I bet Kratos could beat a Portal maze
March 19, 2013
12:57 pm
One of my favourite things about Kratos is that as much as he might seem to fit the bill of a meat-head action anti-hero stereotype, he’s really fairly crafty and resourceful when you think about it.
I know it might seem rude of Commander to be offering unsolicited Sudoku help, but really, what’s more of a powder keg than a guy who does a lot of puzzles but also flies into a violent rage every time he gets frustrated?
Kratos kinda looks like a pissed-off owl in the third panel…
Kratos looks EXACTLY like a pissed off owl in the third panel.
Odd, as he has never “wooted” once.
Kratos kinda looks like he’s writing sideways in the first panel…
Are you really questioning the writing styles of the God of War?
I’m amazed that Kratos can do Sudokus at all. I would imagine that Greek numerals are not the same as our modern-day number system. He learns fast!
It is 9 symbols. He can learn (or write down a cheat sheet).
Greek numerals WERE different from our current system (which is Arabic, if anyone was curious/didn’t know already), but Commander’s Agency exists precisely for reintegrating people like Kratos into modern society, remember?
Our numerals are more likely to have come from Sanskrit than any Arabic system. It’s a common misconception because some of them look similar, but that’s more due to a common root than one following the other.
Sudoku Kratos is unimpressed with your offer.
Unfortunately, Kratos seems to have already failed this puzzle; the bottom-left cell in the center-right box cannot be filled in without conflicting with another already-filled cell.
Thus begins the next story arc.
*Crosses ‘Sudoku’ off the list of things they can have around Kratos*
Ha ha, I was filling it in off a puzzle I grabbed on google and I put the “1” a box too high. That’s kind of funny, I don’t even know if I want to fix it.
Nah, leave it be.
He’s screwed up the middle right block as well. Hasn’t placed 2,6, or 9 in it, and he can’t place 2,6, or 9 in the bottom left square in that block.
My local newspaper has printed mistakes in its Soduko puzzles. Let’s just say that Kratos got it from them, and maybe they own a bubble tea stand too.
The nines are messed up, the ones that are given (The bold faced font)
But the top left box forms a handgun… .357.
I think this just lends further validation to the Commander being worried about a meltdown.
Pt 2 – A continuation of “what we can / can’t have around Kratos”
I can’t wait to see pt 3.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed this.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who tried to solve it.
3rd panel Kratosface is my favorite thing on earth today.
Seconded, a lot.
It’s.. beautiful.
I’m amazed that it got 500+ views, really.
What music is that?
Pompeii by E.S. Posthumus
oh gods that’s brilliant.
Definitely. It’s the funniest thing I’ve seen all week.
Can we please have a strip of Kratos doing a portal puzzle?
I’d like to see what would happen if Kratos met Asura. We haven’t done that, have we?
Now that you mentioned it… Asura never appeared on MGDMT
This is totally just me but in the 3rd panel Kratos looks like an angry parakeet.
Spending the majority of my life with a lovebird probably effected a lot of my mannerisms.
Kratos needs hugs.
You go ahead and try. We’ll watch.
I’ll be standing at the ready with a mop and bucket.
And the list of things we can and can’t have around Kratos.
Funny how when you don’t want help with something you cover it up. ‘S like you’re protecting it from someone’s good intentions.
XD Kratos’ face in the 3rd panel is the best thing ever.
Press “X” to complete the Wall Street crossword.
Bwarhar chortling out loud at work :D
I always like the Kratos strips, and they’re getting better and better as the obvious personality quirks get worked out. I can’t play any of the God of Wars without seeing Coelasquids spin on him all the time.
Yeah, I never liked Kratos much in the games, but in MGDMT he’s sort of lovable, in a bloodthirsty way.
Does Kratos ever have a moment where he’s just like “Okay guys, we need to calm down and think this through”?
Fairly often, actually. When confronted with an empty room full of huge obnoxious stone pillars to shove into alcoves and rotating mirrors to deflect light beams into wall-mounted gemstones, he can be surprisingly precise and methodical. He’s bested dungeons crafted by Daedalus, and outsmarted Gods and Titans such as Hephaestus, Hera and Hermes and other very smart deities whose names started with other letters, all renowned as much for their intellect as Ares was for battle skill (ok, Hera was kind of just drunk and bitchy and then he iced her, but alliteration yo!). He’s staged MULTIPLE one-man prison breaks from the bowels of Hades (the realm, not the dude). His canonical puzzle-solving skills are easily just as impressive as his more celebrated streak of godslaying.
It’s just that wigging out all over the controller and making him flail burning chains at anything that moves is a lot more visually impressive than all that, and is the implied solution to any scene of interaction with another living being that isn’t also the mandatory minigame-a-trois for this installment.
Cretos’ expression in the third panel was priceless.
I loves all the facial expressions you do. They are marvelous.
God, I love it when you draw Kratos.
Why am I oddly saddened more stuff is not destroyed when Kratos rages????
Ah, Kratos just sets himself up for this kind of spectacle. It’s always comfortable reading when you use him, Coela.
Pretty early into GOW, I remember thinking “this Kratos guys great but so over the top, could we ever take him seriously?”
Apparently not.
Come to think of it, I had a tougher time with the puzzles in GOW than with the Boss’.
Violent rage in 3..2..1.. lol
Love his frowny face.
Can I have a screen shot of the sudoku? I love those things!
Seconded
Thirded. Seriously want it.
I’ve got 3 set up with possible full puzzle, since a little bit of a circular portion is visible under Kratos’ middle finger. Which based on the way the numbers are written, means it can be a 3, 6, or 8. the 5 doesn’t curve up enough to be that… so I have 3 puzzles set up like that and I’m attempting to figure them out.
I get way too hooked on puzzles.
Well, Kratos is doing better than I would be. No one has ever taught me about Sudoko, so I don’t know how to play it, much less what it actually is.
If someone could educate me on it, I’d appreciate it.
Sudoku is a puzzle where you are given a grid divided into 3×3 sections. (i.e. The most common format is 9 sections, resulting in a total 81 squares.) There are typically preset numbers filled in some boxes to give you clues what to put into the empty ones. The puzzle is completed when each row, column, and section contain numbers 1-9 without a repeat number.
…Somehow I have a feeling I just made it even more confusing and I apologize for that.
I think I get it… But then again, I still cannot fully grasp it.
Ah well, numbers were never really my friend anyways. Which is why I’m glad that Game Freak made Unown Letter Pokemon rather than Number Pokemon.
don’t give them idears like that ever
they will suck more too and we kown it
In addition to what was mentioned above, sudoku is, at its heart, a logic puzzle. You use clues and pattern recognition to first determine what can’t fill a square, then whittle down the possibilities until only one possible solution remains. Don’t be confused by the numbers; you could replace them with a set of nine different symbols and it’d still be solvable (but more difficult since you won’t have an easy visual cue to determine what’s missing).
If you’re having trouble figuring out the 9×9 puzzles, there are much smaller ones floating around. This is a 4×4 puzzle that can easily be solved at a glance using basic logic.
Hah. Ever play Kakuro? Like it’s similarly japanesed-named-cousin puzzle, kakuro is played by not repeating a number in a section, and using clues to figure out what can and can’t go in a space.
The twist is, it’s more like a mathematician’s crossword puzzle, in that your tiles are broken into “words” 2 to 9 digits long, overlapping in horizontal and vertical positions, and the clues lay outside the puzzle area. However, the clues are small enough not to require a whole seperate area for them, they lie in the black space between the play zones. Each clue is the sum of the numbers within the “word”. The smallest possible clue is 3 (1+2, 2 digits), and the largest is 45 (1+2+3+4… 9 digits). Two “words” in a row or collumn CAN have the same number in them, if separated by a gap (5 9 8 7 6 9) that makes them separate play areas.
This makes it much tougher than plain old sodoku, but much more entertaining. =D
Yep! I’ve played a fair amount of kakuro, though I’ve never been as interested in it as sudoku (or similar number logic puzzles such as skyscrapers) since it requires more memorization than deductive reasoning. Sure did teach me all the possible nonrepeating digit combinations for 15, though!
Lol, Kratos.
…Huh, I was just like this when I was little. “Honey what are you doing?” “TIEING MY SHOES” “Do you want me to help yo–” “NO I CAN DO IT BY MYSELF I DON’T NEED YOUR HELP” In the end those shoestrings were so tangled they made a snake orgy look like a picket fence.
God, I hate puzzles in Ascension. Every time the game stopped me to solve some contraption, “devs crossed the border” was passing my mind.
I can see it now. Commander B, pencil hovering over “Sudoku” on the “Things we can like around Kratos” list. Does the agency have any sort of anger management classes there?
As for Kratos solving a Portal maze, do you mean the normal way or the “rip panels off the walls to escape room” way?
Maybe Kratos actually really likes solving puzzles, and that’s why he spends so much time dicking around with switches and statues when we all know he’s perfectly capable of smashing walls and doors and really anything in his way.
Kratos’ face in the 3rd panel makes me just want… I DON’T EVEN KNOW! Its just awesome! Yay!
I have ALWAYS thought Kratos’ intelligence was highly underrated. I mean sure he screams a lot and solves many things with force, but he often applies that force to very circuitous reasoning to accomplish massive things.
He’s like Nerd Rage. It’s great.
Navigating Kratos through a massive dungeon is like watching a lovebird try to figure out how to climb a bookshelf, you can just feel the gears turning.
It’s hard to imagine Kratos holding a portal gun.
Then again it’s easy to imagine his face when he realizes the cake is a lie…
Funny, I would have thought Kratos would be doing pictocross.
I used Goggles to actually try and complete the Sudoku and…. yeah, Kratos is doomed. Damned thing is unsolvable.
This comic just made my day. I went from crying to giggling in the span of three panels. Thank you so much.
This made me remeber something I want to ask to the author.
Will we ever see any of the Darksiders dudes?
Death already has a cameo, in the extras. Sorry, don’t know how to insert the link here, its in Extras > Comics, the name of the picture is scowlymen.jpg
That was War.
My bad.. not a DarkSiders player myself ^_^;
Maybe solving puzzles is Kratos way of calming down? Or at least directing his rage at something else? Like a giant, overcomplicated stress ball or something maybe?
I see so much potential in this strip to change what Kratos is up to…
For some reason I feel like you have already drawn Kratos completing an Aperture maze.
Clearly this means it already exists in potentia in the swirling aether, and you must grant it form as a comic.
(also i just realized how much the commander is voiced by hugh jackman inside my head)
Kratos’ Last Reward
damn it, my brain automatically tried to finish the sudoku but there’s too much stuff blocked off
I have to fly a lot for work, so I take sudoku puzzle books with me for the long flights. Kratos is pretty much me when one of my coworker bugs me while I’m doing sudoku.
You’d be crabby and a little blood thirsty too if you were stuck on a six hour flight from California to New York in economy.
Alternate subtitle for God of War, ‘A Million and One Uses for a Corpse’
Ooh! Ooh! A 7 goes in the bottom right box of the bottom left set!
*Gets decapitated*
I meant bottom left box of the bottom right set :C
http://betteroffdeader.tumblr.com/image/45825703264
Kratos actually messed up! Here’s the answers to the puzzle in all it’s glory.
Not sure that Sudoku is actually solvable without at least one or two more ‘confirmed’ numbers. For instance, this would also be a perfectly acceptable solution given that we only know the bold numbers for certain –
314,526,789
567,984,213
982,137,465
621,375,894
735,498,126,
498,261,537
256,719,348
843,652,971
179,843,652
Auuuugh, I didn’t think of just capturing the bold numbers that were shown, I just copied all of the ones that were shown. But the two bold nines create a problem in the middle right box.
I found the following solution, I don’t know if it is entirely correct, but I only used the bold numbers and went from there.
3 5 8 9 4 6 2 7 1
4 6 1 7 2 3 5 8 9
9 7 2 5 1 8 4 6 3
6 2 3 1 9 7 8 4 5
7 8 4 3 6 5 1 9 2
1 9 5 2 8 4 6 3 7
5 1 6 4 7 9 3 2 8
8 3 7 6 5 2 9 1 4
2 4 9 8 3 1 7 5 6
My roommate bought the new God of war, but has yet to play it. Getting tired of waiting! I wanna see what kind of tantrums our hero gets this time.
Also, what kind of tantrums my roommate gets when he plays the hard parts. I heard there is one part near the end that can really put your panties in a twist.
First thing i notice: Is it just me or based upon his hand position, is he doing that puzzle sideways?
Ah… ^^’ He’s got it wrong already.
According the the row he’s in, the empty boxes can only have 1, 4, or 8. But the empty box on the right end of that row (left of the 3 and 7) has all three of those numbers in its column.
Commander Badass, better start preparing damage control…
I JUST REREAD EVERY COMIC TODAY
there goesan hour or two of my life well spentI have just finished all of the comics for the first time! Oh man that was so good. What am I going to do with my life now that I don’t have another three years of Machismo to power through?
This series makes me appreciate Kratos SO MUCH more. <3
I want to see Kratos face off with Glados.
I don’t think Kratos even really needs to breathe anymore. He can survive underwater, and according to that fight against Ares, in space. So Neurotoxin may not be that much of a problem.
oh kratos, i feel your pain…. every puzzle i attempt makes me rage, living in a family that are all puzzleholics, and i can’t solve any of them ….. GAARRRH!!!!
GAAARRRHHHHH! GAAARRRRHH!!! GAAARRRRRHHH!!!!!!
GAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRHHHHHHHH!!!!!
dangerous woman in a wheelchair…..
Kratos makes the best faces.
him and Jared, man. best faces. hands down.
Not really up to your usual high standards, Coleasquid. Just not that funny this week.
I’ve been doing overtime every day this week and working through my weekends, sometimes I have to phone it in. I’ve roughed out an amount of art roughly equal to a graphic novel in the past week.
Most certainly a matter of opinion. I thought it was pretty funny.
That’s because this one is a trick — the punchline is actually Kratos’ face in panel 2 and 3.
I bet he’d get through it within five minutes if it were real cells with men in there screaming to be freed, with numbers on them.
and they had to be lowered into a furnace.
Kratos has a point, though. People who offer unsolicited Sudoku/crossword/solitaire advice are the worst.
So are people who murder everyone in their immediate vicinity for completely arbitrary reasons.
Oh, so you’re gonna bring that up.
This makes me want to take up Sudoku again. Been a while since I played. Was into it a lot after I got Brain Age, then I finished all of the puzzles it came with. Laziness about finding more made me quit. Is “lazy” a manly quality?
Woah, I just now noticed the drawing of Marv you see if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the new layout.
It’s commander.
Commander’s nose is rather distinctive, as are his sideburns.
I love Kratos’ faces in all of these I just want to watch him make these faces all the day long… all the day long…
I think many of us are waiting for the second part of this strip to go something like this:
[The next day…]
[Commander writes in another item on the ‘Things we can’t have around Kratos’ list while Kratos rages in the background]
if you remeber its “things we can have around kratos” becouse its a storter list
I solved a Sudoku puzzle once, thus proving my superiority over them, so I don’t need to solve any more.
Definition of irony
Hey kelly. do one where kratos tries talk with a girl (and it ends up badly)
Have you ever considered filling in the gap in the Commanders teeth?
Why would you ever want to do that? It’s part of his manly charm =D
Was browsing some old penny arcade comics and found this http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/03/28
personally I like your Kratos better ^.^
OhNOOO!! I’ve caught up and now I have to wait to read this amazing comic. :(
How does everyone like the new god of war game?
whoot he play saduko too X3
So was this thing intended to be impossible? Because there is no possible solution for the bottom left corner of the middle right square. The numbers 1-9 are all surrounding it.
Pretty impressive for Kratos, considering he was born before Arabic numerals. (I presume, anyway?)