God of War

I loved God of War, it was a short experience, but I'm kinda glad it was. The story was great, the graphics were impressive, and they took a boring hack and slasher game and turned it into a fun puzzle solving platformer. Overall it wasn't the most original game ever made, but I was still pretty impressed by it.

A few things about this game that doesn't warrant it a 9.0 or higher for me. For one, Video Game Nudity, why was this put into this game? Everything seemed so classy about this game until Kratos had his way with a couple hookers and later rescued a lady in a see-through blouse. This seemed like a cheap tactic to impress a younger audience rather than the 20+ crowd.

There was only 3 real boss battles in the game. They're fun and creative (compared to each other) but there was only three, the first one was at the VERY beginning of the game, while the last was at the VERY end, so there was a ton of stuff inbetween. Atleast Star Fox Adventures had about 5 or 6. Heck, each Zelda game gives you 9. This is suppose to be a big title.

The lack of any camera control, this SUCKS for platforming. There was many times where I fell to my death because of the camera. The game was also really linear. That's all my complaints, I hope they fix this with God of War 2.

----------Battle System----------
God of War is an action platformer game with some RPG elements to it. I'll get the RPGness of the game out of the way first. Everytime Kratos kills an enemy, he gets red orbs, these red orbs can level up Kratos' skills and weapons. Kratos will get 2 weapons within the game, and they can easily be switch in and out without a menu screen. Kratos will also gain 4 magic skills, you can scroll through these with your D-pad hotkeys for quick and easy access. After Kratos levels up his weapons he'll gain new attack combinations.

During Kratos' quest he'll find treasure chests that contain Gorgon Eyes or Phoenix Feathers. If you find 6 Gorgon Eyes then Kratos will gain more max HP, and if he finds 6 Phoenix Feathers he'll gain more max MP.

The battle system is fairly button mashy, but they combat this with finishing moves to your enemy. After you've beaten on your enemy for so long the Circle button will appear over his head, if you hit the Circle button while this is appearing then you'll go into a finish move real time button combo like in Shenmue or Resident Evil 4. Each move is determined by the monster you are fighting, so if you're fighting a Medusa, then you'll have to mimic the directions you are giving with your L-Stick. If you are fighting a Minator, then you'll have to button mash your Circle button into oblivion.

The best thing about this game is the puzzles. They're fairly similar to what you would find in a Zelda game. There's block pushing, time based challenges, lever pulling, and loads of other variations of that.

----------Characters / Story----------
You play Kratos, a dark seeded character, with little words and lots of action. Kratos is sort of a demi-god, and he's on a quest to kill the God of War Ares, who is destroying the city of Athens.

I loved the story, the pacing, the characters, and the ending to the game. Everything came into place, I loved all the backstory. I thought the beginning of the game was extremely cheesy as they're trying to force Kratos' no-nonsense personality into a few minutes, but it seems after he gets "off the boat" and into Athens the story gets REALLY good.

----------Graphics----------
Absolutely amazing graphics for the PS2. The cutscenes have so much detail that I'm amazed time and time again that this is a PS2 game, even though some of them are pre-rendered. There's barely any load times in the game too. The character models look good and are unique, so you'll remember just about everyone you come across. There could of been more enemy types in the game, because you'll be fighting a ton of the same things over and over again from start to finish. The environments look great, although some tend to be generic (sewer level, hell level, desert level), while everything else tends me blend between mountain level and cave level, or town level. Other than that, each stage is unique, and when you revisit some of them there are a ton of differences you'll notice. The only thing that totally bugs me about the graphics is how there is no camera options, the camera is fixed, so you can't change it or have control of it.

----------Sound----------
The voice work is fairly good, while the music is really damn good. I can't think of anything bad about this section.

----------World Map----------
There really isn't one, you just go from area to area in a very linear fashion. This was disappointing, I was hoping for some amount of explorations, like Zelda or even Beyond Good and Evil, but oh well.

----------Time to Complete Game----------
8:28:57

Wow that was extremely short, but I would say that is a good thing. After you beat the game you unlock a TON of extras including a Making of feature, God mode and a ton of other things.