Review: God of War (PS2)
Unfortunately, unless one is totally dedicated to games, one is likely to miss out on a release or two. The fact of the matter is that there are just too many games; I usually have to stick to development studios that I'm familiar with (a bad habit, I know), or else try something only when acclaimed by others I respect. One such game that I missed was God of War. Yeah, yeah, it was like, "Best of E3" a few years ago, or something, but for whatever reason (probably because I was in Japan at the time) I didn't play it when it was released.
Well, a sequel came out, and my friend Adam was raving about it over IM, so I put the original into my rental service queue. A couple months later, I work through the other games on my list, and God of War is sent my way. The gist of this game is that it's ACTION/ADVENTURE. Yes, not action/adventure, but ACTION/ADVENTURE. Taking place from a 3rd-person perspective, the player controls a Spartan warrior named Kratos through all manner of ridiculous situations. See, Kratos is a true amoral hard-ass, and killed a lot of people for the glory of Sparta... all at the cost of his sanity. Now plagued by nightmares of atrocities committed in his past, Kratos does the dirty work of the gods. As I'm sure you're able to tell, this game borrows liberally from Greek mythology, although mostly in character (as opposed to setting). Regardless, the gist of the game is that Ares (the "God of War") is laying waste to Athens, and other gods are forbidden to fight against him. It's therefore up to Kratos, as a human, to put a stop to Ares' rampage by finding an artifact called Pandora's Box.
Now, if you were an aspiring developer, given a team of geeks and told to make a game, what would you do? Try creating something quirky and original? Well, I can tell you what David Jaffe, lead designer of God of War did: he stuffed a somewhat mediocre game full to the gills with over-the-top action, larger-than-life situations, and huge tits. Kratos attacks various baddies with his Blades of Chaos; fiery daggers attached to lengthy chains which slice and dice in a quite impressive display. As enemies are killed, Kratos absorbs blobs of red energy (wait, this is starting to sound familiar) which allows him to power up acquired weapons and spells. As enemies are whacked to oblivion, a counter pops up on your screen, recording how many times the player has consecutively hit an enemy (I'm sure I've seen this before somewhere).
Sometimes, an enemy is too big and/or bad to simply dispatch with your blades... you must grapple the beast, then execute a series of timed button presses or analog stick movements to finish it off. This includes bosses, which are obscenely large. Unfortunately, the boss fights, while cool, never attain the level of excitement or intensity that a game like, say, Shadow of the Colossus, possesses (that was perhaps a bit unfair, but we do compare with what comes before).
To the casual observer, God of War looks impressive. Once the player picks up the controller and delves deeper, however, the game proves somewhat monotonous. A similarity with Grand Theft Auto III seems to exist, both in audience and style of play. If the player is the type to enjoy simply having their on-screen avatar run around, killing stuff in a virtual world, then God of War seems like a good game to play; similar to how some of my friends enjoyed endlessly stealing cars and blowing them up in GTA3. The sad fact is that nothing really seems to change in the course of the game, and it just gets boring fighting the endless streams of enemies in exactly the same way.
Another thing that irked me about God of War is the way that it takes from Greek mythology. As you may know, people can spend their entire careers studying this sort of stuff; i.e. the history is vast, and each figure in that mythology has a fairly well-established personality. God of War doesn't seem to transfer any of that; there's no sense of "canonicity." The designers seemed to think that it would be cool to have Greek gods as charactes in their game, but didn't seem to care enough to make them act like the mythology says they are supposed to. Certain parts of the mythology are totally out of place as well, such as Sirens in a desert (wouldn't it make more sense for them to be in the initial shipwreck stage?), or Cronus (Zeus's Titan father) being chained up and wearing Pandora's Temple like a turtle shell. I don't have a problem with storytellers borrowing from existing legend, but it helps when they actually respect the source material.
I wasn't able to finish God of War, due to the fact that the disc I rented had problems in the Playstation I was using. The game was ok, but just not compelling enough for me to jump through any sort of hoop in order to continue playing. I also wasn't a huge fan of the blatant pandering to the teenage male audience... maybe this was just another sign that this game wasn't for me. As a side note, I do appreciate the fact that the lead designer, David Jaffe, was able to get off the team that is making the third installment of this series. I can understand the sequel, and I'm sure that there were some unfinished ideas that he wanted to realize, but three games in such quick succession is whoring it a bit, and I respect him for leaving after the second game. Anyway, to sum up, God of War is a well-produced, impressive-looking (if somewhat uninspired) action adventure game. Worth a rental if you liked killing pedestrians in GTA3.
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