God of War for PlayStation 2

Ever since Halo 2 dropped, one of my friends laughed, "You know, I never play my PS2 anymore." Even when Gran Tourismo 4 dropped, he played it for a while and jumped back on his Xbox to battle on Fight Night, Halo 2, or other Xbox Live games. Basically, PS2 wasn't releasing much in the way of exclusive games that warranted him dusting off his PS2 and putting aside his Xbox….UNTIL NOW!

God Of War hits the gaming scene in a surprisingly hard way. Appealing to action/adventure fans all over, God Of War is your classic style action/adventure game much like an ancient Greek version of Onimusha. The real difference is that God Of War is an epic game apparent from the first battle of the game. The graphics will blow you away, the storyline will captivate you, the music will transform you, and the bosses will make you want to run away! This game is so utterly violent, gripping, and drop dead fun that you will put down Halo 2, Gran Tourismo 4, Everquest 2, and anything else you have just to enjoy the utter chaos, the sick combos, and the gorgeous environments that easily make this game the best in YEARS!

Ok, so the premise of this game is that you're a Spartan general, Kratos, who gave his life to the Greek Gods in a last ditch effort to save himself from defeat on the field of battle. In doing so, he became the personal assassin of the Gods forced to do their bidding and dirty work. Slaughtering the guilty and innocent with no remorse, Kratos will encounter minotaurs, titans, centaurs, ogres, sirens, undead, and more in his quest to save himself from an existence he regrets.

GRAPHICS

When you first begin playing this game, the first level really doesn't do anything spectacular graphically until you begin fighting the hydra monster! First thing you say is, "This thing is HUGE." Well, it only gets better, as you progress through the game, the animation during the gameplay will astound you and the bosses you encounter will get bigger and bigger and meaner. Lets just say when you first see Ares in the background, you'll pee in your pants watching him destroy a massive army on the battle field. As in Onimusha, the camera usually only gives you one view from behind your hero but it pans around and follows based on Kratos' position. Sometimes this would become a problem in the Onimusha games but the camera feels a slight bit more free in God Of War. Needless to say, most of the time you won't be worried about the camera angle. There are moments when you wish you had some control of the view but they are few and far between.

SOUND

God of War thankfully does not suffer from poor sound production. The sound effects come through powerfully and loud. The explosions will rock your speakers. The screech or roar of the mystical beasts will chill or deafen you. The voice acting for your hero (who truly sounds butch with an astonishingly deep voice that really fits the character's persona) and others don't seem out of place and though overly dramatic at times, it doesn't steal the thunder from your experience at anytime. The music has an epic classical feel and won't leave you listening to techno or rock music in a game based on an era long before any of that existed. The music is just as integral in the storyline as the characters and dialogue itself. Thankfully, the same tune won't play every time you battle a boss or enter a battle. In fact, if it does, you'll barely notice because you'll be so involved in the gameplay to pay that much attention. Still, as you run from battle to battle, the dramatic music will envelope you and punctuate just the right moments when Ares is first seen or puzzles are solved and so forth. The music enhances the mood, it doesn't steal the show…as it should.

GAMEPLAY

Other game developers could learn a thing or two from the gameplay of God Of War. This game makes beating up and slaughtering scores of mythical beasts difficult (at first) to do yet simple to execute. The combos that can be executed get progressively more difficult but timely animation pauses or slow mo allow you to catch your breath for just a second or so. This reduces the difficulty from "pound your joystick" Ninja Gaiden-style to jump up and down "I can do killer combos". Don't sleep though. You will have to use a majority of the buttons on your PS2 pad to pull off the more beautiful combos. Even so, they aren't so difficult that they can't be pulled off by the time you finish the game. Also, as you battle furiously against these scores of foes, you'll be treated to moments where you can initial gruesome critical attacks. The circle button icon will appear over the head of a foe when near death and if pressed in time, Kratos will unleash devastating grabs, slashes, or blows that will rend your foe in two, behead them, ram a sword in their mouth, swing and slam them, or a number of other gruesome fates. This is not only done against normal foes. With bosses, sometimes these cinematic combos are the ONLY way the defeat them. Once again the so-called combos are randomized and yet still simple enough to pull off if executed before time runs out. These unique opportunities usually only last for a few seconds.

When you aren't splattering the wall with the blood of your foes, you'll be solving puzzles like moving statues to cover holes in the walls where unlimited foes are pouring out of. These puzzles spice up the moments of Rambo-like blood lust that usually permeates through the gameplay. The gung-ho kill em all gamer will have to take a back seat and actually think to get through portions of this game. Destroy everything if you like, but you won't get far until come to your senses and figure out why all these beasts keep respawning.

Just like in the Onimusha series, you'll collect souls to power up the variety of weapons that Kratos will be granted with throughout the game. As you upgrade the weapons and magic, you'll gain more moves and make the overall effectiveness of the weapons better. The difference here is that you don't have to 'vacuum' the souls to you. They automatically come to you as you free them. This variety in the weapons and things you can do with them is what makes the replayability of this game more than your average action/adventure game. Because of the high fun factor in using the weapons, the fluidity of the combos, the ease at which you can wield them, and satisfaction of 200+ hit combos, this game has the same kind of replayability of a Contra or a Halo campaign or a Double Dragon.

Don't believe me yet? Well make this game the first one that you rent next time you go to the video store and you'll be hooked. The hours will melt by, your mouth will drop open over and over again, your thumbs will hurt from repeated combos, and your soul will crave more as you experience one of the most addictive action/adventure games this casual gamer has played in YEARS!