God of War - PlayStation 2

You know, it wasn't too long ago when I last reminisced over my all-time favorite action game for the PS2, Devil May Cry (the first one). I still remember playing the demo in a video game store before it came out - my jaw was on the ground. I remember the anxious feeling I had when I first bought the game and just couldn't wait to get home. At that time - that was the best action game ever and I never thought those feelings could be reproduced. In my mind NOTHING could best that game. The second one was pale in comparison (haven't played the third yet...actually picked GOW over DMC3) could there be a game other then DMC that could do the action genre justice? Enter God Of War. God of War takes the action genre and does everything right. The controls are extremely fluid and easy to learn, the story is engaging, it doesn't seem like a button mash-em (although you do have to rapidly press buttons sometimes... but only when it makes sense to do so), the magic and weapons are awesome, the boss battles are epic, the graphics are amazing - considering the aging PS2 hardware, the sound is spot-on, the camera isn't your enemy... I could go on and on. This game is very polished. It is very obvious that the developers spent an enormous amount of time making sure every facet of this game is perfect - and they nearly achieved that. The Graphics: Simply put, these are some of the best graphics you will see on the PS2. We are in a time now where the PS2 is starting to age a bit, but this game really does a great job of showing what the PS2 is capable of... and it's impressive! It's amazing how much can be packed on one screen and still remain fluid. The monsters are nicely detailed and the landscapes and architecture are jaw dropping to say the least. There is the occasional slight hiccup in the frame rate, but it's rare and when it does happen it's barely noticeable. Another thing worth mentioning is the camera. Unfortunately this game has a fixed camera angle, but fortunately the camera work is done extremely well! Rarely did I get annoyed because of the camera. The Sound: The sound is epic. The music featured in this game fits the atmosphere very well. I found myself completely immersed in this game thanks to the impressive sound effects, music and good voice acting. The voice acting in this game is definitely worth mention. The voice actors are very convincing most of the time. There is the occasional line that isn't delivered quite right, but for the most part the voice acting is top-notch. With the music and voice acting so amazing it's not surprising that all of the other environmental sound effects such as the clanking of swords are top-notch as well. The Controls The controls in this game are some of the best controls I've ever experienced. The action is extremely fluid and it's relatively easy to execute the moves that you're intending to. Each move performed goes seamlessly with each other move. You can go from beating the crap out of baddies on the ground, launch one up in the air, kick the crap out of them in mid air, come back down and grab another baddie - from here you can swing the baddie around via a chain (which has swords attached... which is attached to the baddie =) and hit others, then pull out Medusa's head, turn three or four more baddies into stone, shatter them, then one of the baddies might have a circle icon above his head... just hit circle while your near the baddie and you will unleash some true pain! Then you must finish him off by rapidly hitting circle and jamming your sword down his throat (often-times you have the option to hit a sequence of buttons that appear above the monsters head, if executed correctly you will unleash some REAL pain) In other words you can link together some truly amazing combos, and it's not too hard once you get the hang of it! You can string combos well into the 200+ range (it keeps count for ya). Also, there is a meter that goes up and once it's full you hit R3 and L3 simultaneously and all hell breaks loose! This is similar to the Devil Trigger mode in DMC. You can really start whoopin' up once that meter is full. Virtually every button on the dual-shock is used, which may sound daunting but the controls are so intuitive that the learning curve is relatively short. I could go on and on about the combat system, but I'll leave some to you for discovery. It's truly ingenious - nuff said. The Story: The story in this game is also done well. I am one that doesn't like to give away any spoilers what-so-ever, but in a nutshell you play as Kratos. You are sent to kill the God Of War. Initially you want to end your life, before you know it - you are saved from your suicide attempt and thrust into a flashback three weeks prior. You will learn a lot about our depressed anti-hero throughout the game, especially during the mid to later parts of the game. I am not going to spoil anything so you're just going to have to find out for yourself. The Cons There is very little in this game that I don't like. The camera although often perfect, will occasionally make the game a little tougher (quite rare though). The boss battles are so epic that I wish there were a few more. Some people say the puzzles are too easy, but I don't play an action game to rack my brain on a puzzle for hours, I like them the way they are because they break up the action a little bit without getting overly annoying. That's really about it! Conclusion This game is amazing. I paid full-price for this gem ($49.99) and I don't regret it at all. Games like this have lots of replay value in my opinion just because they're so darn fun to lose yourself in. There is lots of bonus material as well (mini-games, documentaries...etc). Some of it is unlocked for you right off the bat, other material you will just have to earn. You need to at least rent this game, but I believe that no game library is complete without it. The developers have hit just about every angle right in this game. Even in this short review I have failed to capture it's true magnificence... you will just have to play it to find out what I'm talking about.

The greek culture and the stories acient greeks came up with to understand their existence fascinates me. God of War completely builds itself around that train of thought ancient greeks left behind. The Minotaurs,Cyclops, Cerberus, Zues, Hades, Poseiden, Athena, Satyrs, etc... All these things in this game make it seem like this was a story told long ago and made into a videogame. This game and the upcoming God of War 2 which is released today will be the last great PS2 games to end the 6 year reign of the PS2. What is it that gives this game good Marks.....Lets talk about creativity, character and story wise. Kratos is a fictional character created to further the history of ancient greeks. He is a fierce spartan warrior that has sold his soul to ARES, the god war, to maintain his prideful right as the most ruthless warrior. As told by ancient greeks, the Gods were tricky and ruthless themselves, also playing and manipulating the lives of humans. Naturally the same happens with Kratos where he is tricked throughout one of his battles for ARES and kills his Family Accidentally. ARES felt it was the best thing for him to do to throw out any feelings Kratos had so that he can be the ultimate warrior. From here we have an epic adventure involving you fighting legendary creatures told in Greek culture to exact revenge against ARES and if need it be as far as all the gods. The Creatures are so uniquely designed in this game and scaled massively at times that you'd swear thats how they looked if the Fictional ancient greece were real. The story mends all of these creatures together to form an all new story that can be thrown in with the rest of ancient greek documents and stories. The famous tale of the PANDORA's BOX is thrown in to further story and help you exact your revenge when the time comes. Two of the best created creatures was HYDRA and ARES themselves. Both look menacing and evil as the titles and stories put behind them. The enemies you fight were created well but you end up fighting them repeatedly throughout the game. One Character i found that wasnt repeated quite often were the "Half Man/half Horse" creatures(Sorry forgot the Name), if anything you saw them at least 3 times in the game. Unfortunately their arent alot of spectacular bosses in the game considering the many gods and creatures that ancient grecians mentioned in stories. Gameplay was so simple and to the point. Controlling Kratos himself was with the Left analog stick, and the right analog stick were dodge moves. Combat was a matter of holding down some buttons and pressing others to form more combinations. As you leveled up, your blades of chaos and magic powers, you would get a list of even more button combinations to vary the combo ballet you would form. Many combos existed but the one thing that looked a tiny bit awkward, to me, is that the combos looked as if they could not link fluidly. Their would be this split second where you could tell the computer had to pause kratos to start another combo but nonetheless everything responded very quickly. I just thought a game like this would have everything link 2gether to look more graceful. It was no bid deal anyway. Boss Fights were very limited to the same combos that were given, but when given the chance to grab on to a boss or an enemy the game would engage to a mini game, similar to the dance dance games, were you would have to press the correct button that lighted on top of the enemy. What would happen after every press of the button is a spectacular midair move to cause more damage to the enemy. But I often felt i wasnt doin much to the enemy but hurting him till he gets dizzy so i could grab him and do the same minigame. It wasnt annoyin but i thought it could have been more frantic and more involved. Unfortunatly the same minigame system has been kept in GOD OF WAR 2. Overall everything is top notch. The things i mention are just small quirky things that i noticed along with other people. Puzzle wise, I found the game to be decently challenging and it did not need to be harder. Some people found the puzzle with the rotating spikes, in Hades, to be hard as hell. For me the thing was to keep moving and take advantage of every open spot that the spike Column would give me. Yea i fell plenty of times but I got it very quickly. Difficulty on the game at the Hard level was ok. The only problem I had with the hard difficulty is the last fight with the copies of the multiple Kratos's to defend the wife and kid. Damn was that crap hard with the difficulty that high. After finally being able to beat it and putting it on God Mode, God mode was a cake walk till i got to that last level to defeat the multiple Kratos's. NOW I CANT BEAT THE DAMN LEVEL....LOL. SOME ONE HELP! Other than that the game is solid. I think i touched on the fine points of the game on this review. I totally recommend this game along with GOD OF WAR 2. Get them both and play the last great games of the PS2. 5, 10, 20, 100 thumbs up. HAPPY GAMING AMIGOS

God of War is immediately accessible, beautifully expansive, and brutally dark. Anyone who has ever enjoyed the platform action/adventure genre will instantly feel at home in this game, but will be constantly amazed at the detail and fluidity of design in every facet of this extraordinarily well made game. Classic and "out of the box" puzzles are around every turn and constant gory battles are the staple of God of War. The controls are tight and easy to use. You are totally in control of Kratos' bloody combos and violent finishing moves. Once most enemies are torn down to a certain point in health, contextual button pressing and stick movement will reward you with even more satisfyingly orchestrated deaths. The game can be very difficult and challenging because of it's puzzles, but the combat's difficulty is variant on the settings you choose. If you start the game on a harder setting and then are continually slain you will be asked if you want to decrease the difficulty up on restart from the last checkpoint. Many special features can be unlocked when you successfully complete the game and an extremely difficult setting for the combat. God of War has some of the best graphics and presentation I have ever seen on a PS2 game. There is almost never a load screen and even through the environment background and obvious detail is so high, the game never bogs. You are not in control of the view angle, but the game usually picks the best possible perspective to add to the atmosphere and mood of the area. Rather than control a "camera" the right analog stick actually is used for evasion rolls in any and all directions relative to the perspective of the auto camera. The audio is outstanding. Very powerful and epic sounding crescendos occur often and never repetitively throughout Kratos' quest. Nearly every area has a unique mood in music as well as look. It is a soundtrack that you would find in a high budget film with similar epic scale. It ads to the engrossing qualities but is never overbearing. The story is dark and brutal, but is extremely well thought-out and very well written. The voice-overs and lip-syncing is outstanding and very professional and add to the believability of the emotion behind the characters. The storyline is not linear even, though the game play can be at times, but you persistently feel like you are actually in an epic story rather than a game. It is nearly as fun to watch as it is to play! It is definitely rated "M" for a reason, though. There is a lot of female frontal nudity and tons of gore. They held nothing back on this one and that can be too much for some. There is even a small portion near the beginning of the game when Kratos is emerging from a bed with two nude women. Many of the female-ish enemies are exposed excessively. This is most defiantly not a game for anyone less than an adult. Over all, I have to say that this was one of the best games I have ever seen. I highly anticipate the release of God of War 2 as should all of you. You must experience the first chapter before, though!

God of War is one of those games you have to own if you have a PS2. It's got great graphics, a compelling story line, tight controls, and is just plain fun to play. If you have a PS3, consider picking up the disk with both God of War 1 & 2 on it. In GOW you taken on the persona of a Spartin who committed a horrible act and has been trying to wipe the slate clean and remove his tortured visions by serving the gods. You don't know much about his history when things start, but you learn his story in dribs and drabs as you go. The story is compelling and it makes you want to keep going a little further to learn more. Your situation ultimately compells you to try to defeat the God of War. One thing GOW is not though is a kid's game. Unless you have a really mature kid, you should probably not be letting your kids play this game until they're at least in their mid-teens. In addition to the violence, of which there is pleny, there is also frontal nudity (toppless) and one mini-game where you are pleasuring two prostitutes. If it were a movie, GOW would be R or NC17. The mechanics are pretty straight forward for a PS2 game. You have attacks, blocks, jump, etc. You have to do some puzzles from time to time and there are a fair number of button pushing mini-games where pushing the correct sequence makes you pull off some cool looking cinematic move. Sometimes these are optional and just make a battle easier, but often they're required to win a fight. Many games have copied this feature and a lot of times they will make you concentrate so hard you miss the cool moves on screen (e.g. Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude ), but GOW is pretty forgiving on the timing to press the button so it never really frustrates you too much. Even when it was difficult, I considered it to be fair and not cheap. I also never really had much trouble figuring out where to go next. I can't encourate you enough to give this one a try. It's got decent length, minimal annoyances, and no major bugs I could see. Really a top of the line title and well worth the minimal price you'll pay to get it.

I wasn't planning on writing a review for this game; I mean, it's five years old and most of the attention has been on GOW3 since its release on the PS3 earlier this year. But the reality that the PS2 has sold around a total of 140 million units and it's still selling steadily means that there are plenty of PS2 owners that have yet to experience this epic game. And to those people I say; for as cheap as this game is going right now, every PS2 owner should have God of War (and GOW2) in their collection. It carries such broad appeal to different types of players. My sports junkie buddy who has his video game collection lined with Madden and NBA games sat down and had a great time. My wife even had a go at a few of the levels. As for me, a moderate gamer, it was completely addicting and I've played thru it twice now including in God Mode. You are thrust into a thrilling adventure inspired by Greek mythology oozing with creativity and luscious detail to stimulate your visual senses while challenging your reflexes. The story line is quite interesting and this is one of the few games of which I sat back and watched the cut scenes. The level designs are astounding for being a 2005 PS2 game. I loved the Grecian setting with huge temples and mountains in the sky, raging storms in the sea, and blinding winds in the desert. The game has been accused of being a mindless button-mashing hack-n'-slash, but while that may be true for portions of the game, there are several levels where you will have to use your logic and creativity to solve puzzles. And if you play in God Mode, you will need to learn to properly block along with timing strategic strings of combos to defeat the onslaught of enemies clamoring on every side. It does get very challenging (especially in Hades), but at least it's not one of those downright frustrating games that makes you wanna toss your controller at the screen. There are plenty of checkpoints so you will rarely be required to re-do a particularly difficult scene that you've already passed. This game is brilliant and easily worth the measly seventeen dollars that Amazon is asking. It is one of the best games I've ever played not just on the PS2, but on any system.

Gow is a hell of a game. The most important aspect, it's flawless fighting scheme which allows multiple moves and combos for weapons (which expand as you upgrade,) the ability to grab and rip open enemies and the use of magic which you acquire along the way. Doors are opened, levers are pulled and even mighty crossbows are fired by continously tapping the R2 button...making every action interactive rather than programmed. It's a button masher for sure...you'll hack and slash through rooms of countless UnDeads over and over, but at the same time, you're using combings and directions cleverly and with a method. The levels are beautiful designed, showing us an fantastic ancient Greece that's full of brilliant statues, temples, towns and even Hades itself. Some, full of spiked walls or booby-trapped floors will seem very familiar to gamers, but still, nothing to yawn at. On top of this, the game is chocked full of beautifully animated cut scenes, awesome bonus features after the game has been beat (including a "making of" featured, God Mode, extra challanges and incredible artwork), a great story and an anti-hero to end all anti-heroes. This game reminds me of a mix of Zelda and what a great 3D Castelvania could be, but it's not exactly perfect (although damn close.) First, while I have no problem with the game's featured, fitting nudity among it's female villains and cut scenes (between the sex and ultra violence, this game is NOT for kids), there's a sex mini-game early on. Clearly, it was intended to get some press and display an edge, but it wasn't fitting and came off as little more than a cheap thrill. It's not explicit,( just a pattern of buttons to press while the off camera anti-hero beds two naked Greek women), it comes off as merely a non-related cheap thrill allowing the gamer to upgrade his weapon to the max...providing he spends six hours guiding the character's sex prowess. Secondly, about halfway through, it became a little repetative. It's slashing through hordes of gorgons, harpes and zombies only to end up pulling levers and scrambling before a timer runs out. There's only three true bosses (including the final), making room for the cheap slashing of set numbered enemies as mini-bosses...which, again, seemed cheap and repative. And the final boss can be beat by simply tapping away on a button or two. Characters such as Medusa and the Cyclops are throw away enemies which provide little challange and could have been utalized much better according to their mythology. To make matters worse, there's an unlockable featuring the creators showing off bosses and levels that didn't make the game due to time restraints. Instead of PLAYING agains Cronos or flying with Icurus' wings, we get to SEE them and hear how the might be in the next game. Why the creators showed off what could have been I don't know. Still, this a beautiful, bug-less slasher with an interesting protagonist and a fascinating story. Definately worth buying if you dig killing stuff with blades and solving the occaisional puzzle.

I want to add ahead of time that I just started playing video games again, after 3 years of no games. Why would I do that? I married a woman who said games are for kids...yep, divorced her and said marriage is for boring people! Anyway, because of my time away from games it allowed me to go back and try out all the great games I had missed. This was #1 on my list. What I found was a beautiful, hack, hack, chop, chop game. That was the outside of the surface, on the inside was some very small puzzles to work the brain a little. I read a review that said there were no puzzles in this game. What I am finding out is that the younger generation of gamers don't realize there are puzzles because they have this thing called the internet that has the things called walk-throughs that has these tips that take all of the puzzle solving parts out. Quit cheating you all, sheesh! There was one puzzle where you had to move blocks by spinning them on a dial so that they would fit just right into a doorway. There was one where you had to drop a block from a crane onto a piece of the ground, just to name a few of them. The star of the game is Kratos. You almost forget while playing it that he can die on the game. He is that great of a character. It is a pure adrenaline game. The story is great, you will see many figures from mythology that you have read about or will read about. The Sirens, Medusa, Hades, of course you are hunting Ares. I would call it one of the best games I have ever played. The first time through it took me 8 hours some odd minutes, so it isn't long, but you can always kick the difficulty up. Possibly the best creature in it is the Titan or whatever they are calling it that has the last level strapped to its back. Beautiful levels and creation all through the game. On a side note, the level of violence and nudity have been mentioned on other reviews. I would say the nudity is PG-13, topless, the only problem there is if the younger ones figure out that you can do more than look at the topless women. So, parents should be forewarned. The blood is bad, but I've seen worse on the PS2. Give it a shot, part 2 looms and I can't wait to get my hands on it!

okay so i hate writing reviews but ive been checking out reviews for this game since i beat it and on G.O.W.2, this is a great game! i do feel there was alot of hype on this game and its not as great as the hype accounts for but it is still one of the best ps2 games ive ever played or game PERIOD! if you love greek mythology and a great story of a game and to beat the crap out of the undead, this is the game for you. if youre not a true gamer then this is not for you, because there are puzzles that make you think and there are parts that you will have to play over a bit to realize your mistakes. (perfect explanation: there is a part where kratos goes to the underworld and has to climb up the moving, spikey wall, u have to use your timing and the X button, which makes him jump up the wall a few feet, to get thur this. trust me you wont make it up in one go but you learn what you need to do as you go. just dont be a baby and wine and quit!) this is a great game but as i say if your not a TRUE GAMER stick to your kid games PROS: -fairly long -great gameplay -no load times (except for some, but not many) -good storyline -will stand out as a game you never played before CONS: -same enemies on every stage (this is my main dislike of the game, GOW should have had it where you encounter new enemies as you move on instead of undead soliders and the bulls with the axes) -weak use of the sex mini-game lol -you wont play it again after you beat it ive already started of GOW2 and kratos looks so bad ass in his GOD amor in the begining of the game! and its already better than than the original

perfect

Good

the game works perfectly not even a scratch

The game plays fine and is a lot of fun. Long live the PS2!

Replaying this again really brought back happiness and giddy feeling i felt so long ago it's been blast playing