God of War Review

One of the main reasons I bought a PS3 was to play the God of War Collection (the other reasons being God of War III and Uncharted and Uncharted 2). I had always wanted to play the first 2 games in the series, and when I heard that this remastered collection was going to be released on 1 disc and for only $40, I jumped all over it. I got the game about a week after it was released (November 17, I think) and chipped away at the first game until finally finishing it last week at some point. For the most part, it was a ton of fun.

I really appreciate a simple story (especially in video games), and this game has got one. ***Story spoilers follow*** It's basically a revenge tale. Kratos is a Spartan super-soldier (kind of like the guys in 300, I suppose). He gets overwhelmed in a certain battle and as he is about to die, cries out to the gods to save him. Ares comes to his aid, sparing his life, but forcing Kratos into servitude for eternity (I think). Eventually, Ares tricks Kratos into killing his own family, which would naturally piss off anyone. Kratos then vows to find Ares and kill him for what he did. This is also the reason that Kratos has that strange white skin: it's the ashes of his wife and son that become plastered onto his body. Pretty cool. So, basically, the game is a quest to find Ares and kill him. ***

The game is a decent length. It's not so lengthy that it gets boring, and not so short that it leaves you wanting more. You have the goal from the beginning of finding Pandora's Box, which one needs to kill a god. You run around Athens for a couple hours until you find an Oracle, who tells you where the box is, which leads to my favorite (and longest) section of the game: Pandora's Temple. This temple is strapped to the back of a Titan that roams the desert aimlessly. I just thought this was awesome and kept thinking about that from time to time whenever I was inside (or sometimes climbing around outside) the temple. This place is HUGE, and takes up about 60% of the game, which is an interesting change and a big contrast to games like Zelda, where one usually has to go through 5 or 6 temples. I admit that it is broken up a little bit into smaller sections that look slightly different, but you're in the same place the whole time and I just really liked that. Don't mistake my comments here as Zelda-bashing, because I love all those games, too, but this was just a nice change. After you retrieve the Box, you get sent into Hades, have to fight your way out, then finally get a shot at Ares. I'd say the whole game took about 10 hours total. It's just a guess, but probably a good one. And it's fine with me. I've heard the second one is longer.

I'd give props to the level designer of this game. There were multiple times when I was going through an area and saw something and wondered if I could get there or interact with something and sure enough, the levels are designed so that often you'll circle back to an area without really knowing that you're doing so, so you'll have a chance to get everything. On the same note, the camera is different than I'm used to. I guess what I'm "used to" is Ninja Gaiden, where you click the right trigger to get the camera to center right behind you. In this game, though, you have NO control over the camera. You can't even go into first-person view if you felt so inclined. It's strange and takes some getting used to, but the game is designed so that you don't really need to control the camera. It follows you and pretty much keeps you in the center of the screen the whole time. For the most part it works, but sometimes it got a little bit frustrating while trying to jump around on platforms. Every so often, the view will change when you're in the middle of a jump, so you have to pay attention and rotate the stick a little bit to adjust your aim so you'll land on a platform and not jump off of the Temple that's on top of a Titan.

Combat is fast and fun. For the most part, I found a few combos that work and stuck with them. Once you upgrade the Blades to level 5, there's one move that I did CONSTANTLY because it was super powerful and also knocked guys off their feet and sometimes off of cliffs. I stuck to the Blades of Chaos (the default weapon) and never used the Blade of Artemis (big broadsword type weapon).

Quick time events play a part in this game, but I find them to be far less annoying here than in other games like Resident Evil. I guess because here if you fail a QTE, you just get knocked to the ground and you can try again. In RE games, you'll die if you fail a QTE. And in this game, except for bosses, you don't even have to use those QTE finishing moves. Often times you'll want to, though, just because of the satisfying gore factor and some enemies will give you different stuff depending on how you kill them (for instance, killing a Gorgon regularly will just net you red orbs (money), but executing them with a QTE will give blue orbs (magic)).

Speaking of magic, they're pretty awesome and varied also, tho I didn't use them too much. There are 4....the lightning attack that hits everyone on the screen within a certain proximity to you, the Medusa glare that turns guys to stone, the thunderbolts which you can throw, and summoning Hades' Army to come destroy everything on the screen (by far the best one, haha).

I can't really think of anything else right now, but I'm hungry so maybe I'll amend this later on after I eat. The verdict right now is that it was a blast and I'm looking forward to playing the second one pretty soon.