return void;

Okay, so I’m more than halfway through the game at this point; I currently have only 6 levels left (I’ve just started Poseidon’s Challenge). Now is a good time to give a review for the Playstation 2 game God of War.

Let me just start by saying that the first level to this game is hands down about the best first levels ever. They drop you 3 weeks prior to the intro movie on a boat being attacked by hordes of the undead. You are Kratos, legendary Spartan who is more than capable of dispatching the undead with his trusty Blades of Chaos. Ultimately, the first level has you defeat some fairly nasty leviathan-style monsters. The level has this very fluid interactive feel to it. You have to open a hatch and crawl down in the underbelly of the boat to fight one of the leviathans. Then you have to find your way around the rubble to the next ship to do the same. Along the way, you have to climb rope ladders (fending off enemies), solve (fairly simple) push-block puzzles, walk beams and climb masts to destroy the mother leviathan.

Whew, that really set the mood of the game. The game is a third-person style action game with plenty of hack and slash and a touch of puzzle solving. Fear not though, the puzzles in this game are nothing like the atrocious puzzles in Legacy of Kain. They can usually be solved by understanding 1 simple rule of thumb: push/pull blocks or other objects around to step onto, hold a switch or destroy a door. For example, when you first enter the Temple of the Oracle, you have to drag some statues in front of 2 holes in the walls to prevent Harpies (note the spelling) from flying through.

The camera is probably one of the most improved action game features. A problem with some games is that the camera is difficult to place it where you want it. MGS for example has this birds-eye camera that gives you minor control as well as a stationary first-person camera. The Ratchet & Clank games let you control the position with the left analog stick. God of War (GoW) controls the camera for you. At first this seemed like it would annoy me until I’m blind with frustration. After about 7 hours of gameplay (so far), the camera has yet to be a problem. They always seem to keep the camera exactly where you want it. If you’re on a cliff, it has uses side-scrolling perspective. If you’re in a narrow hallway and there will be no enemies up ahead, then it may be in front of your character, otherwise it will be behind and slightly elevated. My favorite was the spiral staircase view; it trails you by going down the center of the stairwell rather than trying to follow you leaving the previous flight constantly obstructing your view.

The action is very fast pased. Being locked into a room full of Meduas can be extremely frustrating because sometimes it seems as if I cannot do enough damage fast enough. Fighting Ogres can be difficult because of their massive attack radius (they can also take a serious beating). A fun feature that I haven’t really seen since Mortal Kombat was the finisher mini-game. When you weaken an enemy enough where you can finish them, a circle appears above their head. This allows you to play the mini-game that finishes the enemy immediately; this also makes Kratos invincible while he performs the move.

So you’re probably wondering what I mean by mini-game. In GoW, there are many times where button combinations need to be performed in order to complete a task. For example, opening doors requires you to tap R2 while Kratos tries to lift the door. Sometimes (scaling walls and ropes), you have to shake off enemies with the left analog stick; the same technique is used to remove Medusa’s curse. This provides some entertainment while you scale through caverns while fending off hordes of the undead.

The game also incorporates skills that can be leveled up. By killing enemies and opening certain chests, you can collect red orbs. These red orbs are used to level up your skills. Once you’ve collected enough red orbs, your Omega meter goes up another level. This has no meaning that I’ve found yet. Red orbs can be spent directly towards skills. This is a fun way of obtaining new moves and powering up without forcing yourself to hunt down challenges like in most RPGs.

Okay, now here comes the gripes; the list is short and mostly trivia complaints. First, the saving can be frustrating. You have to save at designated save points, but if you die, you can continue from the last checkpoint. Checkpoints happen automatically and usually when you complete a task or begin a new one. This means you rarely have to do lots of replay if you die frequently. This checkpoint system is great and I’m glad they picked up on it from games like Sonic the Hedgehog. Problem is, it should perform automatic saving. It would be great if I could turn the game off when ever I feel like it like I can in Gran Turismo and Ratchet & Clank. Trying to complete a difficult mission so you can save and go to bed is really annoying.

The blocking system is sort of annoying as well. You have to fight Minotaurs early on, but unless you level up your Blades of Chaos very quickly, you are likely to take a beating if you don’t properly evade. Blocking works much better once you’ve reached level 5 (max) Blades of Chaos, but that’s just annoying. In fact, unless I read a FAQ, I’m not likely to figure out how to max out my BoC that early on (there are apparently some glitches that help).

Lastly, I hate the title screen. It’s painful to look at and also requires an Advil just to glance at. The right side of the screen is the front-left side of Kratos’s mug. The rest of the screen is the flowing orange-red fire. Its badly animated and moves quickly. To make matters worse, the menu is plain white text that you can scroll (not visually) through. My eyes hurt just thinking about it.

All in all GoW is an amazing game and deserves all of the credit bestowed upon it by every critic. The story is actually not boring unlike most action games. The main thing that shocked me is that GoW pushes the M rating farther than GTA. In fact, since the Hot Coffee scandal was not directly part of the game as unavoidable content, I would say GTA is trumpted by GoW in the shocking department. There is extremely graphic violence such as decapitation and many many deaths are depicted and animated (in the movie sequences). To top it off, nearly every woman Kratos encounters has a problem with wearing a shirt. After the first level, there are animated boobs in the movie sequence leading to the second level. The Oracle herself wears this lacy top that is very see-through and very emphasized. I would not recommend this game to anyone under 17.

Kudos Sony for making another outstanding game. My rating (of 10): 10