"Uh oh, here she goes again, ranting and raving about a classic, saying it sucks and didn't play well."
 
Hmm.... yeah.. actually that pretty much sums up what this is gonna be, so you might not wanna bother reading. There's also the fact that this is really long.... but then again how many of my posts aren't the length of a small novel?
 
SPOILERS!! I PRETTY MUCH WRITE ABOUT THE WHOLE ENTIRE PLOT (NOT THAT THERE'S REALLY MUCH THERE) SPOILERS!!
 
It's not that God of War is a bad game, per se.... it's just.... How do I say this nicely... It's special.
 
I almost believe someone swapped my copy of God of War with an ADD test, to see if I could keep my attention on a specific task for a certain amount of time. What other reason could there be for fights that went on and on and on and on and on... and on....... and on? Or what could explain the "puzzles" that were really just frustration threshold tests to see how many attempts it would take before I threw my arms in the air, screamed, and started pulling my hair out?
 
They did a great job tricking me into thinking this was the real game by slowly and gently introducing me to the combat, setting up an intriguing prologue, and then pitting me against a hydra! I thought to myself, "Wow, this game is really great! No wonder so many people like it!" But here's where I made my fatal mistake -- I turned the console off after defeating the hydra (and saving, of course), and went to sleep.
 
It's at this time that I'm fairly certain someone snuck in, exchanged my God of War disc for some nefarious and evil version and then snuck back out, probably laughing to themselves wickedly while doing so.
 
The next time I turned it on, all seemed well. I was slicing monsters up in Athens, wrestling Minotaurs, and slaying Gorgons. I even decapitated Medusa and used her head as an unholy fog lamp. Sure, the combat started to get a bit monotonous, but there were plenty of combos to freshen it up and lots of chances to show off my mad parkour skills.
 
But then I encountered some NPC who screamed at me to stay away from her. What else would I do in such an event? I tried to chase her down! It's the only rational option, right? But I SWEAR I didn't push her off that ledge. Sure, I was considering it, but she fell on her own accord! And so what if I took a key from her dead body? I needed it, alright?!
 
From then on, the journey became a stumbling decent into madness. Swarms of monsters came after me... some where like shadows who would dodge my attacks unless I mashed the Square Button REALLY REALLY hard! That showed them! Oh yes, they learned to fear my quick attacks, bwahahaha! More monsters came for my blood, and soon they too fell to the almighty powers of the Square Button. In retrospect, perhaps Triangle did feel a bit neglected, but if it had done its job properly this would be a non-issue. Instead, it decided to slack off and miss the enemies or get interrupted far more often than not. 
 
So there we were, Square Button and me, me and Square Button, making our way through Athens to save the Oracle. We made our way to her temple, killed a swarm of harpies until the game politely whispered to us, "Psst, you should probably block off those harpy nests, dummy", and then proceeded to follow the game's sage advice. We got to try our hands.. or rather feet, at tight-rope walking on the second floor. Sure it was pointlessly mundane, but it never hurts to have a good sense of balance!
 
Aha! We found the Oracle -- dangling from a rope about 20 feet above the ground. Square Button whispered to me, "Just stand under her and catch her when she falls." Me, being a practically omnipotent warlord, laughed at such a suggestion, shrugging it off as "too easy" and decided to challenge myself to running an obstacle course in under one minute before saving her at the last possible second! Only a true mastermind would come up with such an ingenious plan! I patted myself on the back then proceeded to do cartwheels and pirouettes as I ran the obstacle course with ease.
 
Sure, the Oracle was a tad angry when I finally saved her, but who cares? She got saved, didn't she? But then she had the nerve to say I was too late. Too late?! Kratos the mighty warlord is never too late! In fact, the gods told me so themselves. They said I had so much time that I could take a journey through the Desert of No Return, chill out with a Titan, make it through a labyrinth that has never been successfully traversed, drag the treasure at the end of said labyrinth all the way back to Athens, and still have enough time left over for tea. So there, you poor excuse for an oracle! Aren't you supposed to be able to tell the future? You fraud!
 
In any event, it was off to the Desert of No Return... Square informs me that's not its real name, but that name makes the story sound more dramatic so we'll run with it. We were tasked to kill three Sirens who had decided to take up refuge in the whirling sands and endless sing their songs. You'd think they'd get a lot of sand in their lungs, but I guess not. Or maybe they have some sort of desert gills where they can filter out the sand... Hmm.... *ahems* Where was I? Oh yes. Desert. Sirens died. Door opened. Horn got blown. Hehe... blown. 
 
And soon a massive titan carrying what looked to be a small city on his back, emerged! It was there, in the temple atop the giant's back that I would find fame and fortune! Or so I thought... but then I had some inconvenient flashbacks that reminded me of why I wanted to kill Ares, the god of war, and why I was heading to this temple. Apparently a MacGuffin that went by the name of "Pandora's Box" needed to be obtained in order to defeat Ares, so I said okay and hitched a ride upon the Titan's back. It took three whole days to scale the massive beast! Three days! That's a lot of giant!
 
So you may be asking yourself "What happened to the whole 'nefarious and evil version of GoD?" I'll get to that in a minute; I'm in the middle of recounting my heroic deeds. Don't rush me, geeze!
 
Upon arriving at the temple's entrance, some undead gatekeeper gave me the speech about, "No one ever making it back alive, oogabooga" and "Good luck... sucker" before opening the gates for me and letting me in. And so it would come to pass that this would be my new homestead for many moons. Thankfully, Ares was a patient god of war and held off from destroying Athens while I pranced around the temple like a newly blessed priestess. Teehee!
 
Sadly, the prancing had to come to an end and the killing had to begin. Oh what killing there was to be had! This was the playground of the pantheon itself, where they would unleash their nasty creations on would-be heroes, devouring the flesh from their bones as they breathed their last! But I would not suffer the same fate! I slew scores upon scores of monsters. Square Button was in a constant state of ecstasy. I could tell by the hums and whistles as he cleaved through flesh and bone. They sounded almost orgasmic.
 
Poor Triangle still didn't see much action, nor did the newly acquired L1 skills, and the R1 three hit combo rotted away into oblivion, never once being able to prove its worth. But Square was in heaven! And each new monster it faced put up a greater fight! Some refusing to die even after 30 or 40 hits! Sure, my arms were getting tired and I was falling asleep facing off against wave after wave of the same monsters I had been fighting for the last ten minutes, but Square could have gone all night!
 
Unfortunately, Square was disappointed whenever we hit a point that required more thinking and less killing. Some would-be heroes may label such things as "puzzles", I call them "not fit for the mighty warlord Kratos!" Indeed, they were beneath me. Having me do ridiculously long and boring fetch quests just to find a handle so I could turn a gear made me feel like such a commoner. Or finding ornaments to place into a door so it would open. Fools! My battlecry is powerful enough to tear down doors! The gods know this! Why must I put up with such things as a door that will not open at my command?!
 
And then there was the tight-rope walking. Oh how I loathe Hades and his circus fetish. I was going to use my blades as a hookshot to propel myself from one side to the other, or at the least, swing on the beams like Tarzan, feeling the wind in my... err.. on my bald head, as I flew through the air, swinging from one beam to another. But Lord Hades would have none of it! Instead, I was forced to tiptoe along these beams while blades swung at me! Considering the gods were supposed to be on my side and wanted me to get this "Pandora's Box" thing, you'd think they'd at least give me a bit of flexibility when it came to completing their challenges. But no, they wouldn't budge. Jerks. They shall pay for this!
 
I should point out that by now I had almost lost hope that a challenging opponent would ever show its face. But then the mighty Minotaur came to crash the party and prove me wrong. Or.. at least that's what I thought he was there to do, but he proved less of a hassle than fighting 4 of his baby pals at once. However! Triangle Button got to shine and show off its pretty colors for once! Horray, Triangle! That aerial spin attack was Minotaur's bane! He could do nothing against it! It was like logic to God of War's creators; Kryptonite to Superman; Bears to Stephen Colbert!
 
The mighty Minotaur slain, it was time once again for more "puzzles", that required rotating the entire temple to line up with the stars and the planets and... I don't even remember; it was far beneath a mighty warlord such as myself. But then the earth shook, the heavens moved, and a great statue rose! Soon, the journey would be over!
 
Or so I thought, until the narrator interrupted my daydreams, reminded me once again about my wretched past, and said foreboding, "Little did he know the horrors that awaited him in the upper half of the temple" Wait, upper HALF? I was only half-way done?! They should have called this "Escape from Pandora's Temple" instead of "God of War", seeing as I spent the vast majority of my time in this gods-awful place.
 
But I am the mighty Kratos, so I persevered! Sure, the architect himself warned me that he was kind of drunk when he made this part and didn't know if there was a way to actually complete it, but I was not phased! I pressed on, scaling mountains, killing many, many monsters, and figuring out more puzzles that were, once again, well beneath something a great warlord should have to deal with. 
 
For example, a room with spikes in the floor. I'm not sure how an entire legion made it this far into the temple, as I had to practically tear down the first half to ascend to the second half, but their bodies were strewn about the room. Then again this is the Greek pantheon we're dealing with. Chances are they found some fresh corpses from Athens, brought them here and planted them in this room just to taunt me. Who's side are you bastards on anyways, gods?! I swear I'm going to make you all pay for mocking me so.
 
Stupid trap-rooms aside, I made my way to the end of the temple, facing off against a million harpies and skeletal archers as the famed box taunted me from behind a barred passage. And when I say a million, I mean 10 million. There was no end to the beasts! They just kept respawning! No rez sickness or timer to accept the rez or anything! I began to get the feeling I had been tricked by the gods. I was not there to get Pandora's Box, I was there to rid them of the pest problem their temple was having!
 
Pest extermination complete, I was finally able to claim my reward -- an over-sized box. I was elated... until Athena told me I would have to drag the box all the way back to Athens. Seriously? Ares has already waited this long for me to challenge him, did they really expect him to wait until I dragged an item that was supposed to be able to defeat him across a desert and through town before he finished off Athens? I'm pretty sure the entire pantheon had been knocking back a few too many glasses of "nectar" that day, if you know what I mean.
 
With a heavy sigh I began my long journey of dragging a box back to Athens. That is, until Ares finally got bored and threw a large wooden steak through my chest, thus ending my life. I can see why he waited, though. Forcing me to go through Pandora's Temple was a far greater torture than being sent to Hades would have been. Ares is one sick and twisted bastard.
 
So there I was, in Hell, asking if anyone had a light to try and break the awkward silence. No one even managed a "heh", so I said "Screw this, I'm out of here," and used some poor soul as a ladder to begin my ascension back to earth. It didn't take long before fire-engulfed versions of the beasts I fought before attacked me. They were probably the souls of the beasts I had killed already, trying to exact a bit of revenge. But considering both they and I were technically dead, I'm not sure what killing each other a second time really accomplished. 
 
Weird paradox aside, I killed them anyways and made my way back up to the surface. But not before encountering another one of Hade's circus fetish devices -- huge rotating pillars with blades on them. You wouldn't think a great warlord such as myself would be bothered if the tip of my finger or the bottom of my shoe was scrapped by a blade, but you would be wrong. I'm actually deathly afraid of moving blades, so much so that if one even comes near me, I squeal like a pig, let go of whatever I'm holding, and cry. Needless to say, these cruel devices of Hades had me crying a lot.
 
But I took a deep breath, said "You can do this, Kratos. You're a winner!", overcame those contraptions and made it once again to the surface! Some weird grave digger greeted me and turned out to be a god. I'm thinking he was Hades getting a hard-on as he watched me squeel and suffer on his fetishistic contraptions. That sicko. He will pay!
 
Doing my best to forget his twisted smile and sick laugh I made my way through Athens once again to finally confront Ares in a battle to the death! Ares might be sick and twisted, but he's not too bright and I was able to get Pandora's Box from his grasp and use it! Suddenly I was 100 feet tall! Now, why didn't they just tell me to use it back at the temple and I wouldn't have had to drag it back to Athens, get killed, or endure Hades twisted world?! Clearly, the gods are a screwed up bunch of deities who are not fit to hold their positions.
 
So Ares taunted me, I shoved my swords down his throat, and he didn't like that. So he commanded a black hole to suck me in and sent me on some crazy mind-trip where I had to save my family from a million copies of myself. Did I mention I murdered my wife and child in cold blood? Yeah, I probably didn't. You would have thought I was a horrible person, no doubt. Well, I feel now's a good time to get that out in the open. We still cool? Good.
 
Wave after wave of clones came and attacked me and my family. I must say they were looking damn fine and when I build my army I will have to figure out how Ares did this cloning trick so I may use it, myself. Unfortunately, those clones had to die and die they did. More and more fell to my blades! Square Button was once again living in a perpetual state of bliss while I was staving off the evil sleep monsters. And then... they stopped! I was free of that prison and facing off once again against Ares, but this time, it was personal!
 
It was clear from the start who was going to win -- the one with the great looks, make-up, and fashion-sense, which was me, of course. I had slain a god! But the other gods backed out on their deal to rid me of my nightmares, using some stupid loophole. I totally saw this coming, I mean Artemis appeared to me with horns on the top of her head and Hades looked like a Locust from Gears of War, so I knew something had to be up from early on. Assholes, they wouldn't even let me die, instead making me a god. Haha, those drunk fools...
 
So I pretty much just recapped the entire game. Guess I should put a spoiler warning at the top. Unfortunately, I had far more fun writing that then actually playing the game. The combat became such a monotonous chore of bashing the Square button I really did feel myself falling asleep at times. Trust me, I tried changing it up, but most monsters in Pandora's Temple and onwards would interrupt any slow attacks, couldn't be thrown, or would not flinch when taking damage, instead interrupting slower combos.

The "puzzles" weren't puzzles at all. They were stupid trial and error tasks which test the patience and sanity of the player more than their skill. I abhorred Hade's Trial where it had you walking on the beams with spinning blades trying to throw you off. The spinning pillars with blades in Hades were also a ridiculous time-waster. And there were so many "fetch this crank so you can open that door so you can fetch another crank to open another door" points that it just became so monotonous.
 
I'm not sure which I disliked worse -- the 5-10 minute long combat sessions against trash mobs or the 10-20 minute fetch quests / puzzles. Unfortunately, when those are the only things you really do in the game, it didn't make for a great experience.
 
I did really enjoy the boss fights. It's just too bad there were only three of them! The Hydra, the Minotaur, and Ares. I was definitely expecting more and was sadly disappointed. The story was also good, though there really wasn't much of one. It was more like the prelude to the story. In fact, they probably could have summed up the whole plot in one paragraph --
 
"Meet Kratos, a warlord who nearly lost his life on the battlefield before pledging his undying loyalty to Ares, the God of War. Ares saved him and granted him with powers beyond his imagination, promising to turn him into the perfect warrior. Little did Kratos realize this would mean killing his own family, and upon discovering what he had done, swore revenge on the very god who had once saved him. Cursed to bear the ashes of his murdered loved ones, Kratos fights to free himself from the chains of Ares and help the other gods save Athens from the God of War's terrifying wrath."
 
There, that's the story as told throughout the game up until the battle with Ares. That's practically less than what you'd expect to read on the "prologue" page of an instruction manual.
 
So yeah maybe my legitimate copy of God of War got swapped for this inane monotonous "adventure" and I missed out on what makes the game so appealing to many people. Or maybe this type of game just isn't for me. It certainly has got me rethinking whether or not I should get Bayonetta, as if that boils down to a lot of monotonous trash mob fights, I'll get bored of it very quickly. I was impressed by the demo, but then again, I was also impressed with the first 30 minutes of God of War, so first impressions can certainly be deceiving. Guess I'll just hafta wait and see!
 
On a side-note, I'm conflicted as to whether or not to put Kratos into the "Hunks" list. He's hot, for sure, but he's such a douche -- thinking of only himself, killing thousands, including his family, etc... I really don't like him as a person, at all.