God of War, Review 1

Originally written 2005-04-08

God of War is brilliant. It is (almost) a complete riot to play and always has something new and exciting to show you. It's almost perfect. The only thing holding it back are the mind-numbingly finnicky platforming puzzles that you'll have to repeat over and over and over and over...... They're a real speedbump in the otherwise non-stop thrill ride. Just how non-stop? If I'm guessing right, I stopped tonight...err, morning with one last quest to go plus the final boss. Yeah, I almost marathoned the whole thing. Thankfully, due to its dynamic and gratifying gameplay, stunningly epic production values, and fast-paced story, it should hold up well to repeat visits.

Technical ramblings. As much as I hated the platforming puzzles, I really have to tip my hat to the developers for really simplifying what is normally a horrendous mess. Instead of having to fumble with camera angles to properly judge your jump distances or plank-walking, they place the camera so that the playing field takes on a two-dimensional perspective. Major kudos for that. As an adventurous sort of game explorer, I was in near fits following all the branching paths. Normally these sorts of things have one short, dead-end path to a reward or key area or something then you quickly turn around and follow the other path to progress through the level. Here, however, there are whole side-journeys. I was originally going to make a fit about the world's non-linearity, but as I progressed, I quickly understood their plan. Didn't take that one path? Don't worry, after your one journey, you'll get spit right out right where the other branch is, so you won't have to backtrack....except that you kinda did. Anyway, what I intend to say is that the whole level and world design was amazingly well-thought-out. (What wasn't thought out was when I saved over my save game at a branch where it turns out I would be forever locked out...a rare situation in this game. But if I was locked out, that just means I only missed out on some possible treasures and goodies.) Before I touch on graphics, is there something else I wanted to touch on?....I don't remember. The graphics are unbelievable for a PS2 game. It seems their engineers found an untapped reserve of horsepower. Graphics are crisp with nary any aliasing to be seen (even without the "soft screen" filter applied; turn that shit off when you buy this game; I don't know why the hell it's on by default), geometry is stunningly complex, and textures are rich (mysteriously except for this one pot I encountered in one single corner of a hallway of one level...). Surprisingly, the PS2 is doing damned well keeping up with all this lush chaos on screen. Yes, it obviously chugs at moments, but it never comes to a crawl. Another oddity (and I'm not sure if it's because I turned off the "soft screen") is that the picture tended to crack or rip horizontally. (You'll know what I mean when you see it.) I'm guessing the PS2 is just playing catch up rendering the image, but it tended to happen in areas not suspect to lowered frame rates.

The wrap-up. God of War for the PS2 is flat-out giddy-fun-city.