Mini-review: God of War (PS2)

Amazing graphics, cool concept, and some fun gameplay. So, what's wrong? After all the hype, I figured this would be one of the best games ever made. The demo was pretty fun, but not enough to make me want to run out and buy it. So, I GameFly'ed it and played it over the weekend. The graphics are amazing, some of the best I've seen on the PS2, the storyline is excellent, and there's some really cool stuff going on in it. It's just too bad that I had to trapse through so much bullshit to get there. Some of the levels are great, while some border on the Darkwatch style of "let's throw as much shit on the screen as we can and see what happens," and some are just so crappy they make Max Payne's "walking on bloodtrails" level look fun by comparison.

It wasn't the difficulty that I had issues with -- hell, I loved every hair pulling minute of Ninja Gaiden XB. Difficult and challenge are cool, unnecessary stupidity and frustration is not. The worst parts of the game was anything that involved precision or platforming -- such as an area where you have to walk along a series of beams while bladed fan-like structures are flying at you (and jumping straight in the air can end up having you not land where you jumped from originally) or the controller throwing frustration of trying to climb a spinning wall of spikes several levels high (the first go-around of that one was fine, the second was ass). I trudged through those saying out loud, "who thought this was fun?"

After beating the game, the unlocked special features were amazing, and it showed that the development studio really had an interest in making the game great from the concept down to the actual design. I just have a feeling they may have overreached a little. Not a bad game by any stretch, but some of the "not fun" and "this is so fucking dumb" parts kind of soured it. It plays very much like Ninja Gaiden in the Greek era, but just wasn't as fun. i'd have to say a 7.5/10. Highly recommended as a rental and maybe a purchase, but there just isn't much replay after beating it. I am waiting for a sequel though -- maybe they will get it right, as they were pretty damn close this time, just barely missing the mark in my opinion.