God Of War

I can't tell if my opinion was affected by the tons of praise this got. It's definitely a good game. But at the time this came out, I really can't see how it earned the title of PS2 Game of the Year over Shadow of the Colossus or Resident Evil 4. And more recently, I'm completely baffled at this game being awarded best PS2 game ever over games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and or the Ratchet and Clank series. Anyway, God of War is a very fun game. A lot of people say that the combat is what makes this game so great, but it isn't why I like it though. Yeah, the fighting looks cool, but anyone can pull off a sweet looking combo. Just because the animations look nicer doesn't make your combat deeper than a normal button masher. I will admit that the fighting is very fluid and rewarding and as you progress you become more powerful as the game goes on. There's fairly good enemy variety, with things like centaurs and sirens and plenty of undead soldiers, although most of them come off as annoying little shits that do nothing but swarm around you and piss you off .

The story was more interesting than I expected, accomplishing its goal of helping us understand Kratos a bit more, but what I really liked were the game's set pieces, although even that was a bit uneven at times. The Temple of Pandora section of the game was brilliantly designed, really pulling off the feel of an epic, hazardous dungeon. In complete contrast to that, right before the temple section, the game figures the most entertaining thing you could do to enter the temple is to force you to slowly plod around a huge empty desert searching for sirens that you can you barely hear. I really want to slap the game designer that came up with that. But that somewhat short nightmare is nothing compared the last act of the game, starting in Hades. They were just lazy and braindead here, instead of making what could have been a really cool area, they just threw a bunch of enemies and idiotic spinning spike hazards at you, and it really isn't fun or interesting. After that you enter the final fight against Ares, and the whole showdown with him is no good. After the excitement of the first two boss fights, Ares is just a cheap twat who blocks all of your attacks and the final phase of the fight is more about luck than actual skill. So, God of War is a fun game. It's certainly one of the better PS2 games out there, but its far from the best.