Okay, so here is my review of God of War. Some of you may think it odd to read a review of a Playstation 2 game immediately after a post regarding the evil nature of diamonds, but it's my fucking blog, and I'll write about what I goddamn want to. In terms of lack of fulfillment of expectations and the zombie-like praise this game gets from the boob-crazed masses, I think it fits in perfectly with the concept of “Stop Being So Stupid.” So there. Now, on to the review.
Perhaps the second thing that might seem strange about doing a review of a PS2 game is that it's October, 2009. Firstly, one should notice that unlike SOME companies, [ Microsoft...] Sony has continued to support its powerhouse console long after the release of its new giant, the PS3. Even in this lunar cycle, almost 36 months after initial release, Sony is still releasing PS2 games for those not in a position to own a PS3, or even those who have simply moved their PS2 to their second TV. Microsoft has shut down their entire XBOX department, voided all warranties, and is now 360-compliant-only...but I digress, more on MS bullshit in another post. Secondly, there is a very good reason I have waited this long to play the game, which I will now address in the introduction to the review proper.
This game was veeeery heavily marketed and praised before it retail release, as most potential console-selling games are wont to do. As a result, I was preemptively skeptical, and decided to use a judicious amount of restraint and not run out and buy the damn thing for full price [Gamestop used games and Gamefly are good ideas, my son...]. As the weeks tolled on, the favorable reviews kept pouring in. Then, within a smattering of months, the sequel was announced...and I exercised further restraint. When the first game came out, the only weighted criticism of it across the board was its length...players had just gotten used to playing as Kratos and then the game was over. An included unlockable God Mode did not slake this disappointment-driven desire for more, much as the Blades of Chaos themselves could not slake Kratos' murderous intent for the rest of human history. So, I was resolved to wait until the second game came out, that I might not suffer the same deprivation.
My patient rectitude was not rewarded, dear reader.
That, it was not.
To put it mildly, this game sucks. To put it honestly, this game could not forcibly remove Zeus' Olympian cock from its mouth with the Pelian Spear and an army of 10,000 hoplites bound together as a makeshift Titan in Achille's enhcantedly-oversized Armor and Greaves. Cronus' Adamantine Sickle could not cleave in twain the mass of quivering, wormy shit that this game is. This game couldn't enter peacetime Sweden with Hermes' Caduceus. If this game were wearing Aphrodite's Girdle and was armed with Cupid's Bow, it could not ensnare the heart of the extraordinarily ugly Sarah Jessica Parker; and, after said attempt had failed, even the Winged Sandals would not allow it to catch up with her as she fled in horror. Even the Helmet of Hades would not render this game invisible enough to escape the scrutiny of a sterile, pox-ridden wolverine [known for their bad eyesight] with glaucoma. This game couldn't...you get the idea.
Not only does it make an appearance in the game, this game IS the Pandora's Box of the video game industry, containing all of its egregious evils, perils, and poisons. Where to start, where to start...Oh, I know. The Gameplay.
GAMEPLAY::3/10
At first glance, one would say that this game is reminscent of the Devil May Cry series. And the first glance would be right, if it weren't for one simple fact. This game IS the Devil May Cry series, with an interesting reskin. And guess what? Even considering what pieces of shit those games are, this game isn't even as good as them. Almost everything that GoW does, DMC does better. Let's break it down.
The Orbs:
The main game mechanic of this game is to kill everything. Everything. There isn't anything in this game that you DON'T kill, save for the Athenian Oracle and Kratos' family at the end. Oh, did I mention that this review will be spoiler-heavy? If I didn't, sorry for forgetting. THIS REVIEW WILL BE FULL OF SPOILERS. [This will, of course, be in the interest of solid journalism, and wouldn't at all be related to the point of view that the author doesn't have that spoiler-whiners are full of shit. It also, needless to say, wouldn't be because any game that deserves not to be spoiled won't be spoiled by this reviewer.] Sometimes I wish there was an emoticon for rolling one's eyes...wait, that would be all the time. But, I digress.
The Orbs. When said killings are performed, the bodies of slain enemies erupt with multicolored orbs that are absorbed by the protagonist when he is within a certain distance of them. Obviously, more difficult enemies give more orbs than their mosquito-like counterparts, and the orbs come in three varieties: Green [for health regeneration], Blue [for Magic Power or Mana regeneration, and Red [for weapon and magic power-ups].
The problem with the orbs is that they are simultaneously too numerous and scant at the same time. Let me explain. Along with the living source of orbs, there are also chests, all of which can only be opened once [with one exception where an abundance of mana is necessary to move on in the game, where the player acquires the Gorgon's Head], scattered throughout the game levels. In my tour, these chests were the only thing I needed to be successful. There were a few occasions where I had hoped to receive a certain kind of orb from an encounter of enemies, but those could literally be counted on one hand, and were largely due to my own stupidity rather than the game's difficulty. And, when an enemy does drop something other than red orbs, it's never enough to be meaningful.
There is an interesting mechanic where the player can execute certain types of finishing moves to produce certain types of orbs, but it is hardly useful, and nary controllable [No, Kratos! Not THAT finishing move, the one where you rip it's tits off!]. In fact, there are only two encounters in the whole game where the monsters produce any kind of meaningful orbage, and those are the last two confrontations where there are no chests.
The Enemies:
For a short, fleeting while, the appearance of enemy variety maintained itself in this game. But then, you get to the third level. Basically, the majority of late-game enemies are just reskins of earlier enemies. These reskins may look decidedly different, and may have different weapons, but they are, in fact, the same enemy.
The Final Fantasy series is notorious for this reskinning, as well, but there is a slight, erm, major difference. In the FF series, the enemies are reskinned with different colors or appearances to emphasize their genus and species affiliations, and in most of the games, this actually makes a gameplay difference. Undeads will be hurt by curative magic; a flan will really only be vulnerable to magic, it's just a matter of determining which type; birds will be affected more by physical attacks, but only from characters with a high enough speed to counter their heightened evasion and increased range; a tonberry means run until you know you are several levels higher than the average dungeon level, or this particular party member hasn't killed much of anything. In GoW, these distinctions mean nothing. True, one minotaur may have a maul and the other an axe, but their combos still have the same number of impacts and timing and the same degrees of damage, if not the same animations. The later enemies just look a little different and have more or less health than each other. There is one notable exception when the player enters Hades, where all your enemies are reskinned to be on fire. That's not the exception, though; in Hades, the skeleton archers have a shotgun-like spread of several arrows, rather than just the one. However, seeing as they are interspersed with normal skeleton archers, and the accuracy/range of the two shots are identical, the only thing being modified is the damage.
Another problem with the enemies overall is the lack of variety. Wait, didn't I already say that? Oh, right, the lack of variety in encounters. Yes, there are two different lacks of variety in the enemies. Once you start recycling the enemy types for their upgrades, the only thing left to tweak is the combinations of their spawning. Although the game does relatively well in creating interesting bands of villainy, it doesn't really go into the depth it could have.
Example: the gorgons have a ranged attack that turns Krotos to stone, whereupon he may be struck once to instantly die [which, in and of itself is very annoying...if you are in midair from a jump and you get stoned, the impact of you landing will be instant death. In fact, the gorgons are the hardest enemy in the game to deal with, especially in numbers.]; there are sirens, who hurl low-damage projectiles against the player [the effect of which is basically just to interrupt whatever action is currently being undertaken]; and there are your basic skeleton hordes with swords. A very taxing encounter could have been a single siren lurking at the edge of the battle throwing projectiles while two gorgons circle with their stone gaze, backing up a platoon of skeletons whose primary purpose is to absorb damage for the specialists and distract Kratos from getting to them while his health whittles away or instant death looms.
The conflicts the game presents the player have no such forethought; rather, the developers simply decided to throw random numbers of random enemies together and have them each spawn X times. Even this tired formula is not used effectively; here's another cool idea:
Towards the endgame, when the player has powered up his arsenal of spells and weapons, one low-level skeleton that we haven't seen from the beginning of the game shambles forward. It is dispatched easily, and the player feels like a badass – the lone skeleton has served as a barometer of strength, confirming to the player how far he/she has progressed in the game. Then, another skeleton starts to shamble along. And another. And another. Within half a minute, the player is swamped by these low-level peons, as many as the game engine will allow to fill the screen at once. The player now panics and feels genuine fear; this anthill of mosquitoes is going to kill Kratos.
These kinds of things are apparently too much to hope for in this en masse brawler, which is strange. Even the thoughtful combination encounters [the ones that have strategic rock-paper-scissors aspects to them that also utilize the environment] lose their luster as you are forced to play them six times in a row at their introduction. The sheer, meaningless grind spoils the mood of the whole experience, and can hope to enamor only the most inattentive of consumers...which, thankfully for GoW, is the primary demographic. For those of us with brains, the monster encounters are wanting.
The Combat:
Combat is very fast, and very aggressive. Kratos' movelist is also very diverse, and there is an attack for just about every situation. Your spells are [mostly] very interesting and useful, if not always effective. However, there are several near game-breaking issues with the combat...which I will now go into.
There are two moves that SHOULD be integral to any game of this type, but in this particular adventure, using them could kill you. These moves would be the dodge and the rush. Both are upgradeable, but even in their ultimate form, I found myself deliberately finding ways not to use these two techniques. The reason being, when you either dodge or rush, Kratos travels a short distance, and then stops. And he continues to stop. In fact, he stops for a little over one full second. For one full second, the player is totally incapacitated as Kratos stands there...recovering? What is the purpose of this recovery phase? The man has flaming hellblades surgically bound to his forearms, can double jump on thin air, rips wings off of harpies with his bare hands, maneuvers thirty-foot tall pedestals with a kick, and needs a breather after an ukemi roll? What. The. Fuckadoo. Using the dash, to say, rapidly close the distance between Kratos and a gorgon stonegazing him in an effort to prevent aforementioned stonegazing with a red-hot piece of bronze pain to the brainpan leaves Kratos standing directly in front of the gorgon with his finger up his nose. When the rush is powered up and an attack is added to it, the problem is magnified, for now Kratos is locked in an uncancelable attack animation that can continue in only one direction – the direction of initial rush – and strikes only air as your opponent sidesteps and introduces your lumbar region to a new and interesting sensation...the sensation of being violently removed from the body against any will that the lumbar region may regret to not possess. And the dodge, dear Christ porking me sideways with a roto-rooter. Thank you, Kratos, for deftly rolling out of the way of that thundering hammerblow in neither the direction that I input nor with the will to avoid an attack. Half of the time I dodged, the attack that I was dodging hit me anyway; the other half, it left me open to all variety of attacks from enemies with AI stupider than gravy. These two moves cannot even be used to avoid environmental hazards, seeing as you are incapable of movement upon the move's completion; I quickly gave up trying to roll between the spikey smashey things in Pandora's Temple as it left me standing there to be spikeyed, smasheyed, and thingied until my poor, twisted form resembled the pie vomit from that scene in Stand By Me. Fuck you, Mr. Kratos, fuck you.
The other inextricably necessary move for a game of theis genre that should work but doesn't is the block. Rather than actually blocking, this function seems to be more of a wishful thought. A passing, painful wishful thought that will more often than not leave you with cold metal sticking out of your neck. You cannot block in the middle of an enemy's combo, so if you're timing is off, you're off...the plane that takes you to Happyfightingville. Without a parachute. Sure, I suppose you could open every fight by blocking for an indeterminate period of time waiting for the monster directly in front of you to tire of your incessant stillness and invite you to strike a blow of unrighteous vengeance directly to his addlepated occipital lobe, but that wouldn't be God of War, now, would it? That would be God of Block, otherwise known as God-of-Exercise-in-Boredom-and-Futility-Due-to-Lax-Quality-Assurance-Testing. Yet again, fuck you, Mr. Kratos...fuck you.
Lastly for the player-controlled combat, is the targeting mechanism. Basically, there is none. Kratos auto-targets whom he thinks you want him to hit. Largely, this meets a high degree of success; however, when it fails, it is always the time you need it to not fail the most. As soon as more than seven enemies are in your immediate vicinity, the game gives up on picking an individual target, and makes all of your attacks go in some general direction or other. The problem comes when it is necessary for your attacks to connect so they can interrupt your opponents' attacks...and there is no longer anyone there. Whether by death or flollopping, your enemies manage to wriggle their ways out of your crosshairs more often than they should when in large groups; this can terminate your attack-chain at worst, and leave you stonegazed and awaiting instant death at worst. Thricely, sir Kratos...fuck you.
The only issue that remains in this section of the game is one of preference. You have, as previously mentioned, a healthy array of attacks to meet your gruesome ends; and assuming you actually take the time to remember the labyrinthine way the moves link together, the system is very deep and satisfying. However, the further into the game you get, the less important any of that is. As your weapons and spells become more powerful, there is a markedly reduced need for technique. Once you level up the Army of Hades spell to the max, you just cast it and button mash until everything on the screen dies and your attack-chain climbs to the seventies. This one spell was actually the method used to fight Ares in our first direct confrontation, and it resulted in me not having to even press anything else. The only limitation to such an act is your available mana, but fret not! You can just keep upgrading the ol' faithful Chaos Blades and you'll be totally fine. There isn't even a need to upgrade anything else, as the Blades will dispatch any monster with relative ease when maxed out. While I can get behind this philosophically, knowing that Kratos should be more comfortable with the weapons bound to his body than anything else, it's just another layer of mediocre and boring one-dimensionality in a game that is already fraught with mediocre and boring one-dimensionality [at least in the gameplay itself, but more on that later]. I wish the Gorgon's Head ability had been more utilitarian, seeing as I would have loved to have shattered some stonegazed cyclopian vagabonds with the nerve to not leave me alone to brood in my big bad depression [but no, while Kratos is destroyed in one hit while stonegazed, it takes varying amounts of strikes to shatter opponents; during which time, they are either freeing themselves, or you are being disallowed to land said strikes by some other jackass enemy rapping upon your head with a polearm].
Collision:
This isn't actually that big of a deal, seeing as it only cropped up in one very specific place, but boy, did it piss me off. In the Hades level, there was one platforming bit [which is particularly aggravating for reasons upon which I will exculpate later] where a series of vertical stone drums set atop one another are rotating. You are supposed to climb these drums whilst avoiding the gigantic blades sticking out of them as this column of stone drums spins around in a cuff cut from the cliffside. If you happen to be struck by one of these blades while on the edge of the drum where it meets the cuff, you will be sandwiched into the interstice and then fall through the floor to your instant doom. Weird, and annoying.
Platforming:
This is that big of a deal. Buuuuuuuut, it's not really the platforming's fault all by itself, rather a complication of a bigger problem. So, we move on to the game's biggest problem.
The Retardo Camera:
This, folks, is that rare and precious gleaming jewel of shit that can only be buried under a mountain of sugar and blissful dreams, leading many a mortal to a stinky suffocating fecal death as the sirens lead those sailors to their fates among the rocks. It's very hard to determine where to begin with this monstrosity, so I guess I'll try to get into the mindset of the developers in an effort to be...gracious.
The camera in this game manages to work some cinematic miracles, and that is no small feat for a game whose central mechanic is one man running around letting the blood of various mythological creatures and characters. There were times were I literally had to pick my jaw up off of the floor due to the stunning visuals that swept across the screen in a panoramic pantheon of cooooooool-ness. The problems began when the game tried to turn every third event into such a moment. No, wait...scratch that. When I moved two feet from my starting position and realized I couldn't control the camera...that was when the problems started. When making a game of any proportion, epic or understated, you should ALWAYS allow the player to have even the barest illusion of control of the camera. I personally believe that the best camera system ever implemented for a game was in Mario 64, and that the worst was in Devil May Cry 2 – I'm sorry, I meant God of War. I understand what the developers were going for, but it has backfired miserably, resulting in one of the most ambitious failures since the eunuch lost at Waterloo.
Not every moment can be cinematic, so for the love of puppies and cream, SCE Santa Monica, stop trying to make them be. In the scenic exposition of a gargantuan Ares stomping on Athenian troops marching across the countryside, the camera swings to Kratos' left as he runs along the mountain steppe to provide the “best” view of the slaughter. And every time Kratos runs along said steppe, it does the same thing...even three hours later in the game, when you revisit the site and Ares is in a different location. Yes, even then, the camera swings 'round to show off a whole lot of nothing. This is just a simple scenic exposition, but the problems continue all throughout the game. More often than not, the camera sweeps and swoons to show the environment from the most visually appealing angle, regardless of the hordes of monsters you have to slay in the interim. Enemies obscured by scenic objects, odd character orientation to the point of view making control awkward, and more. When traversing interior corridors, the camera stubbornly remains in its initial placement, meaning that for the first run through the space, you can see what's in front of Kratos [until you have to round a corner], but on the way back [which you WILL be doing a shit ton of, running back and forth] you are perpetually running towards the camera...except for when you aren't. Because, occasionally, and for seemingly no reason whatsoever, the camera will go to a trailing view when going back through a previously traversed corridor. This doesn't make you grateful for being able to see this time, it just makes you pissed off that it doesn't do it all the time.
In most cases, the most egregious sin of the camera is that it is intentional. There are so many hidden ledges and passageways that lead to secret goodies and enhancements that are only hidden because the camera is out of your control. Gone are the days of testing wall cracks with the Master Sword to see if they can be bombed; also gone are the days where secrets hid themselves in plain sight. Now, in the GoW era, secrets can only be secrets if the motherfucking camera can't see them. Yay for brain power and conscientious game development.
The atrocious point of view lock also hampers the platforming sections of the game. Too often – especially in levels such as Hades, with its floating planes and spires – the camera is directly responsible for misjudging distances or angles, leading to countless unnecessary deaths. This problem plagues the entire game from beginning to end, prologue to epilogue. This by itself could be enough to break a game so dependent on platforming when not in combat, but when added to the myriad of others issues vexing the GoW experience, it's totally unnacceptable.
All of this results in a little phenomenon that I like to call, “Exploratory Platforming.” Once about every two minutes, you WILL attempt to jump off of the screen in some random direction just to see if there is a hidden ledge [or even the main path on which to advance the game] placed just out of sight. There's another outmoded Exploratory profession that causes much pain and unnecessary death: Exploratory Surgery. The particular kind of Exploratory Surgery this game resembles is Exploratory Dentistry.
The Levels:
I'll talk about this later.
This concludes your review for gameplay.
GRAPHICS::8/10
Ah, one of the areas where this game is head and shoulders above...well, just about everything else on the PS2. The graphics of GoW are off. The. Fucking. Chain. Now, in October of 2009, the graphics are still reeeeeeally impressive, even compared to some PS3 titles. If you happen to have a progressive scan TV, even more so. The frame rate is always constant and smooth, never lagging or skipping even once for my entire time with the game, regardless of how many renders were on screen at any given time. The size of the set pieces are insane, and showcase a processing power I didn't know the PS2 had. There were times where I could see literally scale miles away to the horizon, with clearly animated assets buzzing around on their merry little way. All of the character animations make sense and have a real sense of weight when executed. None of the levels have the exact same lighting, which showcases the power of the engine under different rendering conditions. There are only two problems with the graphics, and they are as follows:
1] Shadows don't render properly. Whenever Krotos is climbing a ladder, his shadow will dance on the wall or floor in relation to the light source...minus the ladder. The result is a strange, ethereal form just floating about in midair. We knew that Kratos was the Ghost of Sparta, but I didn't think that was literal...
2] There are frequent little gaps in the mesh of the levels. What this means is, whenever polygons composing the actual level layer in the rendering stack intersect, there are small holes in between many of them. There is no physical effect on gameplay with these graphical glitches, but they certainly take their job of shattering the willful suspension of disbelief very seriously. Multiple places in every single level, I could see through rock seams or marble archways to the infinite empty space beyond...and this is without being able to manipulate the camera. It's not like I walked around in First-Person Mode to find these things.
Taken individually, these graphic glitches are nothing. The artistic clout that this game flaunts about is really breathtaking, and pithy little complaints like this can't really take much away from the feats the developers have managed to pull out of their obviously magical hat. But then again, that's the very nature of the problem. With such excellence in all other visual areas, these little bug bites sting even more. With the level of detail in the other areas, the only excuse for the existence of these anomalies is pure laziness...which should be unacceptable for any first-party, much-anticipated AAA title. The only reason this game got a 9/10 on the graphics side is because of how these little pings reduce the level of artistry to that of mere mortals, and the only reason it was lowered to an 8/10 is just because of how mindless these errors are. For such a visually amazing experience from beginning to end, there is simply no excuse for these rat turds to come and spoil the party.
SOUND [MUSIC]::9/10
There's not really much to say about the musical score to the game, other than that it is wonderful. It fits with the historical period brilliantly, manages to flow in and out of combat marvelously, and is constructed of various vamps that really immerse the player into the experience. It also never manages to always support, and never hog attention; it never gets in the way. The sound balance is good, and the musicality from level to level is appropriate. It takes a lot to be better than this...namely, a man named Uematsu or Kondo on your musical team.
SOUND [EFFECTS]::7/10
Not bad, but not that great, either. Enemies don't really have distinctive sounds of their own, and Kratos' grunts and howls become tedious after a while. The noises of items breaking seem afterthoughts, and ambient reports in the level backgrounds don't really enhance or diminish much of anything. Passing grade.
VOICEOVER::7/10
As with the general sound effects, nothing special. The female narration evokes rememberances of Judy Dench's narration in The Chronicles of Riddick, and Kratos himself is little less than a growly bowl of anger and disdain. Aside from a rather standout [and onetime] performance by the voice actor for Hades, it seems that all the voice staff for this game are upper-tier amateurs. Doesn't hurt much, just doesn't really help much, either.
REPLAY VALUE::4/10
I must say that once I had managed to trog all the way through this steaming pile, I was very happy with all the unlockables that popped up. From the main menu when I first started, there was no indication of a selection of unlockables, so I was well and truly pleasantly surprised when I was taken directly to a screen with loads of goodies proceeding the credits. There was a [atypically] enjoyable making of featurette, a character design featurette, trailers, a featurette regarding deleted levels and demo level designs, a 3D room full of monsters that were cut from the game [but seeing as you cannot control the camera, I didn't get to scrutinize them as thoroughly as I would have liked], a teaser about Kratos' brother [which was actually really intriguing, and it made me wonder if his brother would fit into GoW II somewhere, or if he was just a scrapped idea...], and a collection of ten challenge rooms [where you go through different trials based on different conditions and goals for the pride of Greece], and even a God Mode. It was very cool. There were also several options that were grayed out, with a menu indication that they would be unlocked upon completion of God Mode. For literally half a minute, I was energized and motivated to complete the game again on God Mode just to unlock these four remaining treats, and then I slapped myself in the face for being so styoopid. I didn't want to go through that inferno of undulating shit tentacles trying to drag me to the underworld again! Especially if it was supposed to be ultra-hard, where you actually NEED things like block, dodge, rush, and a cohesive camera. Not to mention that beating it on hard already opened abot then things, and God Mode would only unlock an additional four? Nice try, GoW...you almost had me. But then I had to remember that you suck, and that I don't want to play you again.
ART DIRECTION [CHARACTERS AND ENEMIES]::9/10
I must say that this is another area where the game really shines. The design for Kratos really makes the brutality of his character come across well, and all of the monsters are well conceived. Of course, monster coolness is pre-included in any Greek Mythology adventure; I mean, how can you knock minotaurs, centaurs, harpies, sirens, gorgons, undead skeletons, cyclopes, Cerberi, etc., etc.? What was really cool about the design of these particular iterations of those monsters is the edgy rock-contempo style in which they are conceived. Greek Mythology is so pervasive a thing in the hearts and minds of the whole world that everyone knows what a cyclops is and what it looks like. Same with a minotaur, and Medusa. SCE Santa Monica picked up on this and took it into a different direction: rather than stick with traditional aspects for these things, they simply implied to the player who they were fighting. The in-game Cerberus does not look like anything that I personally would have envisioned, but because it is down on all fours and has three heads, I know that that is what it is supposed to be. With this approach, all of the monsters have their own personal identities and menace, and you can tell them from a hundred yards off...it's a pretty cool thing that they did there. Although, as mentioned in the gameplay section, there isn't enough variety between the monsters themselves and their cousins. Every creature has the exact same attire, height, speed, etc., etc. I wasn't aware that the ancient Greeks had access to Spaarti Cloning Cylinders, but it's apparently something I'll have to look into now. It doesn't help the designs that you will see each and every one of them literally hundreds of times.
I already mentioned Kratos with the monsters, but he and the other human designs should be addressed, as well, for with the homo superior, it is a mixed bag. Kratos being almost entirely nude [and therefore unprotected] really drives the point home how violent a being he is. You see many other fully armored soldiers meet extremely grisly ends along this adventure, but Kratos fears not. Somehow, the lack of any armor impresses upon the player how personal and up close Kratos likes his revenge to be. The added back-story of having the ashes of his family permanently bonded to his flesh for his sin of murdering them is another little bit you wouldn't be able to see had his design been of a more standard Spartan hoplite fare. The Ghost of Sparta seems exactly that. The other humes aren't as well fleshed out, however. The aforementioned soldiers are all wearing the exact same armor, there isn't even a captain or commander version of any of them – which just makes them all feel totally inconsequential to the action. When the environment seems more alive than its inhabitants, something has gone awry. The depiction of women in the game is odd, as well. There is absolutely no reason for the Athenian Oracle to have her tits hanging and flopping about for the world to see, covered only by a thin transparent veil of cloth. The septuagenarian Oracle in the town where Kratos defiled the Athenian Temple did not care to show the world the race to the floor being held between her wrinkled left and right boobs; does she think herself superior, or something? The only other women you see are either fleeing in terror in full moomoo toga, or lying in the buff [and in total supplication] upon Kratos' bed impatiently awaiting another romp with his apparently bifurcated johnson. I understand the nudity in the monsters, but in the general depiction of women? Unnecessary.
ART DIRECTION [ENVIRONMENT]::10/10
Possibly the greatest thing about this game. Because of the absolutely stunning design choices here, I not only felt that I was actually in Ancient Greece, but also that I was in a tale of epic scope tantamount to the existing Grecian legends of old. It felt as big as the Trojan War, or the trials of Hercules. Balancing upon the masts of a naval fleet being decimated by the Hydra was truly a sight to behold, as was the long shot of the Titan Kronos bearing the entire Temple of Pandora [Cliffs of Madness and all] upon leving the Desert of Lost Souls. And then, you get to see it in motion from several breathtaking vantage points within that level itself. As I had stated before, the scope and grandeur imparted by the scenic design and execution belied a power I was not aware the humble PS2 possessed. Nothing on the original XBOX looked this good. Absolutely nothing bad I can say about it, period.
GAME DESIGN [MOVELIST, WEAPONS, ETC.]::7/10
As previously stated, these are adequate enough. Of course, we are talking Greek Mythology so a lot of this stuff is already built in. The gorgon head spewing a stoning gaze upon enemies, Poseidon's trident [which allows the bearer to breathe underwater indefinately], and even Zeus' thunderbolts [which are your only true ranged weapon] round everything out. Poseidon's Rage is a nice local area damage diffuser, while the Blade of Artemis is just your standard big damage with the punishment of slow movement weapon. The army of Hades summons undead spirits to vape your enemies, and is probably the most powerful thing in your arsenal. The concept of the newly invented Blades of Chaos work better than anything else, however...which is the main problem with the weapons. Nothing else really has any value: Poseidon's Rage is quite useful in the introductory level...and nowhere else. It seemed to me that, save for the persistent necessity of Zeus' Fury [thunderbolts], all of the new acquisitions only had inherent purpose when you first acquire them. Poseidon's Trident is especially bad about this, as not only will you do an annoying amount of swimming in the Temple of Pandora, but it appears that Kratos didn't know how to swim before he received it. Couldn't we have had a swimming mechanic that included a breath meter that, upon the bestowal of the Trident, could simply disappear? Have it add an underwater dash, as well, rather than being automatic the first time you jump in the water...that would have made the player appreciate it more, rather than saying, “Oh, I can go into water now...forever...and swim like a fish. Neat, maybe this will open up new opportunities for level design.” And then finding that it was not neat, and that it did not open new opportunities for level design. At the end when Pandora's Box made me giantish, I was upset when I was stripped of the Blades of Chaos. True, it's cool to wield a 200-foot long sword that had been architecturally designed as a bridge, but it didn't have the range, effectiveness, or even the simple satisfying feel of the weapons I had learned to use over the course of the adventure. Shame, really.
GAME DESIGN [LEVELS]::2/10
Wow. Bad platforming mechanics in bad levels...this is really special, here. While the levels look brilliant, and provide serious ambiance, they kill themselves with their own drudgery. Every section of every level doesn't feel like it is driving you towards a certain end, but rather it maintains a perpetual feeling of, “Okay, I'm doing this now.” There is a point when you are running down a road in Athens towards the start of the game, and you finally hit this roadblock. Once the roadblock is hit, you realize that you've been running down a street dispatching archers for a solid scale quarter mile...and for what? So you can destroy the roadblock and move on to the next gimmick. You will also be going back and forth through the levels endlessly...of all the times I had to put the game down for a little while, it was most often because running back and forth through an already-cleared-out level was actually putting me to sleep. No, literally, it was making me drowsy. The Temple of Pandora and the Cliffs of Madness were particularly bad about this. Bad collision detection made several of the platforming layouts play as hellishly as anything than I could imagine, and the strangely placed checkpoints sometimes left me befuddled. But, by far, the worst thing about the levels was the camera placement and movement. As mentioned, Exploratory Platforming is not, in actuality, entertaining.
GAME DESIGN [PUZZLES]::9/10
Another area where God of War is much better than average. The Sphinx asked of Oedipus, the liminal character who bridged the gap between old Grecian Religions and the New Olympian Pantehon [in fact, she asked this riddle of all travelers on the way to Thebes], the well-known riddle. The metaphorical answer allowed him to pass on, but a wrong answer would have meant his death. He answered correctly, and was allowed to continue along the road [to fuck his mother and murder his father, incidentally]; the Sphinx devoured herself [some tellings have her casting her own self from a high rock]. This has always typified the nation of Greece to me: a conclave of imperiled thinkers. You always had to be sharp to survive a Greek Myth, whether you were powerful or not. Many of the heroic characters were both, but the necessary trait for all was a quick mind at punishment of hideous death. God of War manages to recreate that feeling within the player with the bevy of wonderful puzzles that break up the action. An early puzzle required me to lure a minotaur onto a floor switch, stone them with the gorgon's head, and then run to the other side of the room and under the giant gate [that had been lifted by the switch] before the minotaur had freed himself from his rocky prison. It took a moment to figure out, and then took another moment to figure out the exact placing for the technique to work. Another puzzle later on required the activation of three switches to open a door. At the far end of the plaza, a timed switch would release the vertical bars, while another timed switch right next to the door would release the horizontal impediments. There was a cracked area on the floor which was obviously supposed to be broken by something. Right above the door was a hill with a crane atop it, already rigged with a gigantic block. The controls would rotate the crane itself, and lift/drop the lashed stone. There was also a large moveable statue on the lower level next to the door. I pulled the statue onto the switch nearest the door [thus negating its need to be timed], ran back over the floating platforms to the farther switch, and made a daring dash back to the door...only to find that, although I had made it in time, the door was not fully open. I sorted out that the crane needed to drop its load onto the cracked floor, which revealed yet another switch, this time pressure sensitive that opened the door completely. The stone didn't drop that far, so I had to move the statue through the hole to cover that switch, rotate the crane to drop its load onto the nearer timed switch, and then platform back to the farther switch, activate it, and platform back under a time limit. All of this just to open a door. And I felt good about figuring it out, as well. Not that this or any other puzzles in the game strain credulity or resolvability, but the game throws you no bones at all when it comes time to scratch the old noggin. Each puzzle that was solved was satisfying in its own right, and each puzzle was very well thought out from beginning to end, without being too hard to solve without assistance from gamefaqs. The only reason this didn't get a ten out of ten is because there was a little too much “Go find key X to insert into lock Y to open door Z,” going on.
Conclusion:
This game would have been thoroughly enjoyable had it not been for the nagging and relentless flaws seeping out of every crack of it; although it is possible that my built-up expectations contributed to that perception. I was expecting the game to be almost perfect, and found that there were only a few touches that made it stand out from the crowd. Even the oh-look-here-we-are-between-levels-let's-have-a-short-cinematic-revealing-a-little-more-of-Kratos'-mysterious-past was far below average. I may also have waited too long and am now spoiled by next-gen games being so...whatever they are [although I still can't believe this came out after the XBOX...and further still can't believe that GoW II is supposed to be even more impressive]. The things about this game that make it so excellent are the same things that shine a microscope on the mistakes, which are neither scant nor insignificant. The game is NOT the jewel it is professed to be, and is, in fact, dangerously close to being a major piece of shit. As it is, it's really only a minor piece of shit. But even that realization is not enough to keep me from being pissed off about it, and that is Sony's and GoW's fault for lying to me [and the rest of the gaming population's for being so fucking miserably STUPID]. I just feel like I've been hoodwinked, and that always twists my dick the wrong way.
The Sphinx is also said to have told another riddle: “There are two sisters...one gives birth to the other, and she, in turn, gives birth to the first.” The answer is a grammatical metaphor, Night and Day [both of the words for Night and Day in the original Greek are feminine]. That is the difference between what this game was made out to be and what it is. Don't waste your money folks...and unless you are really desperate to fill your Gamefly Q with something different, don't even waste your time...this the beautiful yet neurotic mortal babe that even Zeus wouldn't fuck.
