God of War fans "feel cheated" as new game makes you work for a major feature

There was a lot of goodwill towards Sony, Santa Monica Studios and Mega Cat Studios after the surprise reveal of God of War: Sons of Sparta, but after players got their hands on it, people's opinions on it quickly soured, owing to the fact that some God of War fans felt "cheated" after a surprise revelation about the game.

Certainly, there’s a lot of buzz around God of War right now, with the team behind the upcoming TV show from Prime Video announcing castings for characters such as Atreus, Nordic gods Odin and Thor and the main demigod-man Kratos himself.

That’s not even to mention the God of War Trilogy remake that was announced alongside Sons of Sparta, which itself is a prequel and the now-first chronological entry, so it’s a real shame to see cold water poured on the excitement surrounding the IP.

This ill will stems from players discovering that God of War: Sons of Sparta, featuring Kratos and his brother Deimos, has a co-op mode that is only available after completing the single-player campaign.

As noted by Push Square, this was common practice during the early days of gaming, where completing a game would unlock additional extras. Yet, this has largely been replaced by New Game Plus modes, which alter the gameplay, with features such as co-op having been made available from the word go for a long time now.

After some confusion from fans, Santa Monica Studio put out a PSA to X (formerly Twitter) to clear things up.

It was too little too late for some, with fans feeling "cheated" by the absence of the co-op mode from first play.

Whilst the official reveal trailer makes no mention of the two-player co-op challenge mode, fans quickly spotted that the PlayStation Store listing advertised it as featuring "Single Player or 2 Player Couch Co-Op mode", sparking speculation on social media as to what the latter entailed.

Regardless of the story mode not having co-op, it is understandable that many would want to be able to jump in and play the challenge mode with a friend, without having to get through the whole game first.

With so many upcoming games in 2026 and beyond, there’s only so much time to game. It’s not a short experience either, with players across the world reporting that it took anywhere from 8-12 hours to beat, depending on whether you want to go Platinum with it.

That’s a serious time commitment, so if you were hoping to play God of War: Sons of Sparta with someone else, it might be worth waiting to see if Santa Monica Studios will update the game before you dive in solo.

Radio Times has asked Sony to comment.

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