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tbaugh's God of War (PS2)
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| [January 13, 2008 09:11:31 PM]
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GAMEPLAY
Gameplay got noticeably better the second time around. New types of enemies were introduced that require new attention to evasion and using combos. Also, combos were introduced along with a new spell that allows you to freeze your enemies (before I only had a spell to do damage in a circle around my character). The combos are a bit hard to remember, but so far they greatly add to the game.
The hack and slash nature of the game has started become more prevalent with stronger enemies that continually respawn until either they are all defeated or a certain puzzle is solved. This isn’t so bad, but in the case of respawning minotaurs who must be executed in a certain manner, the death sequences can become repetitive and lose their original zeal. These instances are also quite tolerable because you continually get magic and health orbs upon defeating enemies.
The game’s visuals are really quite interesting. As I progress, I have been gaining new combos that provide new ways to destroy the enemies. Each one gorier than the last, they provide quite a bit of entertainment to the hack and slash repetition. The levels have also been providing a new level of interest as I noticed more and more secret item and orb chests hidden throughout the game. And again, there is more unnecessary female nudity.
DESIGN
I don’t think God of War has any unique game mechanic to it, so far at least. Mostly, it seems to generate interest from its fluid combat. As I said, the combos become increasingly gruesome and fun to watch (as long as you thinking tearing apart undead warrior enemies is cool). Collecting the orbs necessary to buy new combos also helps to provide a goal and motivation to explore the levels more thoroughly. Also, as stated before, combat isn’t really too much of a nuisance as defeating enemies provides more health and other status boosts. The new variety of characters in the second session also proves promising as the new enemies present the player with different styles of combat to be used.
So far I think the game only really needs to have a stronger storyline. I know generally what my goal is (kill Ares, the god of war), but there isn’t any real depth or interest in the story itself, all interest has been generated by gameplay (for me, at least). The cutscenes so far have seemed good enough, with decent graphics and voice acting. I think the game could benefit from stronger cutscenes, maybe more or longer ones, with more storytelling being done in them.
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| [January 13, 2008 06:13:49 PM]
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SUMMARY
In God of War, the player controls the character of Kratos, a Spartan warrior of great strength and skill. The game’s plot line centers itself around Kratos and his battles for and against the gods, especially Ares. (Throughout the game there are many references to Greek mythology.) Game play is a combat-based action-adventure game that also features many challenging puzzles.
GAMEPLAY
This was not my first time playing God of War. I had played it when it came out, but only for a few minutes. I couldn’t quite remember what had turned me away from the game, but I quickly remembered exactly what the problem was; God of War is pretty difficult. There were numerous instances in only the first 45 minutes of the game that required reloading from the last savepoint an absurd amount of times. There was a specific instance of intense frustration wherein I had to push a box towards a set of enemy archers in order to jump up to them to kill them. Unfortunately, the box explodes into a million splintered pieces if it gets hit by about four or so arrows. This is made all the more difficult by the fact that it is incredibly difficult to detect if the box has been hit or not. I frustratingly pushed the box about halfway over and over again only to have it shatter right in front of me. However, there was a special sense of satisfaction after I finally cleared this area.
After yelling many expletives and telling my friend watching me play that I was just about ready to try a new game out of frustration, he told me that God of War’s puzzles were probably the hardest part of the game. Such was even more apparent in the first boss showdown. In order to beat the boss, who is three different hydras you have to fight. You must take out the two smaller ones before you can touch the boss. It took me awhile to figure out how to permanently incapacitate the smaller hydra, but it wasn’t quite as annoying of a process as the box situation earlier. My repeated attempts at killing these hydra was even less of a nuisance because of the game’s system of giving health orbs and magic orbs when you attack your enemies. This allows you to hack and slash to your heart’s content and get health back in the process.
Aside from any frustrations, my first experience playing the game was quite enjoyable. The controls are very simple making combat very intuitive and fun, while the graphics are quite slick for a PS2 game. The entire environment of the experience could probably be described as epic, the game does well to set up the tone of the world you live in where gods and monsters are real beings. The levels so far seem to be well designed with plenty of detail and background action/visuals that help set a great mood full of tension. Also, female nudity less than an hour into a game, though unnecessary, was appreciated.
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tbaugh's God of War (PS2)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Saturday 12 January, 2008
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