as well as the other games in the series.

When it comes to open secrets, I don't think there was anyone who didn't know that a 2D God of War game was on the way after what felt like years of rumors, and finally at the PlayStation State of Play last week, Mega Cat Games' God of War Sons of Sparta was shadowdropped featuring a younger Kratos and his brother Deimos as they trained to become the spartans we saw in the original games.

At the time of writing God of War Sons of Sparta has a 69 score on Metacritic after 17 reviews, which places it as the worst game in the series by a mile, as even the fanbase's least favorite game God of War Ascension was able to crack an 80 on the site. With the majority of the reviews being considered "mixed" by the site's metric (which consists of mostly 6 and 7/10 scores).

In GamesRadar+'s God of War Sons of Sparta review, Games Editor Oscar Taylor-Kent gave it three out of five stars and said, "God of War Sons of Sparta struggles to deliver on the best of God of War or the best the Metroidvania genre has to offer. Combat is dull and lifeless despite a handful of nice ideas, and it's visually ugly and muddy. Even lacking in brutal finishers, this all feels quite tame. It's not bad, but serviceable struggles to excite – and that's a sin for God of War."

While I agree with the sentiment that Sony would benefit from having smaller projects come out like this instead of making everyone wait 20+ years for a sequel (or however long The Last of Us Part 2 took), I'm not sure if 'God Of War Kids' was something the fanbase was really clamoring for.

Hopefully, the negative reaction to this doesn't put Sony off from things like this in the future, because, considering it doesn't really use any IP that it can't turn into a cinematic third-person action game, maybe other studios can bring back the varied and fun games the company was known for making.

New God of War game was going to be set "closer" to the Greek saga, but the devs thought kid Kratos "resonates" more.