Game Review: God of War (PS2)

Brace yourselves for a tour through Bile-town, as I have some things to get off my chest after playing through God of War. Let's just begin with saying that an alternate title could have been "Overrated and overhyped". Yet, I have to say that GoW is by no means a bad game. But it isn't great either. It's a good game, despite all the horrible things I am about to write about it.



Gameplay and controls:

To start with the controls, I have to say they are fairly responsive and tight. They do what they're supposed to do and little more. Good. One problem I have is that Kratos isn't the gaming worlds' speediest character created and in large battles this can become a serious problem, especially when savaged by three large swamp trolls at the same time.
The combo-system is also fairly intuitive and suitably brutal. There is one combo in which you launch your enemy into the air, jump after him, smack him down to the ground and if you time things well, you can finish off with what I like to call the Mighty Curb-stomp of Doom and send your enemies packing into Hades American History X-style. Very satisfying if hard to pull off.
Jumping is done with the X-button, and Kratos can of course pull off the the gravity defying double-jump, like a Spartan Super Mario-relative. The Circle-button houses the grab-attack, which with larger baddies starts a quick-time button-matching sequence but with smaller ones leads to instant death. Hence why it is sometimes referred to as the "Fuck you"-button. Square and Triangle are quick and heavy attacks with the Chaos Blades respectively. Here's the only problem I find with the controls: the quick attack is bloody useless unless you are facing off against enemies that can only be killed by a certain combo. The power difference is too great! But as said, the combo-system is fairly intuitive and if you string along a long enough rack of merciless and bloody combos, the game rewards you with a load of red experience orbs, which can be used to increase the power of your weapons and magic. Sweet deal, all in all.
There is also a large segment in the middle of the game which is spent underwater, and the controls underwater are fine. They do their job without becoming sloppy, something common in many games (Super Mario 64 was ridiculously hard as soon as you got underwater, as was Zelda: Ocarina of Time.).

That's all I have on controls. Now for the actual gameplay.

I mentioned quick-time button-matching sequences in the controls, and I have to say, that for once, the game that started a shitty fad at least did it well. As mentioned, bigger baddies and bosses have these sequences linked to them at certain times. Pull them off and you perform massive damage. You're not punished too heavily for cocking them up, a clear bonus. In a way, they become interactive cut-scenes. You're always doing SOMETHING in God of War. Putting down the controller is not an option.
And this is a little bit of a problem at times. You might need a pause (loo-break, for example) but the game doesn't offer one unless you're right next to a save-station. True, the larger puzzles are lulls in the rhythm, but the lulls are there to give you some respite to think about how to solve the puzzle, move on and kill more baddies.
Also, it gives you the feeling that you're not playing an action adventure. It feels like I'm playing a brawler on rails, with some puzzles of varying levels of unfair thrown in at intervals. Yes, on rails. The plot-track is not only marked out by a red thread, but by a rail-road track painted day-glow red the length and width of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
The combat is visceral and satisfying enough, but it doesn't feel like I'm accomplishing anything apart from collecting various historical treasures and murdering tons of people (civilians and baddies). I blame this on there only being three actual bosses in the game, counting the final boss (which is a, lo and behold, tiered boss-fight!). Yes, they are humongous, but still; there are too few of them to make the game feel like I'm accomplishing anything until I've actually beaten the final boss. Maybe it is what Sony Entertainment aimed for, but it doesn't fly well with me.

What about the puzzles then? Well, most of them require very little in the way of thinking, whilst others are completely fucked-up out of context, like the Greek letter cube puzzle in the Architect's Tomb. We also have some pure skill-based puzzles, in which success is dependent on how well you time your button clicks and how well you know your moves. Most make sense and are reasonable enough to get through on the first go, depending on how much of a klutz you are. Apart from one, which I'm getting to in a bit.

I also need to mention that GoW plays entirely with a fixed camera. You can't control it. Most of the time, say 95%, it performs outstandingly well. It does exactly what it's supposed to do; gives you the best viewing angle and still manages to present the game in a way to make it look good, artistically speaking. It just works. Apart from a few instances, which are related to the aforementioned unfair puzzles.
Let me just say that none of these puzzles I'm going to mention are exceptionally bad ideas in and of themselves, but combined with a fixed camera, they leave you wondering whether the people of Sony Entertainment suffered from sudden, collective brain haemorrhage.

The first puzzle I will tear a new one is located fairly early on in the game, a few hours, not more. It involves Kratos having to jump around like a chimp, saving the neck of the Oracle of Athens before she plummets to the ground and becomes the world's largest pizza. The problem? It's basically a timed jumping puzzle with fixed camera. You have 66 seconds to get through the course and as with most things GoW, you fuck up, you're dead. Start over. Trust me, it is not fun to accidentially loose your grip around a ledge, five seconds from the end, when you've already done the segment 4 times already. It does not endear me to the game in the slightest! Still, the puzzle is in and of itself not a deal-breaker. Just fucking annoying.

The second puzzle is located in the Challenge of Poseidon and is just plain bad. The fixed camera tries its best to save this, but it can't. Basically, you find yourself in an underwater corridor, viewed from the side, in which there is a fast moving wall dragged along the ground on a chain a intervals. Get caught by the wall, you die and have to start over. There are two ditches in the corridor floor in which you can hide whilst the wall passes over you, but you have to reach them first. I know I said that the underwater control were fair enough, but I didn't say they lent themselves well to precise underwater manoeuvring, even less to precise and fast underwater manoeuvring. The controls don't lend themselves at all to this.
The only way to get through this puzzle is through sheer bloody minded repetition. I went through this in pure trial and error 30 fucking times! Yes, I counted. This is not good game design!! It's just annoying and there to raise my blood pressure. Come to think of it; it does make me connect better with Kratos as a character... But still!

The third puzzle I want to rivet and the one that made me put down the controller and start playing Ookami instead was one three quarters of the way through the game, in the Challenge of Hades. You know that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indiana Jones has to run away from a huge stone ball? Well, this puzzle is similar, but more bullshitty. Instead of running away, you have to run towards, and instead of one, we have many, MANY balls rolling towards you, in three files. And the balls are on fire. Now, if you thought that all you have to do is play dodge-ball with the Great Balls of Fire and get to the other end of the corridor: WRONG!
That's what I thought too. Turns out, you have to figure out which door is the exit from the corridor out of 8 plain looking doors, which you can't get a good look at to see differences, as the camera doesn't play that game. And you still have to dodge balls of fire.
So, dodging flamey balls of crushing and death and finding a door. Sounds slinky enough, eh? Do I have to mention that the opening of doors in GoW is done through intense R2-button mashing? R2 is not a good button for mashing!
My poor fingers…

Graphics and sound:

Now, GoW is a PlayStation 2 exclusive. Makes sense, created as it was by Sony Entertainment America. And boy howdy have they pushed the ageing lady to her limits. So, the game isn't that long and the bosses are few and far between, but hey! they look awesome, and the world in which this wholesale slaughter takes place is grittier than grit itself. The colours are very washed out, but it doesn't lack colour for that. It doesn't look as if viewed through a used coffee-filter, like most modern games aiming for grit and realism. Also, as you run around on the streets of ancient Athens, you are treated to some modern takes on Doric architecture and that's never bad.

Sound is decent: slashing sounds and satisfying thuds when you thwack your enemies over the head. A lot of semi-sexual grunting on behalf of Kratos, but I can put that aside when the voice-acting that does take place is well performed. I do however have a gripe with that the voice-over in the cut scenes, although having a pleasant enough voice, does mangle some Greek words with "American" pronunciation and as there is no subtitles you can miss information about the plot if you don't pay the aforementioned 100% attention. But who gives a damn about story in God of War?

Story:

Well, I do. And the plot is, despite its mythological tones, very generic when you start picking away at it. It isn't something we already have seen in every game ever made, apart from that there is no princess in the castle at the end. There's an angry War God waiting to pwn your ass if you don't watch it.
It's a revenge story, simply put. Kratos is the unwilling tool of gods, gods acting so far out of the original context that I want to do horrible things to the developers, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The reason we let Sone Entertainment get away with this is because Kratos as a main character is the epitome of anti-heroism. He's a generally unlikeable fuck-bend! He's a bloodthirsty, raging psycho, who's sheer horribleness becomes some sort of anti-charisma that draws me in like a magnet. I don't sympathise with him the slightest, yet still I feel something other than disgust for the tormented Spartan. He's not very deep, but he still manages to be complex, if that makes any sense. I find myself grudgingly liking the genocidal maniac. Like falling in love with Hitler. Very very strange.

Also, as I said, the game is set in ancient Greece. Being designed as it is by history-less Yanks (Sorry Americans, but amongst people who count their countries histories in millennia, you have nothing!), it does to Greek mythology what I called the Mighty Curb-stomp of Doom. It takes the rich mythology out in the street, goes American History X on it and picks up the brain-matter and rearranges it in patterns that suit the design team and not history-nerds like yours truly. To mention one thing: what the hell is Poseidon's Trident doing the Temple of Pandora? I think Poseidon needs it for more urgent business! Secondly, why would Pallas Athena propose to help a Spartan? Spartans primarily worshipped Ares, the titular God of War, whilst the Athenians worshipped Pallas Athena (No shit, Sherlock!?) and the two fractions were at war with each other for prolonged lengths of time.
I'm gonna go off on a generally whiny tangent here and complain about how primarily American games developers treat Old World mythology as a pick and mix bag of ideas for their games, whenever they run out of imagination. Stop doing it! I have seen my own cultural and mythological heritage, the Vikings and the Aesir sagas, savaged so many times by so many different games developers it isn't even funny anymore. If you're going to use them, at least TRY to respect the source material. Look at Richard Wagner. His Das Ring der Niebelungen pulled heavily from Viking sagas, but he created something decidedly German (and fucked up in parts) by respecting the sources. Is that's so damn hard, you cheezeburger inhaling Yanks!?

I feel better now. Sorry.

Summary:

So, is God of War a good game. Yes, it is. If you look past the three puzzles I lambasted, the slightly unbalanced attacks and the whole-hearted stomp it takes on Greek myth, the game has tight battles, that require you to create attack patterns with enemy priorities and tactics as if you had a brain, fairly difficult puzzles and very nice voice acting, when it does take place.
The game DID start the recent trend/plague of quick-time button-matching sequences, but they are integrated into gameplay and work really well, like interactive cut-scenes.
The story feels a bit truncated, despite its finality, which makes me wonder if Sony Entertainment already had GoW 2 planned out when they started making this game.

Also, the bonus features you unlock once you beat the game are very neat indeed. Why don't more games do this, apart from the generic "New Game +" feature? Oh wait, that's because they filled the PS2 DVD with an actual game!