I love God of War.
We often get e-mails from readers charging us to write more "objective" reviews. Per this philosophy, game scores should be based on a rubric of sorts. Let's take fictional fighting game Street King of Mortal Calibur Smackdown as an example. How are the game's fighting mechanics? They're pretty decent, so let's say 7 points out of 10. Graphics? Eh, a 3 out of 10—it's pretty ugly. And so on and so forth. At the end, tally up the points and figure out how the score translates to whatever rating system you're dealing with.
Is that a wrong way to evaluate games? I'm not sure. I do know that this is the method used to rate a lot of games. And I confess that this is how I've rated more than a couple of games myself.
If God of War were judged according to an objective method, it would not get the score that I'm giving it. In the campaign the puzzle solving involves a little too much pushing and pulling of objects. There could be a few more bosses. The length is probably kind of short for most people's tastes.
But I don't care.
This campaign sucked me in from the very opening scene, in which Kratos stands at the edge of a cliff, about to throw himself to the depths below. The story, your basic tale of revenge and redemption, isn't groundbreaking, but it is well told. While franchises can be beautiful things, I loved playing as a new character with no baggage, no history—you could almost call it the perfect one-night stand. I got to become Kratos. It was, in its way, like starring in my own movie.
In fact, the whole game plays like a movie. The story line and resulting gameplay are very linear. The fixed camera, something that typically drives me batty, reinforces the cinematic feeling by zooming out and swooping around, giving you perspectives you'd never see if you were the one in control.
The graphics are more beautiful than any PS2 game's graphics deserve to be. When developers spend time expounding on the beauty of water effects and light streaming, all I hear is "blah blah blah." But this is actually a game in which they're worth pointing out. When you're fighting in a room with a highly polished marble floor, take the time to look down at the floor and see the combat reflections. The water effects actually are pretty amazing—I ran through every reflecting pool I came across just to see at the splashes I could make.
Then know that this is all augmented by movie-quality cut-scenes that I actually wanted to watch. I hate cut-scenes—the only time I don't skip past them is when I think I might miss out on information I need for the next part of a game. During the campaign in God of War, I actually hushed someone in my office who started talking during a cut-scene.
But the really cool stuff is the action. When the mother Hydra head screams in the opening level, you can almost feel the blast that emanates from her mouth. The animations of the blades of chaos as they rip through the torsos of your enemies are so awesome that you are Kratos. And as Kratos, you can render gore galore as you tear a swath of destruction through the game—watch vultures plucking eyeballs from corpses and heads bursting off in showers of blood.
Combat is smooth. Button mashing can suffice on easier difficulty levels, but even then, it's rewarding to learn the combos, thanks to the gorgeous animations of Kratos using his blades. The god powers that you earn along the way can be helpful, too—I made the most use of Poseidon's rage and Hades' demons—but they're not quite as cool to wield as the blades are.
Between bouts of mutilation, you get to exercise your brain a bit by solving puzzles. A few may cause a bit of head scratching, but there's nothing so maddening that you end up beating your head against a wall. And thankfully, all puzzles are fairly contained within their individual levels, so you don't end up retracing your steps to find an item that you failed to see the first time around. The one complaint I have is that too many solutions involve pushing and pulling objects.
My favorite thing about God of War is that it reminded me why I am a gamer. Many developers spend the bulk of their energy coming up with ways to make their games different, to do something innovative. But that's the wrong focus. The bulk of your energy should be focused on making the game good. Who cares if you've provided me with a new move that no gaming character has ever executed before if it's wrapped up in crappy gameplay and a half-assed campaign? People do not play games because they break new ground. People play games because they are fun. And fun is God of War's greatest strength.
On a rubric, you could take away points for nitpicky weaknesses in God of War. However, I didn't care about the minor flaws, because I was enjoying myself so much, and enjoyment is just one of those things that a rubric can't sufficiently measure. This is not a perfect game, but it is a great one. This campaign is full of hack and slash-greek-awesomeness. Get it used, new, from anywhere for a good price.
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