God of War II

The Good
God of War II continues its successful predecessor with a deep-less story, out of focus in Kratos himself's drama and focused on Kratos' revolution fighting the Gods. There is a really obvious improvement in other aspects of the game like graphics, FX, music and gameplay. God of War II reinvents the classic Beat 'em up genre which was a little dead and resurrects it as a new genre who influenced many other games of the same genre. Graphics are better, but just because the stages are majestic, everything is really, really big (maybe some Shadow of the colossus influence here), colossal than the previous game. There are new combos and movements are more dynamic. Everything's well harmonized with the music composed by Marino, Fish, Reagan and Velasco.

The game has evolved on its own concept, now the battles are more epic, moving away from the (sometimes) redundant minor battles which God of War I had, making it a special game for the player. Big bosses are all over the game, with less small battles and more epic battles. The replayability is now better with new unlockable mods once you've finished the main game.

The Bad
The player will miss some new enemies because they're (most of them) the same as before. Also, maybe because it's really funny, the game is short beside the new mods included. Many players will be a little bit disappointed when they try the game and notice that there are not many new movements for Kratos, not many new combos and nothing characteristic on this matter.

The Bottom Line
God Of War II is one of the best Beat 'em up games of this generation of platforms. Everything is apocalyptic and it will make any player who loves this kind of games to play it again just when he finishes it.

The Good
As giants drop like flies, and the inhabitants of Olympus are subject to unthinkable pain and suffering, gamers are treated to one of the most ferociously entertaining adventures to date. In God of War II, we learn that you should never underestimate the wrath of a fallen god. If you thought that Kratos had some issues before, just wait until you see how he reacts when he is stripped of his powers. With his intensified rage comes an influx of unforgettable moments.

The Bad
none, none

The Bottom Line
I continually found myself thinking that I had to play through the game again to see Kratos’ barbaric actions for a second time. The gameplay, which is greatly enhanced by Kratos’ angst, is a razor-sharp package that will put a grin on your face. The puzzles are more ingenious, the combos are more devastating, and the bosses fall even harder. God of War II will surely put a nefarious smile on your face, but the experience is humbled in a number of ways. The story lacks the big reveals of the first, and far too many enemy types are recycled. With this said, however, God of War II is impossible to put down, and easily one of the best games to date.

The Good
I didn't like this game, but before we start complaining, I am going to be fair and say what I did like about this title.

First of all: the story is fairly interesting for me because I was planning to learn more about ancient Greek and its gods. While not 100% historically accurate, seeing a character appear and hearing their name is enough information because the rest I can look up on Wikipedia. For all its blood and gore, God of War II does trigger me to learn something, even if it isn't teaching me directly. A good example is when I saw some guy on a mountain who was cursed by Zeus to be healed every night and be savagely eaten by a giant bird in the day. What is his story? Did it really go like that? Are there paintings based on this moment? Those are all questions this scene brought up in me, so I applaud the game for that.

I don't really believe in "games make children violent", which is something that people who have never played games yell around. If anything this game allows me to blow off steam by killing some enemies in a consequence-free environment, rather than getting arrested for rioting at some football match.

The game also requires a degree of skill which is important for games like this or else they turn into button-mashers (like Ninety-nine Nights). There is a large variety of enemies and they all have different attacks and moves, so you will have to adapt to those on the fly. There are the fairly standard soldiers, but in the middle of a fight with them a Minotaur can emerge from the ground and you suddenly have to stop chopping blindly to actually change to a hit&run tactic instead.

The game boasts some really nice visuals and just like Shadow of the Colossus it really delves into the graphical power of the Playstation 2. Especially the boss-fights tend to be huge and some of the environments are just as amazing (such as a group of gigantic horses created by a titan, where a platforming section took place). There was also an amazing flying section fairly early on where I rode on Pegasus.

The Bad
While the game is very entertaining when it focuses on combat, it just utterly and completely collapses when it tries to be a puzzle game. While most of them boil down to pushing blocks unto switches (I swear I am not going to reference Zelda in this review!), it is just irritating to be interrupted in the middle of an action-packed scene. The game is also rather backtracking-happy and while on the earlier mentioned mountain stage I was constantly walking in circles, constantly gathering new items that had me do the circle all over again.

The puzzles are also made worse by the fixed camera angles the game uses. Naturally my first instinct when faced with a puzzle is to look around the area for objects that could be related to the puzzle, but lacking a first-person looking mode this will only result in Kratos rolling around a bit. There was a puzzle early on where there was a dead body hanging next to some skeletons and the idea was that I had to drag this body to a switch, so it would keep it down while I entered through the gate. However, after cutting down the skeletons for points, I just didn't see the corpse because I couldn't take a closer look due to the camera.

The violence also quickly starts to grow dull and repetitive, see Kratos cutting the head of a three-headed dog once and you have seen it all. The insane amount of violence just started feeling childish to me after a while and it was kind of hard to explain to people when they walked into my room.

The story feels really odd to me, while I am interested in Greek mythology, Kratos as a character just perplexes me. He is the God of War at the start of the game, but decides to cheat and constantly help his favorite faction raids cities for no real reason. He then acts like he doesn't deserve getting his powers taken away and to top it off he becomes a whiny little cunt along the way too. There is nothing more unreasonable than claiming you are killing everybody, simply because the "Gods made you so", Kratos is literally incapable of taking any sort of responsibility and as a character he falls flat.

The Bottom Line
While God of War II would certainly be entertaining if it focused more on the fighting, it just cripples itself with needless puzzles that make me sigh deeply every time they break up my adrenaline trip and the camera angles that contribute to why these puzzles are bad. The poor story and constantly backtracking around the stages are what deals the killing blow to this game for me.

If you are a fan of this franchise then you can go ahead and buy this game because you will surely like this. If you aren't a fan yet, then it depends on whether or not you can handle some simplistic puzzles and low-quality puzzles in your action game and if you actually care about the story. If your answers were "yes" and "no" respectively, then go ahead and try this game, otherwise I can't recommend this title.